The Passover was not the only celebration at the festival in the month of Abib. Associated with it was the Feast of Unleavened Bread together with two special ceremonial Sabbaths. “And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein” (Leviticus 23:6–8). The first ceremonial Sabbath was held on the 15th day and the other on the 21st day of that month.

As part of this celebration they were to wave a sheaf of barley on the 16th day, the day after the first ceremonial Sabbath. This was called the Feast of First Fruits. “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it” (verses 10, 11).

We know it to be barley because it is the earliest grain to ripen in Palestine. The first fruits of wheat were presented seven weeks later. “And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end” (Exodus 34:22). When the first Passover was celebrated in Egypt, it was barley that was already ripe. “And the flax and the barley was smitten: for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled” (Exodus 9:31).1 This is why the Passover must be after the barley is beginning to ripen.

“The Passover was followed by the seven day’s feast of unleavened bread. The first and the seventh day were days of holy convocation, when no servile work was to be performed. On the second day of the feast, the first fruits of the year’s harvest were presented before God. Barley was the earliest grain in Palestine, and at the opening of the feast it was beginning to ripen. A sheaf of this grain was waved by the priest before the altar of God, as an acknowledgment that all was His. Not until this ceremony had been performed was the harvest to be gathered.”2

The first yearly festival was associated with the barley harvest while the second was associated with the wheat harvest. The last festival of the year was associated with the final ingathering of all the crops. These were the three yearly festivals. “Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord God” (Exodus 23:17).

The timing of these yearly festivals was regulated by the agricultural cycle and the agricultural cycle was regulated by the lunisolar cycle. “The Jewish calendar is lunisolar—i.e., regulated by the positions of both the moon and the sun. It consists usually of 12 alternating lunar months of 29 and 30 days each (except for Heshvan and Kislev, which sometimes have either 29 or 30 days), and totals 353, 354, or 355 days per year. The average lunar year (354 days) is adjusted to the solar year (365 ¼ days) by the periodic introduction of leap years in order to assure that the major festivals fall in their proper season.”3

These calculations were based on the actual sightings of the moon. “The testimony of two witnesses who had observed the New Moon was ordinarily required to proclaim a new month. . . . With the decline of the Sanhedrin, calendrical matters were decided by the Palestinian patriarchate (the official heads of the Jewish community under Roman rule). Jewish persecution under Constantius II (reigned 337–361) and advances in astronomical science led to the gradual replacement of observations by calculation.”4 By 359 A.D. they had introduced a fixed and continuous calendar.

Those who tried to keep the calendar month to accommodate the festivals used two things to determine the monthly cycle. “The Karaites, a sect founded in the 8th century, refused, with some exceptions, to recognize the normative fixed calendar and reintroduced observation of the New Moon. Leap years were determined by observing the maturation of the barley crop in Palestine. Consequently, Karaites often celebrated the festivals on dates different from those fixed by the rabbis.”5

Observations of the moon are still used by some farmers today. (As a child, I remember my father studying the cycles of the moon in order to know when to plant various crops. He was an “old-school” farmer using different phases of the moon as his guide. As a result, our farm produced really great crops and became well known in the Sacramento, California, area for its quality produce. Newspaper articles showcased the ample harvests!)

As important as these festivals were, they were to be limited to Palestine; they were impractical in other parts of the world. The simple reason was that a festival could not be held without the normal cycle of planting and harvest. For example, the Feast of First Fruits was not for the wilderness, as they had no sheaves of first fruits to wave before the Lord. “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest” (Leviticus 23:10). It was only designed for an agrarian economy, not for a wilderness sojourn.

When God gave the ceremonial system of feasts at Sinai, they were supposed to be in the land of Canaan in a very short time. As they were nearing the end of the 2nd month6 of the second year, they were already leaving Sinai, bound for the promised land. Because of their rebellion associated with Korah and his comrades a short time later, the rite of circumcision was suspended7 and the Passover was discontinued until after the 40 years of wandering, when there was something to eat from the local harvest fields and when circumcision was once again restored. “And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins. And this is the cause why Joshua did circumcise: All the people that came out of Egypt, that were males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way, after they came out of Egypt. Now all the people that came out were circumcised: but all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised. For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord: unto whom the Lord sware that he would not shew them the land, which the Lord sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with milk and honey. And their children, whom he raised up in their stead, them Joshua circumcised: for they were uncircumcised, because they had not circumcised them by the way” (Joshua 5:3–7).

Since circumcision had been restored and there were products from the local harvest available, they could now keep the Passover along with the associated festivals. “And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho. And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the passover, unleavened cakes, and parched corn in the selfsame day” (Joshua 5:10, 11).

From this it is obvious that they could not hold the Feast of First Fruits of the barley or wheat nor the Feast of Ingathering until there was something to harvest. It is also evident that God planned the yearly gatherings when their workload was the least. It was not to interfere with the planting and harvesting, quite unlike the seventh-day Sabbath. “Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest” (Exodus 34:21). The seventh day was so sacred that it did not matter if they had a heavy workload or not. The annual festivals, on the other hand, were not an intrusion upon the nation of Israel but rather accommodated to their agrarian lifestyle. This is why the annual festivals were not based on a civil calendar; they were based on a lunar calendar, which was specifically designed for a farming community.

We know that the Passover takes place sometime during the months of March or April according to the Gregorian calendar. “The first of these festivals, the Passover, the feast of unleavened bread, occurred in Abib, the first month of the Jewish year, corresponding to the last of March and the beginning of April. The cold of winter was past, the latter rain had ended, and all nature rejoiced in the freshness and beauty of the springtime. The grass was green on the hills and valleys, and wild flowers everywhere brightened the fields. The moon, now approaching the full, made the evenings delightful.”8

During this time, an important part of the ceremony was to wave the sheaf of the first fruits of the ripe barley harvest on the 16th day of Abib. However, if it happened that you live in the Ukraine, it would have been impossible to present such an offering before God, because the same lunar cycle had a different meaning for those living at different latitudes. The winter barley does not get harvested in the Ukraine until June, and in the United Kingdom the winter barley is not ready for harvest until July. This is not even to mention the fact that there are believers now living in Australia where the winter barley harvest is not done until November or December in New South Wales. It would be totally impossible for them to wave this barley in March or April. They don’t even plant it until May or June.

The whole Hebrew system was largely based on agriculture. For this reason the inheritance of land was so important and keeping that land in the family was paramount. “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family” (Leviticus 25:10).

All this shows that God never intended the localized lunar calendar that regulated the annual feast days in Palestine to be used all over the world, as the harvest dates differ from one locality to another and even occur at a completely different time of the year from one hemisphere to another.

Because the annual festivals were based on location, the Passover and the other festivals were not to be kept in the local congregation wherever people lived, but rather had to be kept before the Lord. “Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord God.” Wherever the sanctuary was located, that was the designated place all the faithful had to appear before God. “There were three annual assemblies of all Israel for worship at the sanctuary. Exodus 23:14–16. Shiloh was for a time the place of these gatherings; but Jerusalem afterward became the center of the nation’s worship, and here the tribes convened for the solemn feasts.”9 It was considered apostasy to hold them anywhere else.

This was a central location for all of them in Israel.10 The farthest a Jew would have gone was to Europe—and they still could arrive in time for these holy days. At times some would spend more than a month just in travel time and attendance at these annual festivals in Jerusalem.11 The reason why the feast had to be held there was because the people needed not only the temple service—the agricultural element was also very important to them. They could not complete the harvest until the wave sheaf was presented before the Lord. At the end of the year they were to present their gifts of a completed harvest.

The Feast of Weeks was also dependent on the harvest time. “And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave-offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete: even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat-offering unto the Lord. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the Lord.” [This was also waved before the Lord.] “And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits for a wave-offering before the Lord, with the two lambs: they shall be holy to the Lord for the priest” (Leviticus 23:15–17, 20). This ceremony was based on the wheat harvest. “And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end” (Exodus 34:22).

The Feast of Tabernacles was also dependent on the harvest times and hence was also called the Feast of Ingathering. “And the Feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field” (Exodus 23:16). This was celebrated in the Autumn when the harvest was over. “Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days: on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath” (Leviticus 23:39).

From these statements we can clearly see that the annual festivals of the Hebrew nation were designed for the inhabitants of Palestine (or for those that could get to Palestine within a reasonable amount of time), and these feasts revolved around their harvest calendar. Because they were so closely entwined with their local planting and harvest times, and because they were living in an agrarian society, those times were ideal for the gatherings of the people to be instructed in the law of God. Therefore God required all the males in the entire Hebrew nation to be present at these festivals where the sanctuary was located, first in Shiloh and then in Jerusalem.

It is for this reason that the lunar cycle cannot be used as the religious basis of God’s people on a united, worldwide level. It was purely local to Palestine and designed to accommodate the local agricultural economy of the Hebrew nation. To attend such a meeting in Palestine from Australia today would be meaningless, as it would have nothing to do with the cycle of harvesting grain and would be at the wrong time of the year to be of any benefit. A farmer could not go there to ask for a blessing on the harvest which was not yet planted. The worldwide intent of the gospel is clear in the great commission, “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).