The day after the Sabbath during Unleavened Bread · March or April
Firstfruits
בִּכּוּרִים
Bikkurim
also called The wave sheaf, Reshit Katzir
The first sheaf of the barley harvest, lifted before God before any of the crop was eaten. The smallest of the appointed times and the one most easily missed.
The text, before anyone interprets it
What was commanded
Bring the first sheaf of the harvest to the priest, who lifts it before the LORD to be accepted on your behalf. Until it is offered, none of the new grain may be eaten. It is also the day the count to Shavuot begins.
Where it turns up
Barley ripens before wheat, and it was the poor man's grain and the animals' feed. The first thing lifted before God at harvest was therefore not the valuable crop but the early and humble one, and it functioned as a promise that the greater harvest was coming.
What is on the table
The omer
A sheaf of barley, waved before the LORD. The same word appears in Exodus 16 for the daily measure of manna, one omer per person, enough for today and never for tomorrow.
The counting
Forty-nine days counted aloud, one at a time, each one an act of anticipation rather than a wait.
In the New Testament
Paul calls the risen Christ the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, and the word is this feast's word. The claim in the image is not mainly that he rose first but that a harvest follows: a first sheaf is meaningless unless a field stands behind it.
Not in the Bible, and worth knowing anyway
What tradition added
Much of what makes these days beautiful comes from outside Scripture, and some New Testament scenes are far harder to read without it. It is set out here with its source named, which is the only honest way to hold it: interesting, often very old, and not binding on anyone.
Counting the omer aloud each night for forty-nine nights, with a blessing.
Where it comes from · The counting is commanded in Leviticus 23:15-16. The liturgy around it, and the custom of treating the period as one of semi-mourning, is later Jewish practice.
Was, is, and is to come
The same appointment, three depths
An appointment on a calendar is not crossed off once. It comes round. Christians of every tradition read these events at more than one depth, whether they call it already and not yet, type and antitype, or near and far fulfilment.
It happened
The first sheaf of barley lifted before God while the rest of the field still stood, as a promise that the harvest was coming.
It is happening
Christ called the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, which is a claim about what follows rather than only about who was first.
It is still coming
The harvest the sheaf was promising, gathered in.
How Christians have read it
A reading, not a statement of the text
Christians have long noted that the resurrection falls on this day in the festival week. What the image carries is not only timing but consequence, since firstfruits are by definition the beginning of something larger.
In the wedding reading: In the counting that starts here, the fifty days from firstfruits to Shavuot are read as the journey from deliverance to covenant, from leaving Egypt to standing at the mountain.
How it is kept now
Almost never kept as its own observance outside Messianic congregations, and largely absorbed into Easter where it is noticed at all. The counting of the omer is still kept in Jewish practice and is quietly one of the most beautiful things in the calendar.
Should Christians keep the feasts? Every view at its strongest →