Helen Belton looks at the history and significance of Pentecost, or Shavuot, the biblical 'Feast of Weeks'.
Shavuot in the Hebrew Bible
Easter and Passover coincided this year and so this Sunday (24 May) begins the Jewish festival of Shavuot, known to Christians as Pentecost, referring to the fiftieth day after Passover.
There were three feasts at which the Lord required the men of Israel to go up to Jerusalem to present themselves before him, known as the pilgrim feasts: Passover (Pesach in Hebrew transliteration), Pentecost (Shavuot meaning 'Weeks' in Hebrew) and Tabernacles (or 'Booths', Succot in Hebrew) (Ex 23:14-16). Jesus, the disciples and the early Church celebrated these feasts.
Shavuot or the 'Feast of Weeks' is so called because of its connection in time to Passover. The Israelites were instructed as follows in Deuteronomy 16:9-10:
You shall count seven weeks for yourself; you shall begin to count seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. Then celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you. And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name.
So, from Passover you count off seven weeks (or 49 days) until the fiftieth day, Pentecost (from the Greek for 'fiftieth'). The counting period between the two feasts is known as the counting of the Omer. 'Omer' is Hebrew for 'sheaf': agriculturally, Pentecost marks the end of the barley harvest and the beginning of the wheat harvest. So, you are counting the sheaf to see when it is ripe for harvest.
The Anglican Church has kept the relationship between the two festivals: the Easter season continues for 50 days until Pentecost. At Easter we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus and at Pentecost we celebrate the giving of his Spirit. Many Christians are not aware that Pentecost was an ancient festival long before its mention in Acts. Acts 1:5 says that there were "staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven". What were they doing there? Celebrating Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks.
Shavuot in the time of Jesus
Like all the pilgrim feasts, Shavuot was a harvest festival. At the Temple in Jerusalem, the first fruits of the harvest, known as the Seven Species, were offered. These are: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates, listed in Deuteronomy 8:8 as the fruits in which the land of Israel was rich.
Farmers would tie a reed around the first ripening fruits from each of these species in their fields. At the time of harvest, the fruits identified by the reed would be cut and placed in baskets woven of gold and silver.
The baskets would then be loaded on oxen whose horns were gilded and laced with garlands of flowers, to be led in a grand procession to Jerusalem. As they travelled, the people sang praises to God and rejoiced in his goodness. Priests would meet the pilgrims on the edge of the city and lead them up to the Temple Mount with music, psalms of praise and dance.
At the Temple, the priest would take the sheaves, the firstfruits of the harvest, and wave some in every direction. By doing so, the whole crowd would be acknowledging God's faithful provision and sovereignty over all the earth.
The priests also waved two loaves baked with yeast before the Lord, as prescribed in Leviticus 23:17-21. This was unusual because normally yeast was not to be present in a sacrifice to the Lord, since yeast represents sin in scripture.
How Shavuot is celebrated today
Today the celebration of Shavuot has changed drastically. With no Temple, there can be no waving of the Omer, offering of neither the first fruits nor the waving of the two loaves.
People decorate their homes and synagogues with flowers and greenery because this was originally a harvest festival. The Torah or Law is celebrated because Shavuot was the time of the giving of the Law through Moses at Mount Sinai. Because of this key historical significance of Shavuot, it is also traditional for Jewish men to stay up all night studying the Torah and for Jewish children, age five, to begin their first formal studies of the Torah.
The book of Ruth is read because the story occurred around the time of the harvest and also because Ruth is seen as a great example of someone who voluntarily took upon herself the yoke of the Law. Shavuot is also the anniversary of the death of King David, who was the great-grandson of Ruth and Boaz.
Viewed through New Testament eyes, we can see that Ruth's story also shows the determination of a Gentile to seek God and to be attached to his people. Boaz typifies the loving-kindness of our Redeemer, his compassion and admiration for Ruth's faith and commitment to his people causing him to accept his role as kinsman-redeemer and enter into covenant relationship with her in marriage. In the same way the Lord entered into covenant with Israel, like a marriage covenant, with the Ten Commandments (known as 'the 10 Words' in Hebrew) as the wedding certificate (Heb. ketubah).
The book of Ruth is often read at Shavuot. Through New Testament eyes, Ruth shows the determination of a Gentile to seek God and to be attached to his people."
Traditionally, foods made from milk products are eaten at Shavuot such as cheesecake, blintzes (cheese crepes), kreplach (triangle dumplings), and holiday loaves representing the two loaves waved and eaten in the Temple. It is thought dairy products are eaten because the Promised Land was a land of "milk and honey", and as Song of Songs 4:11 says: "Like honey and milk [the Torah, by interpretation] lies under your tongue."
There is also a theory that because the Jews only received the Torah at Mount Sinai (the reason Shavuot is celebrated), they didn't have the laws of how to slaughter and prepare meat prior to this. When they received the Torah and the commandments about ritual slaughter and the separation law of "do not cook a kid in its mother's milk" (Ex 34:26) leading to the complete separation of meat and milk products in traditional Jewish cuisine, they didn't have time to prepare meat dishes, so they ate dairy instead.1
In the morning service in synagogues on Pentecost, Exodus 19 and 20 are read (the giving of the 10 Commandments). The congregation stands because you are to hear the word of the Lord in awe, as though standing at the base of Mount Sinai and personally receiving these words from God. Ezekiel 1 and 2 are also read, which describe visions of God surrounded by wind and cloud, flashes of lightning and brilliant light, just as in Exodus 19:6 it says there was "thunder and lightning with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast."
Shavuot and the land of Israel
Five days after the Six Day War ended in 1967, over 200,000 Jews flocked to Jerusalem. One eyewitness said:
It was biblical, like a pilgrimage. On that Shavuot, people felt that Mashiach [Messiah] was in the air. I've never known such an electric atmosphere before or since. Wherever, we were stopped, we began to dance. Holding aloft Torah scrolls we swayed and danced and sang at the tops of our voices. So many of the Psalms and songs are about Jerusalem and Zion and the words reached into us a new life. As the sky lightened, we reached the Zion gate. Still singing and dancing, we poured into the narrow alleyways beyond.2
With the reunification of the city of Jerusalem in 1967, a custom to 're-enact' the festival pilgrimage began. Every year, hundreds of people stream on foot from throughout Jerusalem to arrive at the Kotel (Western Wall) early Shavuot morning in order to pray at a sunrise service.3
Every year in Jerusalem since the end of the Six Day War in 1967, hundreds of people re-enact the festival pilgrimage."
Since then, more Jewish people have become believers in Jesus as Messiah than at any previous time in history. Before 1967, there were no Messianic congregations in Israel and now there are over 150.4
The link between Passover and Shavuot/Pentecost: redemption and revelation
Passover and Shavuot were connected because of the two harvests and the counting of the Omer- the 50 days. But they are also connected in a deeper way.
God brought redemption at the first Passover: in the exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people were freed from being slaves to Pharaoh. Then, 50 days later at Shavuot, they accepted the Torah (God's Law given through Moses) and became a nation bound to the Lord. If they were fully obedient and kept this covenant "then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex 19:5-6).
The Torah kept God's people even if they did not keep the Torah in all its fullness. So a new covenant was needed for them and to bring in the nations of the world. Messiah Jesus came and died at Passover (the Messiah is our Passover Lamb, says Paul, in 1 Cor 5:7). 50 days later, at Shavuot or Pentecost, he sent his Spirit to create a renewed holy nation, "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light" (1 Pet 2:9).
However, redemption is not the end of the story. God redeems for a purpose: in order to reveal. Shavuot is about revelation: first of the word (the Torah) and then of the Spirit. Exactly 50 days after the first Passover, God gave the Torah to Israel and so Israel was born as a nation, as a called-out, chosen people, priests to the world.
Shavuot is not just about redemption, it's about revelation: revelation of the word and of the Spirit."
About 1500 years later, at that same festival of Shavuot in Jerusalem, 50 days after Jesus gave his life at Passover, God poured out his Spirit to seal the covenant with his renewed bride, the body of believers in Messiah (which was 100% Jewish at that point).
In Acts 1 we read that the disciples were together in one place, an upper room. We assume that the disciples were still in the upper room when the Holy Spirit came (Acts 2:1) but they would have been at the Temple, because that is where Pentecost was celebrated. "All together in one place" suggests somewhere large enough to accommodate all the disciples, not just the 12.
Also, Acts 2:41 says that 3,000 were added to the believers that day, so it would have had to be an enormous upper room! Peter addressed the crowd of pilgrims who had come for the Feast at the place it was celebrated, their national and spiritual centre, the Temple in Jerusalem. Those 3,000 were immediately baptised and the only place where that was possible was at the Temple.
The Lord promised in Haggai 2:9 regarding the Second Temple that:
'The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,' says the LORD Almighty. 'And in this place I will grant peace,' declares the LORD Almighty.
This promise was fulfilled as the Prince of Peace stood in the Temple at the Feast of Tabernacles and declared that those who would turn to him would experience streams of living water flowing through them (John 7).5 Jesus was speaking of his Spirit, and on the fiftieth day after his death at Passover- at Pentecost -his Spirit was poured out like water over his disciples in the presence of all Israel gathered for the feast of Shavuot,coming to rest on each as tongues of fire. The onlookers were invited to join with the disciples, and those who did became the Body of believers in Messiah: the early Church.
From death to life: repentance and faith
Just as the Spirit of Messiah revived and cleansed their spirits, so their bodies were washed as a sign by baptism or, as it is known in Jewish tradition, the mikveh or ritual bath. At the Second Temple site, archaeologists have uncovered many ritual baths (pl. mikvot). These mikvot were used for ceremonial cleansing before entering the Temple, but also for immersion as a sign of repentance.
At Sinai, 3,000 died because they turned from the Lord to idolatry with the golden calf (Ex 32:28). In Jerusalem, 3,000 were brought to spiritual life as they returned to the Lord in repentance and faith in the Messiah (Acts 2:41).
At Sinai, 3,000 died because they turned away from the Lord. In Jerusalem, 3,000 were brought to spiritual life as they turned back to God in repentance and faith in Jesus as Messiah"
Mount Sinai was covered in smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire (Ex 19:18) and 70 elders of Israel saw the Lord and prophesied, but at Mount Zion in Jerusalem the Holy Spirit descended like tongues of fire on all the believers and they all prophesied – men, women, young and old as Joel 2:28 foretold: "I will pour out my Spirit on all people". The miracle of Pentecost was not just the ability to speak another language supernaturally, but that all the believers prophesied.
Even more significant is the wider fulfilment of prophecy to Israel. At Pentecost the Lord demonstrated that he had not finished with Israel. He proved his covenant faithfulness by making his new Jeremiah 31 covenant with the people he had restored from exile:
And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls (Joel 2:32).
We think that Pentecost is about the birth of the Church, but it is about the rebirth of Israel.
At the time of the first Pentecost, the only believers in Jesus were Jews. In due course, foreigners would join with Israel: not all Israel believed and so "branches were broken off" from the olive tree of faith so that wild, pagan branches from among the nations (or Gentiles) could be grafted in (Rom 11:17-19).
The aim of giving the Torah and giving the Spirit was the same: to enable a holy God to indwell a sinful, but chosen people.
The aim of giving the Torah and giving the Spirit was the same: to enable a holy God to indwell a sinful, but chosen people."
God with us - and in us
"Let the people build me a sanctuary", the Lord said to Moses in Exodus 25:8, but he does not say 'so that I may dwell in it', but 'so that I may dwell in them'.
We may think that we search for God, but God is searching for us in order to indwell us.
At Mount Zion, the new covenant of Jeremiah 31 was fulfilled. Previously, God's law was written on tablets of stone, but now it is written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit. At Sinai the covenant of circumcision was given, a mark in the flesh as a sign of covenant. At Mount Zion, the sign of the covenant was "circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Rom 2:29).
After Pentecost, even Gentiles, we who were far off, were brought in to God's kingdom: as Peter said:
God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. (Acts 15:8-9)
So even the Gentiles could become temples of the Spirit of the living God (1 Cor 6:19). We are "living stones", a collective temple of God's Spirit, as Peter puts it, who "are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood" (1 Pet 2:9).
Christians often talk about 'going up' to heaven, but the story of the Bible is about God coming down"
Christians often talk about going up to heaven when we die. But the story of the Bible is about God coming down: in creation, at Sinai, in Jesus, at Pentecost and eventually in the new heaven, the new earth and the new Jerusalem, when God will live with us (Rev 21:3).
Israel reborn
So, at Pentecost Israel was reborn: a renewed called-out people (Heb. kahal, Gk. Ekklesia, Eng. church). It was an all-Jewish body of believers at this stage. Those Jewish believers visiting from the nations, from the Jewish diaspora, became the first emissaries of the gospel, fulfilling prophecy: the word of the Lord did indeed go forth from Mount Zion and from Jerusalem, as Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 prophesied.
'Diaspora' is a Greek word that literally means "through scattered". Those same seeds that had been harvested for the Lord at Pentecost were re-scattered among the nations as they returned to their homes, forming part of a new spiritual diaspora. Exiles from the future kingdom of God, their true home, they were seeds scattered through the nations to bring the gospel to the known world.
Peter wrote to these Jewish believers as follows: "To God's elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces" (1 Pet 1). They were seeds fallen to the ground, with some dying for the gospel, and Peter wrote to encourage them as they were undergoing Roman persecution for their faith.
The harvest extended to the Gentiles so that, as Ephesians 2 says, non-Jews are no longer foreigners and aliens but fellow citizens with God's people, joined to the commonwealth of Israel. The loaves made with yeast that the priest waved on the day of Pentecost symbolise the harvest of sinful man from among both the Jews and the Gentiles.
Jesus became the firstfruits from among the dead (1 Cor 15:20) when he rose from the dead at Passover, fulfilling a part of that festival called the 'Feast of First Fruits'. At Pentecost he is joined by Jewish and Gentile believers, symbolised by the two loaves. So, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, both Jew and Gentile, is united as "one new man" as Ephesians 2:15 says.
A Ruth Church
Like Ruth, whose story is read at Shavuot, the Gentile woman who followed her Jewish mother-in-law Naomi back to the Promised Land and through kindness and obedience followed a greater destiny than she could have imagined, Gentile believers in Jesus also say, "Your God will be my God."
Where are the Ruths in the Gentile church who will make Israel "envious" (Rom 11:11) through kindness and attractive obedience to God's word? They are still few in number. We must reject the stay-at-a-distance criticism and hostility which has been typical of the Church's dealings with the Jewish people historically and is often still the case today, although now it is directed at re-gathered Israel, the nation.
Will we become the Ruth Church that we were destined to be, loving and supporting Naomi, our frailer, older relative, Israel?"
Will we become the Ruth Church that we were destined to be, loving and supporting Naomi, our frailer, older relative, Israel? Will we draw near to the Lord and to his people, as the Lord desired at Sinai and at Jerusalem in the giving of his Law and Spirit, so he can indwell us and unite us as "one new humanity" of Jew and Gentile (Eph 2:15)? Or will we stay at a distance (Ex 15:21) as Israel did at Sinai, so that only Moses heard the voice of the Lord?
Acknowledgement: with thanks to the late Dr Dwight A. Pryor of the Center for Judaic-Christian Studies (teaching available via www.jcstudies.com and www.cfi.org.uk) for his insights on this subject.
References
1 Gordon-Bennett, C. Why do Jews eat dairy on Shavuot?
2 Voices of Jerusalem-Crowd of Tears, Hadassah Magazine 77, No.9, May 1996: 23.
3 Domnitch, L, 2000. The Jewish Holidays: A Journey Through History. Jason Aronson.
4 Directory of Messianic Organizations in Israel.
5 This resonates with the water libation ceremony that took place at the Feast of Tabernacles, which also connects to Shavuot- but that is a subject for a further study.
