50 days after Firstfruits, 6 Sivan · May or June
Shavuot
שָׁבוּעוֹת
also called Pentecost, The Feast of Weeks, Feast of Harvest
The wheat harvest, fifty days after the barley sheaf. The second of the three pilgrimage feasts, and the day the church was born.
The text, before anyone interprets it
What was commanded
Count seven full weeks from the wave sheaf, then on the fiftieth day bring a new grain offering: two loaves of fine flour, baked with leaven, waved before the LORD. The Greek name Pentecost simply counts the fifty. The same passage commands that the corners of the field be left unharvested for the poor and the foreigner.
Where it turns up
Jewish tradition associates the day with the giving of the law at Sinai, reckoning that Israel arrived at the mountain in the third month. The book of Ruth is read at Shavuot: a barley and wheat harvest story about a foreigner brought into the covenant people, ending in a marriage and a genealogy that runs to David.
What is on the table
Two leavened loaves
The only grain offering commanded to contain leaven. Whatever else it means, it is a picture of imperfect material being accepted.
The counted omer
Forty-nine days of anticipation between deliverance and covenant, walked one day at a time.
Fire and wind
At Sinai the mountain burns and the ground shakes. In Acts there is a sound like a violent wind and what look like tongues of fire.
The corners of the field
Commanded in the middle of the festival law: leave the edges of the harvest for the poor and the stranger. Ruth eats from that command.
In the New Testament
Acts 2 happens on this day, and the pilgrimage requirement is why there is a crowd from fifteen named regions standing in one place to be spoken to in their own languages. Three thousand are added. Readers have long noticed that three thousand fall at Sinai in Exodus 32 and have drawn the contrast between a law written on stone and a Spirit given to people.
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.
That the law was given at Sinai on this day.
Where it comes from · Rabbinic tradition, reasoned from the chronology of Exodus 19. The Torah dates Shavuot by counting from the harvest and never links it to Sinai. The association is old, widespread, and an inference.
That Noah received the covenant of the rainbow on this day.
Where it comes from · The book of Jubilees, second century BC, which makes Shavuot the feast of covenant renewal and ties it to Noah. Jubilees is not Scripture in any major canon. It is a fascinating window into how Jews of that period read the calendar, and it is worth knowing and holding loosely.
Reading the book of Ruth at the feast.
Where it comes from · Later Jewish custom. It fits the season perfectly, since Ruth is a harvest story about a foreigner brought in, which is why it has stuck.
Staying up through the night to study.
Where it comes from · Medieval custom, Tikkun Leil Shavuot. Late, and lovely.
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
Fire on a mountain, a law given, and a covenant made with a people fifty days out of Egypt.
It is happening
Fire in a room, a Spirit given, and three thousand added on the same day of the same calendar. The law that was written on stone put inside people instead.
It is still coming
A harvest of every nation, which is what the wheat was always a picture of.
How Christians have read it
A reading, not a statement of the text
The Spirit poured out on the day the law was given: covenant made external becoming covenant made internal, which is the promise of Jeremiah 31 in so many words. The two loaves, uniquely commanded to contain leaven, are often read as the two peoples, Jew and Gentile, brought as one offering, and as evidence that what is accepted is not what is perfect but what is his.
In the wedding reading: Sinai is read in Jewish tradition as a wedding, the mountain the canopy and the covenant the marriage contract. In the betrothal reading of the feasts, Shavuot is where the terms are given and the bride says yes.
How it is kept now
Pentecost is kept by most of the Christian world as one of the great feasts of the church year, though usually with no awareness that it is a harvest festival with a date fixed by counting. Messianic congregations keep it as Shavuot, with the harvest and Sinai associations intact. The two are the same day approached from different ends.
If you want to keep it
Read Ruth. It takes half an hour, it is set in exactly this season, and it is about a foreigner who is taken in, a field whose corners were left unharvested, and a redeemer who does what the law allowed but nobody compelled.
Should Christians keep the feasts? Every view at its strongest →