Leviticus 23:11, commentary and pictures

On the morrow after the Sabbath, the second day of the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread that followed the Passover, the priest waved the year's first barley sheaf before the Lord at His altar. The waving was a thank offering that acknowledged the harvest belonged to God. The sickle could not be put to the grain and the harvest could not be gathered into sheaves until the sheaf had been presented, and the presented sheaf represented the harvest to come. For more than a thousand years this symbolic ceremony was performed, with the first heads of ripened grain gathered from the field and brought when the people went up to Jerusalem for the Passover.

The ceremony was a type of the work of Christ, in which the sheaf represented the Saviour, as did the slain lamb and the unleavened bread, while the Passover kept in memory Israel's deliverance from Egypt as an object-lesson of redemption. The waved sheaf of first fruits points forward to Christ, who came forth from the grave as its antitype and the firstfruits from the dead. This was one of the vernal types of the law fulfilled in its order and time. Christ's resurrection took place on the very day the wave sheaf was to be presented.

As the first-fruits of those that slept, Christ represents the great spiritual harvest of the righteous dead to be gathered for the kingdom of God, and His resurrection is the type and pledge of their resurrection. As the Passover was fulfilled in the crucifixion and the meat offering in the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the timely fulfillment of the wave sheaf proves the autumnal types will likewise be fulfilled as to time in the events of the second advent. Then Christ as great High Priest will come out to bless the people as the high priest came out of the sanctuary on the tenth day of the seventh month.