The Omer and Counting to Pentecost
By
Ben Whitfield
Omer: Hebrew for sheaf
an
offering brought to the Temple
[during the days of Unleavened Bread
my
insertion]
Thus the name of the period
between Passover and Shavuot. (1)
The bible
(Lev. 23:9-11) prescribes that when you enter the land which I am giving to you and
reap its harvest, you shall bring the first sheaf of your harvest to the priest. And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be
accepted for you on the morrow after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.
After the
waving, a burnt offering together with a meal offering and a libation were made at the
altar and after that had been done it was permissible to eat of the new harvest: (v14-16)
Lev. 23:14.
(KJV)
And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the
selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for
ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
15 And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after
the Sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths
shall be complete:
16 Even unto the morrow after the seventh
Sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD.
Lev 23:14
(NRSV)
You shall eat no bread or parched grain or fresh ears until that very day,
until you have brought the offering of your God: it is a statute forever throughout your
generations in all your settlements.
15 And from the day after the Sabbath, from the day
on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation offering, you shall count off seven weeks;
they shall be complete.
16 You shall count until the day after the
seventh Sabbath, fifty days; then you shall present an offering of new grain to the LORD
The exact
meaning of the day after the Sabbath in the biblical passage was a major point
of controversy between the rabbis and the Boethusians (Men. 65A-B) and later, the
Karaites. The later argued that the ceremony
was to be performed on the day after the Sabbath immediately following the first day of
Passover whereas the rabbis argued that in this context the word Sabbath was
to be understood not as the weekly Sabbath but as a Holyday and meant the
first day of Passover itself. (This would
have placed the start of the count on Nisan 16th, my insertion). Since the passage quoted continues with the law
And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of wave offeringthe day after
the Sabbathyou shall count seven weeks and the fiftieth day is Shavuot it
follows that according to the sectarians the festival of Shavuot always fell on a Sunday. (If you begin the count on a Sunday, youll
always end up on a Sunday
my comment.) (1)
(1)
(Encyclopedia Judaica, page 1383
Article Omer)
(1)
The
count was to begin the Day after the Sabbath.
(No mention of which Sabbath. It
is assumed that if there are 3 Sabbaths during the festival of Unleavened Bread (Two High
Sabbaths, One weekly Sabbath) that it would have been noted which one was being
referenced; however, that is not the case. One
must gain this knowledge through deductive reasoning
thus the door is open for
continual controversy.
A. If the count was to begin on the day
after the 1st High Sabbath, Pentecost would
always result with Sivan 6th.
B. If the count were to begin on the last
High Sabbath it too would result in a consistent result of an assigned day, Sivan 12th,
7 days later. (If God had wanted a certain set day and time he wouldnt
have bothered to tell us to count.) (In
the Diaspora there are two High Days for every Holyday, (yom tov), except Yom Kippur.) (2)
C. The assumption is that since we must
count that it appears that God wanted us to exercise some responsibility.
D. It is also assumed that the Sabbath
referred to in Lev. 23:15 was a weekly Sabbath, so one began the count on a Sunday the 1st
day of the week.
E. Counting off 7 full weeks would
logically mean that beginning with the 1st day of the week you would have a
complete weekly cycle to count 49
from the 1st day of the week to the
Sabbath was a complete week
(v 15)
seven Sabbaths refers to a week as in the NIV
translation :
Lev 23:15 (NIV)
And from the
day after the Sabbath, from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation
offering, you shall count off seven weeks; they shall be complete.
F. The only way to count off seven Sabbaths or seven weeks
is to have each of them start on a Sunday and end on the Sabbath.
The second
holidays were adopted by the entire Golah, the communities living beyond the confines of
Israel. Its observance was continued by
succeeding generations for more than 2000 years, and became a generally accepted law.
(2,pg11-12)
(2) (The
Complete Hebrew Calendar, by Arthur Spier):
History:
This feast, one of the three pilgrim festivals (Deut 16:16), marked the end of the barley
and beginning of the wheat harvest.
It is stated in Leviticus: From the day
after the Sabbath, the day that you bring the sheaf of wave-offering you shall count
(until) seven full weeks have elapsed: you shall count fifty days, until the day after the
seventh week; then you shall bring an offering of new grain to the Lord (Lev. 23:15-16 and to 21).
We can
see from the above evidence that the Sadducees controlled the temple and the Pharisees
controlled the towns and synagogues. Other groups had their ideas and practices, very much
like today within the various churches.