Leviticus 23:9

"And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring the sheaf of the first-fruits of your harvest unto the priest: and he shall wave the sheaf before Jehovah, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. And in the day when ye wave the sheaf, ye shall offer a he-lamb without blemish a year old for a burnt-offering unto Jehovah. And the meal-offering thereof shall be two tenth parts of an ephah of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto Jehovah for a sweet savor; and the drink-offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of a hin. And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched grain, nor fresh ears, until this selfsame day, until ye have brought the oblation of your God: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings."

Lofthouse and other critics, ever anxious to attack the unity of Biblical passages, assert: "That the chapter is not a unity is shown by the new beginnings in Leviticus 23:9."[10] Such expressions as that found in Leviticus 23:9 are found literally dozens of times in the O.T., and the use of it again here is no evidence whatever of a "new beginning." Those who hope to fragment the unity of this chapter must find something a lot better than that.

"On the morrow after the sabbath shall wave it ..." "These words mean `the day after the first day of unleavened bread'."[11] The great significance of this lies in the fact of ultimate fulfillment of the inherent prophecy that Christ would rise from the dead on "the third day." Christ was crucified on Thursday. Friday was the first day of unleaven bread. Saturday was the ordinary sabbath. And Sunday was the day after the morrow of the first day of unleavened bread. Thus, it was the occurrence during the Passion Week of those back-to-back sabbaths that resulted in the fiftieth day (the Pentecost) coming on Sunday. (See my commentary on Mark 14:42.)

"The meaning of this phrase has been the subject of much controversy. Is the sabbath in question the ordinary sabbath, or is it the first day of unleavened bread (also a sabbath)?"[12] Wenham went on to declare that, "Orthodox Judaism and most modern commentators favor the second suggestion."[13] Of course, there was controversy among the Jews over which was meant even in the days of Christ's earthly ministry. The Pharisees insisted that the sabbath was a weekly sabbath (Saturday), and the Sadducees made it the "high sabbath" of the first day of unleavened bread (John 19:31). This old controversy is reflected in the statement of the gospel of Luke that, "When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all together ... etc." (Acts 2:1) It is a pity that this extremely illuminating passage should have been changed in our version (American Standard Version), and in the Douay, RSV and many others. The use of "fully come" shows that there was a dispute about when it came, that the apostles honored the more extensive count (as in the second interpretation), and that the Holy Spirit came on the day that the apostles accepted as Pentecost. It is notable that the apostles did not follow the lead of the Pharisees. Lightfoot noted that the apostles' Pentecost did not coincide with the Jewish Pentecost.[14] Dosker also admitted that according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Passover that year occurred on Thursday, Nisan 14, hence, Passover fell on Saturday, which, of course, would have been the case if there had been only one sabbath that week! Dosker was also mystified by the fact that according to John, the Passover that year occurred on Friday the 14th of Nisan. The back-to-back sabbaths explain everything connected with this question, which is called "one of the knottiest problems in harmonizing the Christian gospels."[15] The only thing that makes this problem difficult, however, is the erroneous tradition that Christ was crucified on Friday. Add that other sabbath to John's calculations and Pentecost comes out on Sunday where it belongs. The "sabbath" in Matthew and Mark was not Saturday at all, but Friday, "the high day" mentioned by John, namely, the first day of unleavened bread.

"Ye shall bring the sheaf of the first-fruits ..." (Leviticus 23:10). Just as the Passover was inherently a prophecy of the crucifixion of Christ our Passover, so also the first-fruits three days later contained the inherent prophecy of the rising of Christ from the dead "on the third day." "Thus this feast prefigured the resurrection of Christ as `the first-fruits' from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:23; Romans 8:29)."[16]

"And the drink-offering ..." This verse and Leviticus 23:18,37 are the only mention of a drink-offering in Leviticus.[17] Apparently, the drink-offering was always the accompaniment of a greater offering and did not appear to be of the same rank and importance. How this wine was used was given thus by Josephus: "They bring the same quantity of oil which they do of wine, and they pour the wine about the altar."[18]

In later times this feast of the first-fruits came to be called Pentecost, which is derived from the Greek word meaning "fiftieth," which was reckoned by counting seven weeks (49 days) plus one day after the Passover. This complete cycle of seven weeks also resulted in its being called "the Feast of Weeks."