Leviticus 23:11

And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord,.... Or the omer of barley; this was done by the priest in the tabernacle and temple, where was the presence of God, and that before the handful of it was

And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.

To be accepted for you; that God may accept of you, and bless you in the rest of your harvest. On the morrow after the sabbath, i.e. after the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, which was a sabbath, or day of rest, as appears from , or upon the sixteenth day of the month. And this was the first of those fifty days, in the close whereof was the feast of pentecost, or Whitsuntide.

Leviticus 23:11 And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.Ver. 11. And he shall wave the sheaf.] This signified that they and theirs were accepted of God through Christ. On the morrow after the Sabbath.] Here the Lord’ s day was prefigured, saith one, therefore prescribed, and instituted of God. This shake day sheaf was a pregnant type of Christ’ s rising again, the firstfruits from the dead. It was fulfilled in Christ’ s resurrection, the day after the Sabbath. And because this Sabbath was chiefly meant of the Passover (which was a high Sabbath) it was a double Sabbath wherein Christ rested in the grave. The very next morning was Christ waved before the Lord, when, in the earthquake, he rose from the dead "the firstfruits of them that sleep," and there hence entered the everlasting gates as a King of glory, which psalm is in the Greek called A psalm of David of the first day of the week.

(11) And he shall wave the sheaf.—Better, and he shall wave the omer. The priest mixed with the omer of meal a log of oil, put on a handful of frankincense (see Leviticus 2:15), as on other meat-offerings, waved it, took a handful of it and caused it to ascend in smoke (see Leviticus 2:16), and then consumed the residue in company with his fellow-priests. Immediately after this ceremony, bread, parched corn, green ears, &c, of the new crop were exposed for sale in the streets of Jerusalem, as, prior to the offering of the omer, no use whatever was allowed to be made of the new corn. On the morrow after the sabbath.—The interpretation of this phrase also constituted one of the differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees during the second Temple. According to the Pharisees, the term sabbath here, as elsewhere (see Leviticus 23:24; Leviticus 23:32; Leviticus 23:39), is not the weekly sabbath, but the next day, or the first day of the holy convocation, the first day of Passover, on which the Israelites had to abstain from all unnecessary work. It is the 16th of Nisan. The Sadducees, however, maintained that it is to be understood in its literal sense as denoting the weekly sab-bath in the Passover week, which might happen to fall within the seven days, and possibly the fifth or sixth day of the festival. But this is against the import of Lev 23:15. Here the feast of Pentecost is to be reckoned from this sabbath, and if this sabbath might either be on the second or sixth day of the Passover, not only would the feast of Pentecost have no definite day, but the Passover itself would, in the course of time, be displaced from the fundamental position which it occupies in the order of the annual festivals. Hence the Pharisees, rightly regarding the word sabbath here as an alternative term for the day of holy convocation, took the morrow after the sabbath to denote Nisan 16. On the afternoon of this day, therefore, the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns of Jerusalem assembled together “so that the reaping might take place amidst great tumult.” As soon as it became dark, each of the reapers asked, “Has the sun gone down?” To which the people replied, “Yes.” They asked twice again, “Has the sun gone down?” to which the people each time replied, “Yes.” Each reaper then asked three times, “Is this the scythe? “to which the people each time replied “Yes.” “Is this the box?” they next asked three times. “Yes,” was again thrice the reply of the people. “Is this the Sabbath?” the reaper asked three times; and three times the people replied, “Yes.” “Shall I cut?” he asked three times; and three times the people replied, “Yes.” When cut it was laid in boxes, brought into the court of the Temple, threshed with canes and sticks, that the grains might not be crushed, and laid in a roast with holes, so that the fire might touch each grain.

Verse 11. He shalt wave the sheaf] He shall move it to and fro before the people, and thereby call their attention to the work of Divine Providence, and excite their gratitude to God for preserving to them the kindly fruits of the earth. See Clarke on Exodus 29:27, and "Leviticus 7:38" at end.

11. The ritual here set forth has no parallel elsewhere in the Pentateuch. Deuteronomy 26:2 prescribes that ‘the first of all the fruit of the ground’ shall be offered, but gives no direction as to any particular day. In Deuteronomy 16:9-10 the nature of the offering is left undetermined, and the date is seven weeks ‘from the time thou beginnest to put the sickle to the standing corn.’ shall wave] See Appendix IV, pp. 183 ff. the morrow after the sabbath] For this vague expression see introd. note to ch. Driver (LO T.9 p. 55 note) says that it is understood traditionally of the 1st day of Maẓ ?ẓ ?oth (unleavened bread); but this is an unusual sense of ‘sabbath.’ He considers it probable that in its original connexion the ‘sabbath’ meant here was the ordinary weekly sabbath which fell during the seven days of Maẓ ?ẓ ?oth.

11. The morrow after the sabbath — After the first day of holy convocation. Hence the waving of the sheaf, according to Josephus, was on the sixteenth of Nisan.