Sheaf of Firstfruits


The Lord instructed Moses to institute seven yearly feasts for the nation of Israel. Each of these feasts had prophetic significance. The Feast of Passover pictured the death of Christ. Another feast, the Feast of Pentecost, pictured all the work that the Spirit would empower the church to accomplish in fulfillment of the Great Commission. One special celebration within the Feast of Unleavened Bread was a ritual involving a sheaf of firstfruits. This pictured Jesus’ resurrection.

4 These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons.

5 In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD's passover.

6 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.

7 In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.

8 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.

9 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

10 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:

11 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.

12 And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the LORD.

13 And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the LORD for a sweet savour: and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin.

14 And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

Leviticus 23:4-14

In these verses the Lord tells the nation how the Feast of Unleavened Bread should be conducted. He specifies when the feast should be held (vv. 5-6). He lays down strict requirements for the first and last days (vv. 7-8). And He appoints a special observance for the day after the Sabbath (vv. 9-14). On that day, the priests were to give the Lord a special offering that amounted to no more than a single sheaf of barley.1 The sheaf was called firstfruits, for two reasons.

  1. It represented the first produce of the barley harvest, which was just then beginning. Nothing from that harvest could be eaten until the offering was presented (v. 14).
  2. The barley harvest in Nisan, the first month, was the first harvest of the year (Exod. 9:31-322).3

We have three solid reasons for asserting that this offering foreshadowed the resurrection of Christ.

  1. Throughout Scripture, life springing up from a seed symbolizes resurrection.

    23 And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

    24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

    25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

    John 12:23-25

    The middle verse has a secondary reference to the work of the gospel following Jesus' death and resurrection. But the fruiting of the dying seed mainly pictures the believer's future attainment of an immortal body. The bracketing verses verify this interpretation. In verse 23, Jesus calls our attention to His own glorification, which will immediately follow His resurrection. In verse 25, He says that anyone willing to renounce this world even at the cost of his life will win life eternal. Like a seed, he will not really die, but rather he will progress to a superior form of life. God will raise him to immortality, glory, and power.

    The same imagery occurs also in Paul's writings.

    35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?

    36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:

    37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:

    38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. . . .

    42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:

    43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:

    44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

    1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-44

    The analogy is clear. The body a believer now has is like a nondescript, perishable seed. It is not at all comparable to the wonderful body that he will inherit at his resurrection, for then he will become like beautiful ripened grain. But first he must be buried in the ground and undergo a kind of death.

  2. At the celebration of firstfruits during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, one sheaf of grain was offered on behalf of the whole nation. The Lord could have asked for a sheaf from every farmer. Instead, He was content with a single sheaf. The singularity of the offering suggests that it typified one man. Since fruited grain depicts a man in his immortal state, we surmise that the offering typified one man risen from the dead.

  3. Who is that man? His identity is revealed in the second offering that the Lord required on the same day. Besides waving a sheaf of barley before the Lord, the priests also sacrificed a he lamb without blemish (Lev. 23:12). These two offerings on behalf of the whole nation were single entities, as if each represented one person, and they were concurrent, as if both represented the same person. The lamb was undoubtedly a type of Christ, for Abraham had declared that God's Son would die like a lamb for the sins of the world.

    And said Abraham, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my [S]on.

    Genesis 22:84

    We show elsewhere on this site that Christ is identified as a sacrificial lamb in Isaiah 53:7. Thus, the wave offering prefiguring a man who would gain immortality was also a type of Christ. In its transparent symbolism, the offering was God's message to Israel that the coming Redeemer would die and rise again.5

Fulfillment


Our interpretation of the sheaf of firstfruits is supported by the teaching of Paul. He declared that Jesus' resurrection actualized the shadowy picture that this required offering upheld before the nation.

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.

1 Corinthians 15:20

The correspondence between type and antitype was complete in every detail.

  1. The sheaf offered to the Lord was the first grain to be harvested during the year. Indeed, Jesus was the first man to pass from death to life immortal.

  2. The Lord required this offering to be made on the day following the Sabbath during the Feast of Unleavened Bread; in other words, on the first day of the week, which we call Sunday. The New Testament also places Christ’s resurrection on Sunday during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (John 18:28; 19:31; Mat. 28:1–6). It is therefore evident that Jesus rose from the grave on the very day when firstfruits were offered to the Lord. Here, then, is a coincidence defying naturalistic explanation. Just as the Feast of Passover foretold the precise day of the year when the coming Redeemer would die, so also the offering of barley firstfruits foretold the precise day of the year when He would conquer death.

Jonah's Escape


Just as there is an Old Testament prophecy stating the duration of Christ's stay in the tomb, so there is an Old Testament type furnishing the same prediction. Jesus Himself referred to it when He rebuked His enemies for seeking a sign.

For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew 12:40

Seeing Jonah's ordeal as a type of Christ's experience is by no means far-fetched. Jonah's prayer while he languished in the fish's belly clearly suggests a larger significance.

1 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,

2 And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell [Sheol] cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

3 For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

4 Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.

5 The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.

7 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.

8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

9 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.

Jonah 2:1-9

He speaks of himself as cast away by God (v. 4). His sense of alienation reminds us of another who cried that God had forsaken Him (Matt. 27:46). Furthermore, Jonah refers to himself as one dead, locked in the belly of Sheol (v. 2), although he himself did not die when the fish swallowed him. The prayer therefore points to the experience of someone else. Then Jonah rejoices that God has "brought up my life from corruption" (v. 6). From what place would he be delivered? From the place at the bottom of the mountains where his corrupted body would otherwise have lain under bars forever (v. 6). Such imagery plainly speaks of resurrection from the dead.

Since Jesus was the first to rise from death to life immortal, Jonah's prayer is properly seen as a poetic celebration of Jesus' resurrection, which in Jonah’s day was still hundreds of years in the future. And Jonah’s rescue from the fish’s belly is properly seen as an event God intended to serve as a type of Jesus' resurrection.

When recalling the ordeal of Jonah, Jesus emphasized the prophetic significance in how long Jonah remained in the fish's belly. How long was he there?

Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah 1:17

He was there exactly three days and three nights. How then could Jesus claim that the duration of Jonah's stay in the fish's belly was an accurate picture of His own coming burial? Jesus' body went into a tomb late on Friday afternoon (Luke 23:50–54) and rose early on Sunday morning. Its term of burial included three days but only two nights, the nights of Friday and Saturday.

There are two possible explanations. Many commentators have argued that Jewish idiom allowed any part of a day to be considered a whole day-and-night period. But this is doubtful.6

Another possible explanation assumes that Jesus was giving the duration not of His entombment, but of His death. Scripture teaches that when Jesus died, His soul descended to Sheol, or Hades (Ps. 16:10; Acts 2:27, 31; 1 Pet. 3:18–20), and that His descent to Hades took Him to "the lower parts of the earth" (Eph. 4:9). Therefore, when Jesus spoke of His stay in "the heart of the earth," He was referring to His soul’s stay in Hades. His tomb was just a small hole in the side of a hill. To refer to it as the heart of the earth would have been poetic extravagance indeed.

Notice that Jonah himself spoke of descending to the bottoms of the mountains, so that the earth covered him (Jon. 2:6). Again, as a picture of Jesus’ future experience, the prophet’s words reveal what would happen not to the Messiah's body, but to His soul.

If the three days and nights started when Jesus died, the sum "three days" creates no difficulty. He was dead during part of the day on Friday and all of the day on Saturday. Christian tradition has always imagined that He did not rise until the first light of Sunday. The three nights are more problematic, however. Yet Jesus’ death indeed continued for three nights if the first night by His reckoning was the supernatural darkness that enveloped the world during His final hours on the Cross (Matt. 27:45–46; Mark 15:33–34; Luke 23:44–45).7 The first night was the darkest of all, for it was the earth’s only taste of absolute night, enfolding in its shroud the entire planet. We may reasonably infer that this universal night, this most real of all nights, did not relent until it had provided the setting for the world’s blackest event, the death of Christ. It was therefore another night in His soul’s experience of Hades.

Footnotes

  1. Merrill F. Unger, Unger's Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1966), 355.
  2. Jay P. Green, Sr., The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew/English, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1983), 3:1497reen, The Interlinear Bible, 1:165.
  3. Unger, 1134.
  4. Green, 1:51.
  5. Andrew A. Bonar, A Commentary on Leviticus (n.p., 1846; repr., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989), 401–405; Samuel Henry Kellogg, Studies in Leviticus: Tabernacle Worship and the Law of the Daily Life, originally, The Book of Leviticus (New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1891; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1988), 468-469.
  6. There is no doubt that the expression "three days and three nights" is idiomatic. See 1 Sam. 30:12; Est. 4:16. The question is whether it can describe a period barely longer than thirty-six hours. Many who say it can have resorted to the Jerusalem Talmud. "It has been taught: R. Eleazar b. Azariah says, ‘A day and a night constitute a span, and part of a span is equivalent to the whole of it’" (Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 9.3). From this they have inferred that it was customary among the Jews to speak of any portion of a day as a whole day and night, so that part of Friday, all of Saturday, and part of Sunday might be called three days and three nights. What Rabbi Eleazar taught was, however, a minority view. The Talmud sets it aside in favor of the view that part of a span is not equivalent to the whole of it. In any case, the Talmudic debate centers on how days should be counted in determining a particular type of ritual cleanness. Rabbi Eleazar is not saying that for all purposes he considers part of a span as equivalent to the whole.
  7. Paul Smith, personal communication, March 8, 2000.