Your ShelfYour Projects

Question Corner

14%

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 23, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 51.

Read the full edition

Question Corner

By Editor

1453.—Passover and Pentecost. You will please answer the following questions on these texts of Scripture: Ex. 12:6, 18; Lev. 23:5; Deut. 16:4, 9. (1) On what day of the month did they eat the Passover? (2) Did the count of the fifty days begin from the first Sabbath after they began the harvest, or did it begin from the 15th day of the month, as some count? J. S. M.
The paschal lamb was killed between the evenings in the very closing hours of the 14th day of Nisan, the first moon, or month. The lamb was to be eaten in the following night. Ex. 12:8-10. That day, beginning with that night to its close the next evening, was the 15th day of Nisan, or the first day of unleavened bread, the feast of which continued seven days, or to the 21st of Nisan inclusive. The fifteenth day was a yearly sabbath day.
2. On the morrow after this yearly sabbath day, the 16th day of the moon, or month, Nisan, the wave sheaf was to be offered, called the day of the first fruits. Lev. 23:11, 15; Num. 28:26. From that day the fifty days of Pentecost were to be counted. Seven sabbaths, or “seven weeks, called here sabbaths, were to be complete” (Clarke), and on the morrow after the seventh complete sabbath, or week, occurred the Pentecost.
It would be evident to all that the 14th day of Nisan, regulated by the new moon would fall on different days of the week, as also would Pentecost. It will also be seen that between the killing of the paschal lamb between the evenings of the 14th of Nisan and the offering of the first fruits on the 16th there were only parts of two days, the 14th and 16th, and the whole of one, the fifteenth. So also our Lord was crucified on the sixth day of the week, and rose on the first day.
On the question whether the “Sabbath” of Lev. 23:11 refers to the weekly Sabbath, Smith’s Bible Dictionary has this note:—
It has been generally held that the “sabbath” here signifies the first day of holy convocation of the Passover, the 15th of Nisan, mentioned Lev. 23:7 (compare 24, 32, 39). Some have made the “Sabbath here signify the seventh day of the week, or the Sabbath of creation, as the Jewish writers have called it; and thus the day of Pentecost would always fall on the first day of the week. But Bahr proves from Joshua 5:11 and Lev. 23:14 that the omar was offered on the 16th of Nisan.