Various topics about this Holy Week, the Wave Sheaf offering, and the timing of the count for Shavuot.
There isn’t much to talk about on the last day of unleavened bread. I’m not aware of any significant happenings on this day in scripture. And you know what? That’s just fine. Sometime it’s good to just obey simply because the WORD says so. We always want to get into deeper meanings, parallels, analogies, and the like, but once in a while it’s good to just trust and obey, huh? For our observance, we bring all our left over unleavened bread treats to Oneig on this day to eat them up. Oneig is a Hebrew word that means “meal of delight”. Bringing in various foods and kind of cleaning everything up is sort of a metaphor for today’s message, which is just a bit of cleanup on the various topics surrounding the week we are wrapping up.
Slide 2 “Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to YHVH your Elohim; you shall do no work on it.” (Deu 16:8)
Today is the Last Day of Unleavened Bread. Since it’s Friday, this year, it’s the next to the last day of unleavened bread since we can’t go buy anything. The commandment, as we see on the screen, is not just to get rid of the leaven but to actually consume some matzah every day. Since we’re in the west, we can switch up to rice or corn tortillas, which I don’t care for, and forget to have the ULB so I hope you didn’t forget to have a little every day. This is a good segue to contrast between back then and now. On Sunday, or after sundown on Shabbat, we can just go buy some regular bread because we live in the west. In first century Judea, likely not. In ancient Israel, definitely not. It would take a good while before they would have soft bread again. It would come back slowly. We can just go to the store and buy made bread or buy yeast and be back in action pretty fast.
Leavening is metaphorically like sin, but it’s not sin. Be careful when we use analogies, similes, metaphors, and other literary teaching devices not to confuse the real with the analogy. If leavening was sin, then we wouldn’t be able to eat it at all. Leviticus 11 tells us what foods are OK and which are prohibited. Leaven is not prohibited at all. Leavening is used as an analogy for sin because we have to search it out and put forth effort to get rid of it, just like we do with sin, but leavening itself is not bad. In fact, there’s a holy day where leavened bread is offered.
There’s a metaphor in this leaven/sin paradigm for where we live today. We live in Babylon, so while we exit the world for Shabbat or the festivals, once they are over we are right back where we started. Well, physically. Emotionally and spiritually, we should be in a much better place, refreshed and ready to go for another season! In Israel, the festivals likely had more of a lasting effect, especially ULB. Just like it takes a long time to get that starter lump going, it also could have taken longer for the people to get back to hustle and bustle. Since these days were pilgrimage festivals, they had to go home on foot or in carts, so the festival would definitely linger. Like when Yeshua was a boy and they lost Him in the caravan home. They were still together, talking about the festival, talking about the harvest, and traveling. The festival would linger for sure. Today, not so much.
Slide 3 “But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” (Joh 17:13-16)
Just to be clear, though, we’re supposed to be in this condition. After Yeshua ascended, the apostles took the faith outside of Judea. They used the synagogues in the world to spread the Gospel, traveling everywhere. We have the documentation of Paul’s journeys and when they intersected the brethren, but we need to remember that happened to all of them. Paul is just the one whom YHVH saw fit to use as our example. Paul was a citizen of both Rome and Judea. A highly educated Jew who could live in both worlds. This is our condition right now. We have come to the truth in the world and in the world we shall stay until Yeshua returns. It’s also important to note that this was the expectation. Their mission was not to start their own Israel or stay in Judea. They had to venture out into the pagan world and spread the Gospel. Such is our fate as well.
Switching gears, there’s an appointed time that isn’t a High Day for which we don’t have any observance or any means to actually observe outside of the land without a full blown priesthood. That’s the day of the wave sheaf offering.
Slide 4 Then YHVH spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. ‘He shall wave the sheaf before YHVH for you to be accepted; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. ‘Now on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb one year old without defect for a burnt offering to YHVH. ‘Its grain offering shall then be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering by fire to YHVH for a soothing aroma, with its drink offering, a fourth of a hin of wine. ‘Until this same day, until you have brought in the offering of your Elohim, you shall eat neither bread nor roasted grain nor new growth. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places
(Lev 23:9-14)
This is an appointed time that is uniquely a work day. And boy oh boy there’s a lot of speculation about this day, its scope, and its timing. Before I get into it, let’s look at why it’s very important to us!
Slide 5 But now Messiah has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. (1Co 15:20)
First fruits is the day Yeshua was resurrected as the first fruits of the dead. The timing of the week of his death and resurrection puts Him coming out of the tomb on the 1st day of the week after Passover, albeit before sunrise. The holy days are literal, but are also part of the prophecies of YHVH and His plan of salvation. While this day is very literally real, the people had to make this offering before partaking of the new grain, it’s also a sod, a mystery, a prophecy of the resurrection of our Lord. And since YHVH accepted that first offering of His Son’s death, we are able to be part of the spiritual harvest, looking forward to our resurrection to eternal life.
Returning to the Torah, there are two popular ways of timing this day and then a third one that I think I’m the only one who contemplates. The first is the way our group counts this day. This reads “on the day after the Sabbath” and we understand that to be the first day of the week.
Our way to identify this day is to make it the first day of the week during ULB. This year, it would have been Sunday the 17th of April. 50 days from then we arrive at Sunday, the 5th of June. In this manner of counting, we always start on a Sunday and end on a Sunday because 50 days from any day of the week will land on that same day of the week. I think this has to be the way because this observance doesn’t start from a calendar date like the rest of the days in Leviticus 23. The other way to count this, which we will get to next, makes it possible to have the day of first fruits be the actual Sabbath day, which doesn’t make sense as this is a work day. Our way lines up with Yeshua’s resurrection, though, so I think it’s a keeper.
The second way to count this is to say the day after the Sabbath to wave the sheaf is Abib 16. This way of counting calls the Sabbath the high day, which is the 15th of Abib, and starts counting on the same calendar date each year, which is Abib 16. That doesn’t make a lot of sense because it’s not set in Leviticus or anywhere as a calendar date. It’s also very possible for Abib 16 to fall on the weekly Sabbath, which would mean people would bring their offerings on a day when nobody is supposed to work. But a lot of people use this manner of counting, including the Pharisees of the first century.
Both of these methods of counting hinge on the timing of Passover and ULB. Passover is Abib 14, ULB 1 is Abib 15, so then you either have Abib 16 or the Sunday during ULB as the day to start. In my feeble mind, and I’m the only person I’ve ever heard say this part, what if the barley isn’t ripe enough to cut on Abib 16 or the first day of the week during ULB? What if the crops just aren’t ready by then and they have to go another week? Could it be possible this day isn’t directly tied to Passover at all? Like I said, our group times this one of the two popular ways and isn’t likely to change, but I wanted to bring this up in case we get to the kingdom and learn something different 😊.
You don’t have to count every day. This is a tradition. There’s nothing wrong with counting every day, I just want to point out it’s not a commandment. Literally, we are to count 7 weeks and a day, so one could count week 1, week 2, etc. This also lends more credence to starting the count on the first day of week one, so you actually count 7 Sabbaths and a day. And I’m sure there were people would did count 50 days individually back in the first century and before. The kohenim definitely kept count. Regular folk probably kept count, too, to keep track and because it’s a fine tradition. But it’s just fine today to look at a calendar 50 days down the road and mark an X. Which is June 5 this year.
It’s also important to remember what was happening during the Exodus at this time. Today is the LDUB, but it’s also the 7th day of fleeing. The people were terrified, they were on the run with the flocks, herds, and kneading bowls. Pharaoh was in hot pursuit. It was still chaos. Pure, uncertain, chaos. They had to get to the Red Sea, get boxed in, and then have that incredible miracle happen. And then they get to the other side and have some relief because they are safe. All that happens during the 50 days. The tradition, which does work out mathematically and makes sense, is that the first day of Shavuot during Exodus was when YHVH gave the 10 commandments from Mt. Sinai. The bible doesn’t say this, but there’s no reason for it not to have happened like that.
In contrast to the Exodus, these days actually anticipate shalom, not chaos. The remembrances are instituted so we can remember the chaos. The Torah is not just a set of rules, it’s an actual culture for a nation. The nation entered the land in Joshua 5, after circumcising everyone, and was able to harvest grain they did not plant and observe the days of unleavened bread in complete peace. Nobody was chasing them. They were enjoying bread for the first time in 40 years. Many of them born in the wilderness had never tasted bread. This happened during peace. Then they went off to war. After the conquest, the nation was expected to plant, harvest, offer, and eat in peace. They were expected to observe ULB and then millions of households would make new starter lumps. They would do this safe and snug in their land with no enemies. The memorial to eat the bread of affliction was to teach the generations that it wasn’t always peaceful and to cherish what they had.
The moral in that story is that they didn’t. They were good for exactly one generation, the Joshua generation. Our adopted ancestors couldn’t keep the faith, just like how the apostles couldn’t even stay awake. They sinned, got tossed into captivity, brought back, were good for a while, then decided to become Greeks. Then a remnant called the Maccabees restored Judea but made a pact with Rome that led to the occupied Judea of the first century. Then we have the Son of God coming to begin the New Covenant, which then launches the greatest evangelism in the history of the world. So that we, a people who were not God’s people, could be grafted in, and be called His People. So as we finish the festival of unleavened bread, let’s rejoice that we are called, and be dedicated to doing it again every year until the Messiah returns.