Exodus 12:2

12:2 “This month is to be your beginning of months; it will be your first month of the year. ¹ 

Exodus 34:22

34:22 “You must observe ²  the Feast of Weeks – the firstfruits of the harvest of wheat – and the Feast of Ingathering at the end ³  of the year.

Exodus 23:16

23:16 “You are also to observe ⁴  the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors that you have sown in the field, and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year ⁵  when you have gathered in ⁶  your harvest ⁷  out of the field.

[12:2]  ¹ sn B. Jacob (Exodus, 294-95) shows that the intent of the passage was not to make this month in the spring the New Year – that was in the autumn. Rather, when counting months this was supposed to be remembered first, for it was the great festival of freedom from Egypt. He observes how some scholars have unnecessarily tried to date one New Year earlier than the other.

[34:22]  ² tn The imperfect tense means “you will do”; it is followed by the preposition with a suffix to express the ethical dative to stress the subject.

[34:22]  ³ tn The expression is “the turn of the year,” which is parallel to “the going out of the year,” and means the end of the agricultural season.

[23:16]  ³ tn The words “you are also to observe” are not in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[23:16]  ⁴ tn An infinitive construct with a preposition and a pronominal suffix is used to make a temporal clause: “in the going in of the year.” The word “year” is the subjective genitive, the subject of the clause.

[23:16]  ⁵ tn An infinitive construct with a preposition and a pronominal suffix is used to make a temporal clause: “in the ingathering of you.”

[23:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “gathered in your labors.” This is a metonymy of cause put for the effect. “Labors” are not gathered in, but what the labors produced – the harvest.