Fifty days, or seven weeks, following the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, or Pentecost was to be celebrated signifying the end of the harvest. Mark Robinson, editor of Israel’s Messenger magazine, identified when the feast was celebrated by the early Jews: “The Sadducees, generally wealthy members of the Jewish aristocracy who had embraced Hellenism, were the Temple custodians. They numbered about 3,000 at the time of Jesus. According to Josephus, in the 107 years from the beginning of Herod’s reign in 37 B.C. to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., there were 28 high priests. The Talmud records that by the time of Jesus, the high priest bought the office from the government and the position was changed every year. These policies resulted in a group of wealthy Sadducean priestly families being appointed to the office on a regular basis. They understood the Sabbath to refer to the first Saturday of Passover; thus, the counting was to begin on the first Sunday, always putting Pentecost on a Sunday. The Pharisees generally came from the middle class, were zealous for the Mosaic Law, and were the “party” of the people. At the time of Jesus they numbered about 6,000.
They interpreted Sabbath not to mean Saturday but the first day of the rest (the first day of the Passover Festival). The counting would begin on the second day of the Passover Festival and Pentecost could fall on any day. The Pharisees method became the generally accepted method and is used today among the Jewish people.”
The feast was to be a holy convocation. Numbers 28:27–31 gives us a much more comprehensive list of the types of offerings that were to be made: “. . . but offer a burnt offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord: two bulls from the herd, one ram, seven male lambs a year old; also their grain offering of fine flour mixed with oil, three tenths of an ephah for each bull, two tenths for one ram, a tenth for each of the seven lambs; with one male goat, to make atonement for you. Besides the regular burnt offering and its grain offering, you shall offer them and their drink offering. See that they are without blemish.”
In the Rose Guide to the Temple, author Randall Price explains the meaning of the celebration: “Fifty days after Passover the Israelites celebrated the Feast of Weeks. This feast is also known as Shavuot, Pentecost, the Feast of Harvest, and the Latter Firstfruits because it was the time to present an offering of new grain of the summer wheat harvest to the Lord, showing joy and thankfulness for the Lord’s blessing of the harvest. It is the second of the three pilgrimages.”
According to the Talmud, it does, however, have another, more spiritual meaning. It was on the day of Pentecost that God gave the Torah to the Jews. It also denoted the commencement of a new season of harvest, Hag HaKatzir or the “Harvest Holiday.” This name was derived from the custom of taking grain to the temple on the feast day. After Herod’s temple was destroyed in AD 70, the celebration of Shavuot became more connected to the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Because of that association, the Ten Commandments are chanted on that day, and some Jews might spend the entire night studying the Torah. Passover released the Israelites from physical bondage to Pharaoh; Shavuot is symbolic of the release from spiritual bondage.
Since about the second century, the practice of reading the book of Ruth during the celebration of Shavuot or Pentecost has been adopted. According to Rev. Mark Robinson of Jewish Awareness Ministries, that custom would play a role in the modern-day church. “For the festival of Shavuot the book of Ruth is read in the synagogue telling the glorious story of the love of a Jewish man for a Gentile woman as he followed the God of Israel’s desires. It is no coincidence that at the festival of Shavuot (Pentecost), a Jewish man, Jesus, and ultimately, primarily, a Gentile bride, the church, were brought together, in the birth of the church. This too is a love story of a Jewish man for His Bride!”
For New Testament Believers, the day of Pentecost represents the day on which the Holy Spirit was poured out upon those in the Upper Room who were awaiting His arrival and empowerment. Jesus had alerted His disciples of the happening in Acts 1:4–8:
“And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, ‘you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’ So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.’” 
The prophet Joel had prophesied that the Spirit would come. Joel chapter one outlines the terrible drought and the plagues that had beset the Israelites and decimated the crops. In chapter two, he advised the people what would happen if they came together to worship and honor Jehovah: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit” (Joel 2:28–29).
As we read in Acts 2:2–4, fifty days following Christ’s ascension, the disciples were gathered together in a room in Jerusalem: “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.”
On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood before the assembled multitude and delivered his very first sermon. In Acts 2:40–41, we read of the disciple’s call to repentance: “And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, ‘Be saved from this perverse generation.’ Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them.” It is interesting to note that 3,000 were saved following Peter’s exhortation. Why might that be significant? Let’s look back at the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. After Moses received the Ten Commandments written on stone tablets by the very finger of God, he returned to the camp to deliver them to the people waiting at the base of the mountain. But what did he find when he descended out of the cloud?
He found a people reveling in rebellion and delighting in disobedience. Having grown weary of Moses’ absence, the Israelites prevailed upon Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them a god of gold—a calf. “Come on,” they might have said, “we don’t know what has happened to Moses. We need a god that will lead us out of the wilderness.” The psalmist, David, wrote of those who worshiped other gods. It was a description of idol worshipers of that time, but resonates with similar people of our time: “But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them” (Psalm 115:4–8).
While the people danced before the golden calf, God warned Moses of trouble in the camp and threatened to destroy the people Moses had led out of Egypt. Moses interceded for the rebellious Israelites, and God heeded his plea to spare them. As Joshua and Moses reached the bottom of Mount Sinai, they were stunned by the sight that met their eyes: “When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it” (Exodus 32:19–20).
Moses must have turned to Aaron and asked, “What were you thinking?!” Aaron’s answer would have won an Oscar for his response and his lame excuse. Can you picture him with arms upraised and a shrug of his shoulders? “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron might have answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”
Aaron didn’t bow in contrition and take responsibility for his actions; he tried to justify going along with the crowd. How often does that still happen…drifting into disobedience instead of taking a stand? We chuckle at Aaron’s disingenuous reply, but haven’t we been guilty of the same? We excuse our own behavior while pointing a finger at someone else’s fall into sin. So distraught was Moses that he literally drew a line in the sand: “So he stood at the entrance to the camp and shouted, ‘All of you who are on the Lord’s side, come here and join me.’ And all the Levites gathered around him. Moses told them, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Each of you, take your swords and go back and forth from one end of the camp to the other. Kill everyone—even your brothers, friends, and neighbors.’ The Levites obeyed Moses’ command, and about 3,000 people died that day” (Exodus 32:26–28).
On the day that the Law of Moses was given, 3,000 died because of sin in the camp. After Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost, Luke tells us in Acts 2 that 3,000 were saved because of grace. The day of Pentecost was so much more than tongues of fire and the disciples speaking in other languages. It was a new covenant: the Holy Spirit coming to earth to dwell in God’s people. The prophet Jeremiah spoke to the children of Israel: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: ‘I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’” (Jeremiah 31:33). At Sinai, the law was imparted on tablets of stone; in the upper room it was written on hearts of flesh and the people of God were called to be a holy nation and a royal priesthood (see 1 Peter 2:9).
The description of the seven feasts God instructed the Israelites to observe in Leviticus 23 provides a picture of the past, present, and future. The first four feasts—Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Pentecost—outline events that were fulfilled by Christ during His time on earth. Some Bible scholars believe the Church today is living in time symbolized by the three-month period between Pentecost and Rosh Hashanah, the Feast of Trumpets. In Leviticus 23:22, God defined what was to take place during this time: “When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you. I am the Lord your God.”
Pastor Iain Gordon provides insight on the deeper meaning of this verse: “You can just take it as general instruction that He cares for the poor and those outside of Israel (which is certainly true) but in that all of this chapter is also prophetic in nature, I believe there is more to this verse than the obvious. I believe that God has placed this as a sneaky little verse between Pentecost and Trumpets because He was indicating what He was going to do between the fulfillment of these two feasts. As you may remember from the introduction to the feasts study, between the spring and fall feasts there is a gap of over three months. Prophetically, this gap speaks of the Church age that began at Pentecost and will conclude at Trumpets. So what did God do during this time? He did [precisely] what He told Israel to do—He remembered the poor and alien (foreigner/stranger) in sending His word to the far ends of the earth so that the Gentiles could be saved. Now that age still continues today. It is the age of grace and shall continue until the day when trumpet sounds . . . and I believe we are very close to the time for the fulfillment of the Feast of Trumpets to occur.”
