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The Shavuot Counting

There is a lot of information in The Good News of Messiah relating the the counting to Shavuot because it relates directly to the resurrection of Yeshua. The count is posted in the subtitle of the website banner in addition to the current day of the biblical (Hebrew) month and year. The image at the right is one of the comments about the matter in the supporting material in The Good News of Messiah translation. The substance of the note will be repeated somewhat here.

The counting to Shavuot is the same as counting days to the feast of Pentecost. The word shavuot means "weeks" coming from the Hebrew word shavua meaning week. Three separate countings are maintained. First there is a counting of seven weeks, seven days, seven times. So among the counts is the day of the current seven day period and the number of the week. These weeks are seven day periods, and not regular weeks. When the seven weeks are counted out, then the very next day after the seventh week finishes is Shavuot, the feast of weeks.

Also a counting of 1 to 50 days is maintained, and finally a counting of 1 to 7 Sabbaths is maintained. The passages giving the commandments for the counting are Lev. 23:11-16 and Deut. 16:9

Deuteronomy 16:9 states, "Seven shavuot (weeks) you shall count for yourself. From when the sickle is common in the grain you shall begin to count seven shavuot (weeks)." The sickle is common in the grain after the firstfruits offering is brought to the Temple on Nisan 16. Before that the grain is holy, and may not be eaten, but when the Most High's portion is offered on that day, then all the people may begin to eat the grain, because now it is common and no longer holy.

Leviticus 23:11 states, "In the tomorrow of the Sabbath the priest shall wave it (the holy portion)." The Sabbath here refers to the annual Sabbath on Nisan 15, because the Hebrew word Sabbath actually means a ceasing or resting. On that day we are to cease from servile labor because it is the first day of Passover.

The Sadducees and later a minor sect of Jews called Karaites interpreted matters so that the holy portion was to be offered after the weekly Sabbath. Christendom followed these sects in this matter because they thought that the resurrection was on Sunday, and so they required the first fruits to be offered on Sunday, since Paul remarks on this in connection to Messiah.

But the EDS corrupted the chronology. Truly, Messiah rose on the Sabbath before dawn just as the first fruits day was ending, and this fact agrees only with acknowledging that "in the tomorrow of the Sabbath" (Lev. 23:11) means the day after Nisan 15, so that in AD 34 the first fruits day is allowed to begin at dawn on Friday and end at dawn on the Sabbath.

For Matthew 28:1 says the resurrection was "The later of the Sabbaths" in Passover week, and Luke says "The Sabbath was dawning" in respect to the resurrection. And finally, all four Evangelists identify that Resurrection Sabbath according to the commandment to count seven regular Sabbaths "in the tomorrow of the Sabbath." For it says, "You shall count for yourselves in the tomorrow of the Sabbath, from the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven Sabbbaths. Regular ones they shall be." And the resurrection day is counted as the first of these Sabbaths in all four Evangelists.

If the EDS was right about its Sunday reckoning, then the first of the Sabbaths would follow Passover by more than a week. However, in all four Evangelists the resurrection is placed not just on the Sabbath, but on the "first of the Sabbaths."

The final counting is the counting of 50 days, or more correctly, the 50th day, because it says in Lev. 23:16, "until in the tomorrow of the seventh Sabbath you are counting a 50th day." It is at this point, the EDS, the Karaites, and Sadducees said, "Hah, the counting stops on the very day after the seventh Sabbath with 50 days!" But they are ignorant that in the Biblical Hebrew idiom, "in the tomorrow" is using the word "tomorrow" to mean "time after," or "time later" as is common in Hebrew. English sometimes employs the word tomorrow in this fashion to simply mean the future. So "in the tomorrow of the seventh Sabbath" simply means however far later than it is required to reach a 50th day.

Proof of this matter is found in Lev. 23:15 which was just quoted above. The seven Sabbaths are not counted in the tomorrow of the Passover Sabbath if it means the very day after. Rather they are counted in the future of the Passover Sabbath.

The EDS translations, and Jewish one's also show their ignorance or bias in the way they translate Lev. 23:11, 15, and 16. They translate "in the tomorrow of" in three different ways.

No. 1, vs. 11: "in the tomorrow of the Sabbath."

No. 2, vs. 15: "from the tomorrow of the Sabbath."

No. 3, vs. 16: "until the tomorrow of the Sabbath."

But we see that if it can be translated "from" in vs. 15 to accomodate seven Sabbaths later than the very day after, then it can be similarly translated in vs. 16 to accomodate a 50th day that comes later than the very day after the seventh Sabbath!

The Hebrew word is exactly the same in all three cases. Why then is is allowed to put "from the tomorrow of the Sabbath" in vs. 15 but not in vs. 16?

A remark is in order here on the Hebrew idiom, best illustrated by English. If someone says "take time from tomorrow to have tea" and someone else repeats the order as "take time in tomorrow to have tea," then we see that "from" is being used in the sense of "in" and not "after." So "from the tomorrow of the Sabbath" means the same thing as "in the tomorrow of the Sabbath," and proves that the solution is that "tomorrow" simply means future time.

So we see that "until in the tomorrow of the seventh Sabbath you are counting a 50th day" is a nothing burger proof that the counting must end on Sunday.

The counting of the resurrection Sabbath as the first of the Sabbaths shows that we should not listen to the Sadducees, the Karaites who came along in the 9th century AD, or the Ecclesiastical Deep State.

The calendar page has additional information on counting to Shavuot