Exodus 22:29

22:29 “Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. ¹  You must give me the firstborn of your sons.

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.

Leviticus 23:9-21

The Presentation of First Fruits

23:9 The Lord spoke to Moses: 23:10 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘When you enter the land that I am about to give to you and you gather in its harvest, ⁴  then you must bring the sheaf of the first portion of your harvest ⁵  to the priest, 23:11 and he must wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted for your benefit ⁶  – on the day after the Sabbath the priest is to wave it. ⁷  23:12 On the day you wave the sheaf you must also offer ⁸  a flawless yearling lamb ⁹  for a burnt offering to the Lord, 23:13 along with its grain offering, two tenths of an ephah of ¹⁰  choice wheat flour ¹¹  mixed with olive oil, as a gift to the Lord, a soothing aroma, ¹²  and its drink offering, one fourth of a hin of wine. ¹³  23:14 You must not eat bread, roasted grain, or fresh grain until this very day, ¹⁴  until you bring the offering of your God. This is a perpetual statute throughout your generations ¹⁵  in all the places where you live.

The Festival of Weeks

23:15 “‘You must count for yourselves seven weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day you bring the wave offering sheaf; they must be complete weeks. ¹⁶  23:16 You must count fifty days – until the day after the seventh Sabbath – and then ¹⁷  you must present a new grain offering to the Lord. 23:17 From the places where you live you must bring two loaves of ¹⁸  bread for a wave offering; they must be made from two tenths of an ephah of fine wheat flour, baked with yeast, ¹⁹  as first fruits to the Lord. 23:18 Along with the loaves of bread, ²⁰  you must also present seven flawless yearling lambs, ²¹  one young bull, ²²  and two rams. ²³  They are to be a burnt offering to the Lord along with their grain offering ²⁴  and drink offerings, a gift of a soothing aroma to the Lord. ²⁵  23:19 You must also offer ²⁶  one male goat ²⁷  for a sin offering and two yearling lambs for a peace offering sacrifice, 23:20 and the priest is to wave them – the two lambs ²⁸  – along with the bread of the first fruits, as a wave offering before the Lord; they will be holy to the Lord for the priest.

23:21 “‘On this very day you must proclaim an assembly; it is to be a holy assembly for you. ²⁹  You must not do any regular work. This is a perpetual statute in all the places where you live throughout your generations. ³⁰ 

Numbers 28:26-31

Firstfruits

28:26 “‘Also, on the day of the first fruits, when you bring a new grain offering to the Lord during your Feast of Weeks, you are to have a holy assembly. You must do no ordinary work. 28:27 But you must offer as the burnt offering, as a sweet aroma to the Lord, two young bulls, one ram, seven lambs one year old, 28:28 with their grain offering of finely ground flour mixed with olive oil: three-tenths of an ephah for each bull, two-tenths for the one ram, 28:29 with one-tenth for each of the seven lambs, 28:30 as well as one male goat to make an atonement for you. 28:31 You are to offer them with their drink offerings in addition to the continual burnt offering and its grain offering – they must be unblemished.

Deuteronomy 16:9-12

The Festival of Weeks

16:9 You must count seven weeks; you must begin to count them ³¹  from the time you begin to harvest the standing grain. 16:10 Then you are to celebrate the Festival of Weeks ³²  before the Lord your God with the voluntary offering ³³  that you will bring, in proportion to how he ³⁴  has blessed you. 16:11 You shall rejoice before him ³⁵  – you, your son, your daughter, your male and female slaves, the Levites in your villages, ³⁶  the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows among you – in the place where the Lord chooses to locate his name. 16:12 Furthermore, remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and so be careful to observe these statutes.

Acts 2:1

The Holy Spirit and the Day of Pentecost

2:1 Now ³⁷  when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.

[22:29]  ¹ tn The expressions are unusual. U. Cassuto renders them: “from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses” (Exodus, 294). He adds the Hittite parallel material to show that the people were to bring the offerings on time and not let them overlap, because the firstfruits had to be eaten first by the priest.

[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.

[23:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “and you harvest its harvest.”

[23:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “the sheaf of the first of your harvest.”

[23:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “for your acceptance.”

[23:11]  ⁷ sn See Lev 7:30 for a note on the “waving” of a “wave offering.”

[23:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “And you shall make in the day of your waving the sheaf.”

[23:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “a flawless lamb, a son of its year”; KJV “of the first year”; NLT “a year-old male lamb.”

[23:13]  ¹⁰ sn See the note on Lev 5:11.

[23:13]  ¹¹ sn See the note on Lev 2:1.

[23:13]  ¹² sn See the note on Lev 1:9.

[23:13]  ¹³ tn Heb “wine, one fourth of the hin.” A pre-exilic hin is about 3.6 liters (= ca. 1 quart), so one fourth of a hin would be about one cup.

[23:14]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “until the bone of this day.”

[23:14]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “for your generations.”

[23:15]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “seven Sabbaths, they shall be complete.” The disjunctive accent under “Sabbaths” precludes the translation “seven complete Sabbaths” (as NASB, NIV; cf. NAB, NRSV, NLT). The text is somewhat awkward, which may explain why the LXX tradition is confused here, either adding “you shall count” again at the end of the verse, or leaving out “they shall be,” or keeping “they shall be” and adding “to you.”

[23:16]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “and.” In the translation “then” is supplied to clarify the sequence.

[23:17]  ¹⁸ tc Smr, LXX, Syriac, Tg. Onq., and Tg. Ps.-J. insert the word חַלּוֹת (khallot, “loaves”; cf. Lev 2:4 and the note there). Even though “loaves” is not explicit in the MT, the number “two” suggests that these are discrete units, not just a measure of flour, so “loaves” should be assumed even in the MT.

[23:17]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “with leaven.” The noun “leaven” is traditional in English versions (cf. KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV), but “yeast” is more commonly used today.

[23:18]  ²⁰ tn Heb “And you shall present on the bread.”

[23:18]  ²¹ tn Heb “seven flawless lambs, sons of a year.”

[23:18]  ²² tn Heb “and one bull, a son of a herd.”

[23:18]  ²³ tc Smr and LXX add “flawless.”

[23:18]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and their grain offering.”

[23:18]  ²⁵ sn See the note on Lev 1:9.

[23:19]  ²⁶ tn Heb “And you shall make.”

[23:19]  ²⁷ tn Heb “a he-goat of goats.”

[23:20]  ²⁸ tn Smr and LXX have the Hebrew article on “lambs.” The syntax of this verse is difficult. The object of the verb (two lambs) is far removed from the verb itself (shall wave) in the MT, and the preposition עַל (’al, “upon”), rendered “along with” in this verse, is also added to the far removed subject (literally, “upon [the] two lambs”; see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 159). It is clear, however, that the two lambs and the loaves (along with their associated grain and drink offerings) constituted the “wave offering,” which served as the prebend “for the priest.” Burnt and sin offerings (vv. 18-19a) were not included in this (see Lev 7:11-14, 28-36).

[23:21]  ²⁹ tn Heb “And you shall proclaim [an assembly] in the bone of this day; a holy assembly it shall be to you” (see the remarks in B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 160, and the remarks on the LXX rendering in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 367).

[23:21]  ³⁰ tn Heb “for your generations.”

[16:9]  ³¹ tn Heb “the seven weeks.” The translation uses a pronoun to avoid redundancy in English.

[16:10]  ³² tn The Hebrew phrase חַג שָׁבֻעוֹת (khag shavu’ot) is otherwise known in the OT (Exod 23:16) as קָצִיר (qatsir, “harvest”) and in the NT as πεντηχοστή (penthcosth, “Pentecost”).

[16:10]  ³³ tn Heb “the sufficiency of the offering of your hand.”

[16:10]  ³⁴ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in 16:1.

[16:11]  ³⁵ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on “he” in 16:1.

[16:11]  ³⁶ tn Heb “gates.”

[2:1]  ³⁷ tn Grk “And” Here καί (kai) has been translated as “now” to indicate the transition to a new topic. Greek style often begins sentences or clauses with “and,” but English style does not.