Leviticus 23:16-21
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
16 you shall count to the day after the seventh week, fifty days.[a](A) Then you shall present a new grain offering to the Lord. 17 For the elevated offering of your first-ripened fruits to the Lord, you shall bring with you from wherever you live two loaves of bread made of two tenths of an ephah of bran flour and baked with leaven. 18 Besides the bread, you shall offer to the Lord a burnt offering of seven unblemished yearling lambs, one bull of the herd, and two rams, along with their grain offering and libations, as a sweet-smelling oblation to the Lord. 19 One male goat shall be sacrificed as a purification offering, and two yearling lambs as a communion sacrifice. 20 The priest shall elevate them—that is, the two lambs—with the bread of the first-ripened fruits as an elevated offering before the Lord; these shall be sacred to the Lord and belong to the priest. 21 On this same day you shall make a proclamation: there shall be a declared holy day for you; no heavy work may be done. This shall be a perpetual statute through all your generations wherever you dwell.
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- 23:16–21 Fifty days: Pentecost. This festival occurs on a single day, fifty days after the feast of Unleavened Bread, elsewhere called the “feast of the Harvest” (Ex 23:16), “Day of First Fruits” (Nm 28:26), and “feast of Weeks” (Ex 34:22; Dt 16:10, 16). The name Pentecost comes from the later Greek term for the holy day (cf. Acts 2:1; 20:16; 1 Cor 16:8), referring to the fiftieth day. This is the occasion for bringing the first fruits of the wheat harvest.
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