Names for Shavuot
Feast of Weeks
Feast of Harvest
Day of Firstfruits
Pentecost (πεντηκοστή)
Exodus 34:22 “You shall observe the Feast of Weeks [חג שבעת, chag shavuot], the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end.”
Numbers 28:26 “On the day of the firstfruits, when you offer a grain offering of new grain to Adonai at your Feast of Weeks [חג שבעת, chag shavuot], you shall have a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work.”
Deuteronomy 16:9-10 “You shall count seven weeks. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks [חג שבעת, chag shavuot] to Adonai your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as Adonai your God blesses you.”
Leviticus 23:15-17, 21 “You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to Adonai. You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and they shall be baked with leaven, as firstfruits to Adonai … And you shall make a proclamation on the same day. You shall hold a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work. It is a statute forever in all your dwelling places throughout your generations.”
PASSOVER – 7 Weeks – PENTECOST
Acts 2:1-12 When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the holy spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians – we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” [lit. “What is this wanting to be?”]
b.Shabbat 88b With regard to the revelation at Sinai, Rabbi Yoḥanan said: What is the meaning of that which is written: “The Lord gives the word; the women that proclaim the tidings are a great host” (Psalms 68:12)? It means that each and every utterance that emerged from the mouth of the Almighty divided into seventy languages, a great host. And, similarly, the school of Rabbi Yishmael taught with regard to the verse: “Behold, is My word not like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that shatters a rock?” (Jeremiah 23:29). Just as this hammer breaks a stone into several fragments, so too, each and every utterance that emerged from the mouth of the Holy One, Blessed be He, divided into seventy languages.
Romans 8:3-4 For God has done what the Torah, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the Torah might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit.
Jeremiah 31:31-34 “Behold, days are coming,” declares Adonai, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares Adonai. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Adonai, “I will put My Torah within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know Adonai,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares Adonai, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Not a birthday; a wedding day!
Shabbos 104a – Rav Ḥisda said: The letters mem and samekh that were in the tablets were standing miraculously. Each letter was chiseled all the way through the tablets. In that case, the segment of the tablets at the center of the samekh (ס) and final mem (ם), letters that are completely closed, should have fallen. Miraculously, they remained in place.
Leviticus 18:1-4 And Adonai spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘I am Adonai your God, (a) You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and (b) you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes [חקות, chukot]. You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes [חקות, chukot] and walk in them. I am Adonai your God.’”
REFERENCES:
Acts 20:16 For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he might not have to spend time in Asia, for he was hastening to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Shavuot.
1Corinthians 16:8 “But I will stay in Ephesus until Shavuot…”
Exodus 31:18 And He gave to Moses, when He had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
Exodus 32:15 Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written.
Acts 23:6 Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.”
