Exodus 23:14-17

God here, through Moses, speaks about the three harvest festivals among the holy days. They are also the three pilgrimage feasts where once they got into the land the people would come to Jerusalem to keep those particular feasts, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost as we call it now, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Now, what is interesting here is that for the last two, God gives them different names from what we are used to. God calls Pentecost the Feast of Harvest. In the New Testament, of course, we call that Pentecost. In Leviticus 23, it is called the Feast of Weeks. And so we have a different name for Pentecost, and then the Feast of Tabernacles, instead of dwelling on the idea of tents or temporary dwellings, here He talks about ingathering, another harvest term.

Well, we need to notice as we focus in on the Day of Pentecost, how God describes this holy day. First, He does call it here the Feast of Harvest. Now, the Hebrew word that lies underneath the word harvest is qasir. (Like I said before, I am not going to give you all the diacritical marks here.) And this particular word does not necessarily mean harvest. It comes to mean harvest, but the base idea behind the word is cutting or severing. And so when you reaped a field of grain, you brought in the harvest, you would cut the stalks with something very sharp, and then you would gather them up and bring them in.

Now you might wonder, is that the same word that they used for ingathering there in the middle part of verse 16? But no, these are two different words and that is why they are translated with two different English words. Ingathering is the Hebrew word asip, and it means to gather or to bring in, to receive, or of course ultimately it meant also to harvest. This refers not to the reaping or the harvest of grains out in the field, but more specifically, it refers to the ingathering of fruit, or grapes specifically. That is what was ripe in the fall, whereas the wheat that was gathered in and around Pentecost was ripe around Pentecost. And so it was cut out of the field, harvested, whereas at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, the harvest was a fruit or grapes, and that was brought in, as the Hebrews thought of it. And that is what the word ingathering means, to gather or to bring in.

Exodus 23:14-17

The phrase "the month of Abib" in these three situations is properly connected with the Exodus and not Passover. So why in Deuteronomy 16 is "being brought forth out of Egypt" used in connection with Passover and not Unleavened Bread as in all the other scriptures?

Exodus 23:14-17, Exodus 34:18-24, and Deuteronomy 16:1-17 all have something in common. They all pertain to the three festival seasons: Unleavened Bread, Pentecost (called the Feast of Firstfruits), and the Feast of Tabernacles. In neither one of these contexts is either Passover or the Last Great Day mentioned at all. What we have in these three chapters are specific instructions for these three Feasts. This is especially important to Deuteronomy 16. Deuteronomy 16 is not about Passover. It is about the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles.

Exodus 23:14-16

I do not want to go further because I want you to note what it says there. Verse 16 specifically applies to the firstfruits offering. Now, is it not true that the wave sheaf offering is the first of the firstfruits offering, so this instruction that is given here in verse 16 applies directly to it. You could not get something more positive.

What does it say here? It says that the offering must be made from the firstfruits of their labors that the Israelites had sown in their field. See—"which you have sown." Is there anything hard to understand about that phrase? The wave sheaf offering had to be made from the harvest from the seeds that they had sown in the field.

Exodus 23:16

Both Exodus 23:19 and Exodus 34:26 contain the phrase first of the firstfruits. And in Exodus 23:16, God refers to the Old Testament Feast of Weeks and the New Testament Day of Pentecost as the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field. In Numbers 28:26, Pentecost is called the day of the firstfruits. Now the firstfruits were the early part of the harvest. The first of the firstfruits would be even earlier in the harvest season. So the wave sheaf offering represents a small initial harvest, and it carries significant symbolic meaning representing the pure, sinless, and risen Christ.

Exodus 23:16

In Matthew 24:13, most of us know that Jesus says, that those who endure to the end shall be saved. And James 5, verses 7 through 11 speaks a lot about how patience must be a part of producing the fruit. The thing is, remember, Exodus 23:16 tells us that the focus on Pentecost is seeing His people out in the field laboring. He wants to see them out in the field all the time producing. It does not necessarily matter how much you produce. The fact is you are out there producing what you can.

Exodus 23:16

Not only did it have to be something that they reap, but also something that they have sown in their own fields.

So the offering has to come from your own labors that you have sown from your own field, and field in this context means your place of labor or work. So the offering that we make to God must be free of the taint of sin of any kind, otherwise they are blemished and unholy. The labor has to be clean labor not tainted by anything that is defiled in the eyes of God.

Exodus 23:14-16

This first mention gives a basic outline of the three festival seasons, and here the present Feast is called “the Feast of Ingathering.” It is a harvest festival, and this sets the tone because it evokes thoughts of abundance as all the produce has been gathered in, and there is a break from the work.