Leviticus 23:4-14
These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons. In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’S passover. 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.
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 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. 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. 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. 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.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): It is true that we consider these days, weeks and sacred festivals to have become obsolete by the fulfillment of the great Truths of God which they typified but—it becomes us to study the spiritual meaning of these types.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us,” 1 Corinthians 5:7. The Jewish Passover was a type of Christ; wherefore Moses kept it by faith, in the faith of the Messiah that was to come, Hebrews 11:28; as it was instituted in commemoration of the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, so likewise to prefigure Christ, and the redemption of His people by Him.
THE EDITOR: The unleavened bread signified Christ’s sinlessness; thus Jesus could bear our sins upon His own body. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world,” John 6:51. The Passover was instituted while the Israelites were in the bondage of Egyptian slavery, because “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” Romans 5:8. Indeed, the order and timing of these feasts is crucial to understanding their spiritual fulfillments.
JOHN LIGHTFOOT (1602-1675): First, there was the Passover, and the day following was a Sabbatic day, and on the day following the first fruits were offered. So Christ, our Passover, was crucified: the day following His crucifixion was the Sabbath, and the day following that, He, the first fruits of “them that slept,” rose again.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Josephus says that the sheaf brought upon this occasion, or the “handful,” as the margin of our English Bibles has it, consisted not of the stalks of corn as they were cut, but of corn ears dried by the fire, Leviticus 2:14. The harvest here mentioned, signifies the barley harvest, which began about the time of the Passover, Exodus 9:31.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): The expression “handful” is most appropriate, since it represented in a lively manner the beginning of the harvest.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): A sheaf or handful of new corn was brought to the priest, who was to heave it up, in token of his presenting it to the God of Heaven, and to wave it to and fro before the Lord.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): The beautiful ordinance of the presentation of the sheaf of firstfruits typify the resurrection of Christ, who, “in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week,” rose triumphant from the tomb, having accomplished the glorious work of redemption, Matthew 28:1. His was a “resurrection from among the dead,” Luke 24:5; and, in it, we have the type of the resurrection of His people.
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Saith Paul—He is “become the firstfruits of them that slept,” 1 Corinthians 15:20. As the first sheaf in the field, in the reaping season, soonest ripe, soonest gathered, and first brought in, is but the pledge and earnest of all that is to follow; so Christ the first in resurrection, for it behoved Him “in all things to have the preeminence,” Colossians 1:18—is but as that pure corn of wheat which fell into the ground, which by dying, bringeth forth much fruit. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit,” John 12:24.
THE EDITOR: But this wasn’t the wheat harvest. The Feast of Firstfruits was at the beginning of the barley harvest, an earlier, coarser grain than wheat. Those are surely significant facts. While Christ is indeed the Firstfruit Himself, this sheaf does not represent Him personally. Jesus is represented here as the high priest waving this sheaf of the firstfruits before God on the day of His own resurrection; but the sheaf itself represents the harvest of “them that slept.” Who were they?
JOHN GILL: Those who were already fallen asleep—respecting chiefly the saints that died before the resurrection of Christ; and if Christ was the firstfruit of them, there is no difficulty of conceiving how He is the firstfruits of those that die since.
THE EDITOR: Exactly. See this detail recorded only in Matthew’s Gospel, about another result of the earthquake which ripped the temple veil open, when Jesus died on the cross—“And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many,” Matthew 27:50-53. Surely these must be Old Testament saints, “who had seen the promises afar off, and embraced them, and died in faith,” Hebrews 11:13. That phrase “many bodies of the saints which slept,” well fits the presentation of a sheaf, or a handful. But notice, by the command of the Lord, this Feast of Firstfruits could not be observed until the Israelites actually entered into the land of Canaan—that “land of promise” which Abraham had dwelt in by faith, Hebrews 11:9. This Feast had not only an appointed time, but an appointed place where it was to be observed.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Why is this important?
THE EDITOR: To understand these types rightly, we must understand the type of the land of Canaan correctly. It can never be a type of heaven, because the land was filled with enemies, and there are no enemies in heaven. The land of Canaan is a type of the spiritual “land of promise” wherein believers, saved by grace, dwell by faith as did Abraham; they are in this world, but not of this world, and they have enemies to fight: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Believers, born of His Spirit, “enter into His rest”—they rest on Christ’s finished work, and the promises of God’s Word. “For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief,” as that generation did, who perished in the wilderness, Hebrews 3:17-19; 4:10,11. The barley harvest, speaks of all those who had died in Christ—yea, even from Abel to the believing thief who died on the cross beside Him, Luke 23:42,43. There was no leaven in that “handful,” because it signified the “spirits of just men made perfect,” Hebrews 12:23, who had trusted in the promise of Christ’s full atonement, and were already with Him in heaven.
MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): The offering of the first-fruits, under the law, sanctified the whole crop.
THE EDITOR: “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect,” Hebrews 11:39-40. Therefore we also have our share in this blessed promise: “Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed,” Psalm 37:3.
JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): As in the firstfruits offered to God, the Jews were assured of God’s blessing on the whole harvest; so by the resurrection of Christ, our resurrection is insured.
