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 offering—the day after the Sabbath—you 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, you’ll always end up on a Sunday…my comment.) (1)

 

(1) (Encyclopedia Judaica, page 1383…Article Omer)

 Some Things to consider:

 

(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 wouldn’t 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.

  At the time of the Second Temple, when the Sanhedrin announced the beginnings of the months on the basis of observations, the communities living far from the seat of the court could not be reached in time by its messengers.  Those communities, in doubt about the day of the New Moon and the festivals, established the custom of celebrating an additional day for each of the major holidays.  Thus they were certain to observe the festivals at the same time as their brethren in Israel, on the days sanctified by the Sanhedrin.  Whenever the Torah had prescribed one day of holy convocations and prohibition of work, they celebrated two days except on Yom Kippur to avoid two successive days of fasting.

 

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.

 In the land of Israel, then as well as today, the “Second Holidays” are ordinary days, but semi-holidays on Nisan 16 and Tishri 16, Hol Hamoed. Rosh Hashanah is an exception because it is the only holiday that occurs on Rosh Hodesh. It was often uncertain up to the very last moment when the witnesses would arrive and whether the court would sanctify either the 30th day of Elul or the following day, both days were considered as one long day.

(2,pg11-12)

(2) (The Complete Hebrew Calendar, by Arthur Spier):

 Shavuot: Pentecost, the 50th day, the festival celebrated 50 days after the offering of the Wave sheaf or Omer.  (According to the Pharisaical tradition counting method it would be the 6th of Sivan and also on the seventh for the Diaspora. According to the Sadducees it would be 50 days after the 7 week cycle beginning with the Omer offering and Pentecost would be on a Sunday.)

 The Biblical names for the festival are: “Hag Shavuot” (Feast of Weeks,” Ex. 34:22;Deut 16:10); “Yom ha-Bikkurim” (The Day of the Firstfruits,” Num 28:26), and “Hag-ha-Kazir” (“The Harvest Feast,” Ex. 23:16).  The rabbinic name is “Azeret” (RH 1,2;Hag.2,4). (3)

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).

 Lev. 23:11 states that the sheaf was waved on the day after the Sabbath on the festival of Passover.  Thus Shavuot falls 50 days after this day.  The *Sadducees (and later the Karaites) understood the term “Sabbath” in these verses literally, hence, for them Savuot always falls on a Sunday.  The *Pharisees, however, interpreted “Sabbath” as the first day of Passover (which was a Sabbath, “day of rest”) so that, for them, Shavuot always falls on the 51st day from the first day of Passover (Sifra Emor Perek 12; Men. 65a-66a). The *Falashas interpreted “the day after Sabbath” as meaning the day after Passover so that for them Shavuot falls on the 12th of Sivan.   The community of *Qumran apparently interpreted “Sabbath” as the Sabbath after the end of the Passover festival, and as they had a fixed solar calendar this “Sabbath” always fell on the 26th of Nisan so that Shavuot always came out on Sunday the 15th of Sivan. (3)

 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. 

 It is interesting to note that the Pharisees insisted that Shavuot be observed on a fixed day because they wished to affirm that the festival commemorated the Sinaitic theophany…the giving of the law 50 days after the Exodus (according the general Pharisaic belief in an oral Torah reaching back to Moses which the Sadducees denied) and because a purely agricultural festival had little meaning for the town dwellers who made up the Pharisaic party (L. Finkelstein, Pharisees, (1962), 115-8, 641-54).

 If this is correct, the transformation into a historical feast took place before the present era. (Before the birth of Christ, my insertion).  However, neither Josephus nor Philo refers to Shavuot as “the time of the giving of our Torah,” and none of the references in the rabbinic literature to the Torah being given on this day is earlier than the second century C.E. though they may have been a tradition far earlier than this.  The earliest clear references to Shavuot as the anniversary of the giving of the Torah are from the third century.  (3, pg 1319-1320)(3) (Encyclopedia Judaica)