Unleavened Bread study series, pt. 2/7: Firstfruits and the promise of resurrection
Hint: it’s not Easter Sunday.
Now, within the Unleavened Bread “week” is the Feast of Firstfruits:1
And Jehovah speaks unto Moses, saying, ‘Speak unto the sons of Israel, and you have said unto them, When you come in unto the land which I am giving to you, and have reaped its harvest, and have brought in the sheaf, the beginning of your harvest unto the priest, then he has waved the sheaf before Jehovah for your acceptance; on the morrow of the sabbath does the priest wave it. And you have prepared in the day of your waving the sheaf a lamb, a perfect one, a son of a year, for a burnt-offering to Jehovah, and its present two tenth deals of flour mixed with oil, a fire-offering to Jehovah, a sweet fragrance, and its drink-offering, wine, a fourth of the hin. And bread and roasted corn and full ears you do not eat until this self-same day, until your bringing in the offering of your God—a statute age-during to your generations, in all your dwellings.
There is of course much dispute into this very day over whether Firstfruits can fall on any day of the week on any given year, or whether it always lands on a Sunday. This debate is contingent on whether the “sabbath” referred to in the Lev. 23 command is referring to the weekly or high sabbath.
Although a considerable gargantuan swath of the “mainstream” theological realm takes the “Sunday-always” view, a close consideration of the context reveals otherwise—in this Leviticus chapter, the list of appointed feasts are described in this order:
seventh-day sabbath (weekly) (23:3)
Passover (annual) (23:5)
Unleavened Bread (annual) (23:6-8)
Firstfruits (annual) (23:9-14)
Pentecost (annual) (23:15-22)
Trumpets (annual) (23:23-25)
Atonement (annual) (23:26-32)
Trumpets (annual) (23:33-43)
The consistent theme is that weekly rigidity—in terms of whether a sanctified day coinciding always on a particular day of a week—is only the case for the weekly sabbath which is always the seventh day of the week. For the seven appointed annual feasts of Jehovah, the dates are determined according to a lunisolar reckoning of months and years according to the new moon, not by weeks, and therefore any can fall in any particular year on any day of the week.
When God spoke of “the morrow of the sabbath,” it is not referencing the weekly sabbath, but rather the high sabbath of the first day of Unleavened Bread that itself can fall on any day of the week, because the specifications for Firstfruits are immediately preceded by the affixed times for Unleavened Bread which define the first and seventh high days of Unleavened Bread as Nisan 15 and 21 respectively.2
In the year that Jesus was crucified, it was indeed so that the Feast of Firstfruits coincided on a “Sunday,” a.k.a. on the first day of the week. However, that was because the date for the Messiah’s atoning sacrifice for sin was predetermined with precision so that Jesus’s death on the cross would be on a year (30 A.D.) where the first day of Unleavened Bread aligned perfectly with the weekly sabbath that year, not as if this alignment transpires every single year.
According to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus was crucified on the Preparation Day of Passover, a.k.a. Nisan 14, when the passover lamb was slain:3
Pilate, therefore, having heard this word, brought Jesus without, and he sat down upon the tribunal—to a place called, ‘Pavement,’ and in Hebrew, ‘Gabbatha’; and it was the preparation of the passover, and as it were the sixth hour, and he saith to the Jews, ‘Lo, your king!’
And after Jesus died on the cross, the evening of the subsequent day arrived, which was not only a weekly sabbath day but a great one, a.k.a. one out of the seven annual high sabbath days:4
The Jews, therefore, that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath, since it was the preparation, (for that sabbath day was a great one,) asked of Pilate that their legs may be broken, and they taken away.
And after that high sabbath (Nisan 15—First Day of Unleavened Bread), it came to pass that the subsequent day was the first day of the week.5 This means that in the year the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ atoned for sin on the cross, Nisan 16—the Feast of Firstfruits—was the day that Jehovah resurrected His Son from the grave.6 Therefore, it can be reckoned that the weekly alignment of the Passover-Unleavened Bread transpiration was so on the year of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ:
Passover (Nisan 14): sixth day of the week (Thursday sunset-Friday sunset)
First Day of Unleavened Bread (Nisan 15): high sabbath coinciding on the weekly sabbath, the seventh day of the week (Friday sunset-Saturday sunset)
Second Day of Unleavened Bread a.k.a. Firstfruits (Nisan 16): first day of the new week (Saturday sunset-Sunday sunset)
And the New Testament speaks of exactly who the firstfruit is chiefly identified as in antitypical substance and verity:7
And now, Christ hath risen out of the dead, the first-fruits of those sleeping he became, for since through man [is] the death, also through man [is] a rising again of the dead.
For even as in Adam all die, so also in the Christ all shall be made alive, and each in his proper order, a first-fruit Christ, afterwards those who are the Christ’s, in his presence, then—the end, when he may deliver up the reign to God, even the Father, when he may have made useless all rule, and all authority and power, for it behooves him to reign till he may have put all the enemies under his feet.
The last enemy is done away—death.
In undoubtedly clear terms, Paul identified the fulfillment of the Feast of Firstfruits with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Paul wrote also:8
And if the first-fruit [is] holy, the lump also; and if the root [is] holy, the branches also.
This mirrors precisely what Jesus spoke to His disciples at the Last Supper:9
I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman;
every branch in me not bearing fruit, He doth take it away, and every one bearing fruit, He doth cleanse by pruning it, that it may bear more fruit;
already you are clean, because of the word that I have spoken to you;
remain in me, and I in you, as the branch is not able to bear fruit of itself, if it may not remain in the vine, so neither ye, if ye may not remain in me.
I am the vine, you the branches; he who is remaining in me, and I in him, this one doth bear much fruit, because apart from me you are not able to do anything;
Paul used two parallel analogies: the holiness of a firstfruit indicates the holiness of the corresponding lump, and likewise that the holiness of a root determines that of its offshooting branches. Jesus affirmed what is the interpretation of that latter analogy’s meaning: He is the vine, and His adherents are the branches. And as Paul wrote to the Corinthian assembly, Jesus Christ is the firstfruit from the dead!
And so, the antitype conveys this picture:
Jesus dies on Nisan 14, the passover (day 1)
Jesus rests in the grave on the great sabbath, the First Day of Unleavened Bread (Nisan 15) (day 2)
Jesus is resurrected by His Father from the grave on the Feast of Firstfruits, the Second Day of Unleavened Bread (Nisan 16) (day 3)
Throughout the Old Testament, the “third day” was alluded to as a prefiguring type for redemptive salvation (brief, non-comprehensive list of examples):
Abraham lifted up his eyes on the third day in the journey where he ventured to sacrifice his son Isaac, faithfully committed in his heart to fully obey Jehovah his God and sacrifice his son because he believed with utmost faith in God’s promise of the resurrection10—just as Abraham was about to offer up his son in type, so too Jehovah gave His Son in antitype
when Joseph was in Egypt and interpreted the dreams for the chiefs of the butlers and bakers in prison, it came to pass just as he pronounced that on the third day, Pharaoh restored the chief of the butlers while hanging the chief of the bakers11
when Joseph punished his brothers after they came to Egypt, he instructed them on the third day what they must do to live by reason that he fears God12
Jehovah was revealed unto the Israelites at Mount Sinai on the third day13
the prophet Hosea declared, “He doth revive us after two days; in the third day He doth raise us up, and we live before Him.”14
Esther (a type for the redeemed assembly of Jehovah in the New Covenant) found grace in the eyes of her husband, the Medo-Persian king Ahasuerus (a type for Jesus Christ), on the third day after three days and three nights of fasting15
And there is of course the typology of Jonah, who was trapped inside the bowels of a massive sea-monster for three days and three nights,16 which Jesus spoke of as a prefiguring for His own earthly death in the grave in between His crucifixion and resurrection.17
The hope of the resurrection is the substantive confirming verity of a hope of eternal life for God’s faithful adherents—Paul rebuked the Corinthians for the prevalence of denial in their ranks of the Resurrection of Jesus:18
And if Christ is preached, that out of the dead he hath risen, how say certain among you, that there is no rising again of dead persons?
And if there be no rising again of dead persons, neither hath Christ risen; and if Christ hath not risen, then void [is] our preaching, and void also your faith, and we also are found false witnesses of God, because we did testify of God that He raised up the Christ, whom He did not raise if then dead persons do not rise.
For if dead persons do not rise, neither hath Christ risen, and if Christ hath not risen, vain is your faith, ye are yet in your sins; then, also, those having fallen asleep in Christ did perish; if in this life we have hope in Christ only, of all men we are most to be pitied.
However, because Jesus was resurrected by Jehovah the Father to live unto eternity, there is a hope for all who faithfully walk as Christ walked,19 that just as the firstborn of all creation20 was resurrected, so too His adherents are raised up with Him21 not only in the spiritual rebirth of being born again22 as a new man23 circumcised in the heart in accordance with baptism,24 but unto the hope of the bodily resurrection in the Second Coming25 towards eternal life in a spiritual body26 and in the everlasting abode with the universe’s divine Creator, whose face will be seen by those who love Him unto the end.27
In the second assembly dispensation spanning the end of the Apostolic Era unto 313 A.D., we read of this description in the second out of the seven letters to the seven angels of the seven assemblies in Rev. 2, structured as a pericopal chiasm:28
a: ‘And to the angel of the assembly of the Smyrneans, write:
b: These things says the First and the Last, who did become dead and did live: I have known your works, and tribulation, and poverty—yet you are rich!
c: and [I have known] the evil-speaking of those saying themselves to be Jews and are not, but [are] a synagogue of the Adversary.
d: Be not afraid of the things that you are about to suffer!
c’: Behold! the devil is about to cast of you to prison that you may be tried, and you shall have tribulation [for] ten days.
b’: Become you faithful unto death, and I will give to you the crown of the life.
a’: He who is having an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies! he who is overcoming will not be injured of the second death.’
From cir. 100 A.D. into 313 A.D., the faithful adherents of God throughout the Christian assemblies within the Roman Empire faced intense persecution from the imperial authorities as rampant perversions, co-optations, and blasphemies of various Gnostic flavors were propagated by those who called themselves Christians (a.k.a. spiritual Jews) and were not. Jesus’s message to His faithful adherents in the face of existential persecution and harrowing martyrdom was none other than the promise of the resurrection, pointing firstly to His own resurrection from the dead after dying in obedience according to the will of His Father, and assuring that likewise, those who walk in His path of righteous obedience unto the martyred end will be granted the crown of the life and delivered from the second death.
Lev. 23:9-14.
Lev. 23:6-8.
Jn. 19:13-14.
Jn. 19:31.
Mk. 16:1-2; Matt. 28:1; Lk. 24:1.
Acts 2:32-33; I Pet. 1:21.
I Cor. 15:20-26.
Rom. 11:16.
Jn. 15:1-5.
Gen. 22:4.
Gen. 40.
Gen. 42:18-20.
Ex. 19.
Hos. 6:2.
Est. 4:15-5:8.
Jon. 1:17.
Matt. 12:39-40; Lk. 11:29-30.
I Cor. 15:12-19.
Cf. I Jn. 2:6.
Col. 1:15.
Col. 2:12.
Jn. 3:1-8.
Eph. 2:14-16, 4:22-24; Col. 3:9-11.
Cf. Rom. 6:3-4; I Pet. 3:18-22.
I Thess. 4:13-18.
I Cor. 15:44.
Rev. 22:4.
Rev. 2:8-11.