Before we get to the two loaves, we will get an overview of Pentecost from Deuteronomy 16:
There are several elements we will pull out of this passage. The first is in verse 12, which says to remember the former slavery. This is not an aspect of Pentecost that we focus on, but it is right there in the text. In fact, the instructions for all three festival seasons command us to remember the former slavery and God’s deliverance. That is a theme of the weekly Sabbath as well, in Deuteronomy 5. With each holy day, God tells us to remember where we came from and what He has done in separating us from this world. He does not want that to ever get far from our minds lest we become tempted to return.
When we remember our former enslavement, we have cause to celebrate our freedom in the present, and this leads into a second element in this passage. As we know, the count to Pentecost consists of seven weeks—seven sevens—and then the next day is the Feast. It is the same pattern as the Jubilee, except that the Jubilee consists of seven weeks of seven years instead of seven days. But Pentecost and the Jubilee use the same procedure to arrive at their respective endpoints.
So, God says here to remember the former slavery, which then reminds us of the liberty we have now. Similarly, at the beginning of the Jubilee year, liberty was proclaimed throughout the land for all its inhabitants (Leviticus 25:10). It was a consecrated and holy year, even as Pentecost is a holy day. So, Pentecost is like a mini-Jubilee.
Finally, I will draw your attention to verse 10 again. This is something that we know, but we will read it again so we can maintain the right focus. It says to keep the Feast “to the LORD.” It is a day when He is fills our minds. He was to be the object of the holy day for Israel, and they did not even have the gospel accounts and the epistles to really see how Pentecost really is about Him, as we will see. Even though we can identify ourselves within the symbols of the day, verse 10 here declares that it is still a feast to the LORD.
Verse 10 reiterates what we saw in Exodus 23 that the Feast of Weeks is kept to the LORD. It wasn’t just a festive occasion, but a time He set apart for His people to remember Him. The feasts are about Him.
Part of Pentecost’s uniqueness is its emphasis on time. It is the only holy day arrived at by counting. In the Hebrew Scriptures, its primary name is the Feast of Weeks. It is called that five times (Exodus 34:22; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:10, 16; II Chronicles 8:13), and the Feast of Harvest once. In the New Testament, Pentekostos is a Greek word that means “count fifty.” Thus, it is a feast that cannot take place until the designated number of weeks, or the number of days, has been fulfilled. The feast is a culmination of a distinctive span of time.
