**4. The Wheat Festivals:** *Mas. s.ôt***,** *Qas¯ .îr,* **and** *Šabu¯ʿôt*

The Covenant Collection in Exodus (21:1–23:19) is believed by many scholars to be the oldest of the Pentateuchal legal collections (Levinson 1997; D. Wright 2009). It includes a description of three festivals (Exod 23:14–17):

<sup>14</sup> Three times a year you shall hold a festival for Me: <sup>15</sup> The Feast of *Mas.s. <sup>ô</sup>t* (Unleavened Bread) you shall observe—eating unleavened bread for seven days as I have commanded you—at the set time in the *H. odeš ¯* (New Moon) of *<sup>ʾ</sup>Abîb ¯* (Green Ears), for in it you went forth

<sup>16</sup> Although for a long time, H was considered to be earlier than P and pre-Exilic, for the past two decades, the majority of scholars have embraced the idea that H is a revision of P or even the editor of the Pentateuch itself. As such, without taking a position on whether P is pre- or post-exilic, it seems quite likely that H is, though some scholars disagree. (See Knohl [1995] 2007; Schectman and Baden 2009).

from Egypt; and none shall appear before Me empty-handed; <sup>16</sup> and the Feast of the *Qa¯s.îr* (Harvest), of the first produce of your work, of what you sow in the field; and the Feast of *ʾAsîp ¯* (Ingathering) at the end of the year, when you gather in the results of your work from the field. <sup>17</sup> Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Sovereign, YHWH.

The three holidays here are not of a piece. The first is described as a commemoration of the exodus from Egypt, the latter two as agricultural holidays, celebrating the successful growth season of certain products. And yet, part of the difference derives from redactional supplements (supplements are indented):

The Feast of *Mas.s. ôt*—

you shall observe, eating unleavened bread for seven days as I have commanded you—

at the set time in the *H. odeš ¯* of *<sup>ʾ</sup>Abîb ¯* ,

for in it you went forth from Egypt;

The first supplement is easy to recognize, since this phrase was added into a number of biblical passages, interrupting the flow of the text (e.g., Exod 12:15–16, 13:6; Deut 16:3).<sup>17</sup> The second was part of the attempt to redefine many different observances as being commemorations of the exodus (more on this later). Thus, the oldest layer of the *Mas.s. ôt* passage follows the same structure as the other two: name of festival plus season of observance.

And yet, the festivals are still not of a piece. The time for celebrating *Mas.s. ôt* is marked by a date, while the time for celebrating *Qa¯s.îr* and *<sup>ʾ</sup>Asîp ¯* is marked by an agricultural stage, when you harvest or gather the given product. Moreover, the meaning of the latter festivals is clear—thanksgiving for a good harvest—whereas the meaning of the *Mas.s. ôt* festival is opaque. What are the unleavened flatbreads for?

The first clue comes from the date—the first of the month of "Green Ears" (*ʾAbîb ¯* ).<sup>18</sup> To what grain does this refer? An important find that sheds light on the agricultural calendar for ancient Canaan/Israel is what scholars call "the Gezer Calendar," discovered in 1908 at Tel Gezer by R.A.S. Macalister, and dated to the 10th century (roughly the time of David according to biblical chronology). I will quote the calendar in full, as we will make reference to other parts of it later in the piece.

His double-month is ingathering. His double-month is sowing. His double-month is late-planting. His month is chopping flax. His month is barley harvest. His month is harvest and measuring.<sup>19</sup> His double-month is pruning. His month is summerfruit. Abiya (trans., P. Kyle McCarter, *COS* 2, 2003, p. 222 [#2.85]). (Hallo and Younger 2003) 20

For our purposes, it should be noted that immediately preceding the wheat harvest is the barley harvest. Wheat was a much more significant product to the farmers than barley, and as we already see in the Gezer Calendar, where the word "harvest" without a modifier refers to wheat harvest. Similarly, the Bible also specifies "barley harvest" when it has this in mind (2 Sam 21:9, Ruth 1:22), whereas the word "harvest time" on its own, likely refers to the wheat harvest. In any event, Exodus 34, which is a later revision of parts of Exodus 23 (Gesundheit 2002), specifically states that the holiday of *Qa¯s.îr* celebrates the wheat harvest. But what about the festival of *Mas.s. ôt*?

<sup>17</sup> Although many scholars still read this text as coming from one author, a number of scholars have suggested redaction along the lines discussed above. The specific, critical redaction suggestion here is based on Gesundheit (2002). Reinhard Kratz refers to the addition in v. 15 as "syntactically clumsy" (Kratz [2000] 2005, pp. 142, 152 n49). A middle position, in which the author of the whole passage is the author of the Covenant Collection, but that this author was reworking older material, is found in Wright (2009, pp. 310–11).

<sup>18</sup> As *H. odeš ¯* can mean month, the phrase could be translated as "at the set time in the month of green ears." This would then assume that the reader knows the set time for this festival.

<sup>19</sup> The translation of this word is disputed. Others, such as King and Stager (2001, pp. 88–89) suggest "feasting."

<sup>20</sup> The language of this document, specific translations of given words, and even the nature of the document, are all matters of dispute. See discussion in (Talmon 1963; Lemaire 1976; Young 1992; Sivan 1998).

The Hebrew word *Mas.s. ôt*, in the biblical text, refers to flatbreads, likely made from barely (Avrahami 2018). As the stores of wheat would have been depleted if not entirely used up by this point in the year, flatbreads would have been the only bread available in this season; green ears of wheat can be eaten parched (*qalûy ¯* in biblical terms, known today by the Arabic term, freekeh), but cannot be made into flour for baking. What is the festival's meaning?

On one level, it seems possible that the festival celebrates the barley harvest (Schmidt [1968] 1983, p. 120). If so, it would work well with the other two festivals, as each celebrates a different harvest. And yet, this only partially explains the festival for two reasons. First, if it were to be exactly like the other two festivals, then one would imagine the first barley being offered not eaten. Second, the verse never mentions this being the time of gathering barley. Instead, the only marker is a date, and this is a reference to the green ears of unripe wheat, not the ripe barley.

Thus, the eating of (barley) flatbreads may have been an apotropaic ritual to ensure the success of the wheat harvest (Propp [1999] 2010, pp. 429–34). Specifically, it appears to be a privation ritual, the logic of which comes from the idea that showing wealth can bring about the opposite. We know from other biblical passages that in years of plenty, the stores of wheat grain could last into and even past the next year's wheat season (Lev 26:10). And yet, as fates and gods are capricious in many cultures' conceptions, eating baked wheat bread at the beginning of the wheat harvest season could be understood as implying that the farmers have "no need" of this new crop or any divine help. Such an implication could anger the relevant deities, causing them to demonstrate how much they are needed by destroying the crops with blight or bad weather.

An argument for the likelihood of this interpretation comes from the concomitant ritual act that, although not mentioned in the Covenant Collection or the Ritual Decalogue (and thus perhaps a later development), appears in all other references to this festival: the prohibition to eat leaven (Exod 12:15, 13:3, Deut 16:3) and the requirement to remove all leaven from one's midst (Exod 12:19–20, 13:7, Deut 16:4). Noting this, Yael Avrahami (2018) has argued that the ritual of the *Mas.s. ôt* festival mimics the practice of a bad year by having the Israelites live as if they had no wheat in stock. Such an act of self-privation was meant to ensure the opposite; as the deity would not want his people to go hungry, he would watch over the growing wheat and ensure the harvest went well.

According to this, the wheat harvest had two festivals attached to it. *Mas.s. ôt* before the harvest as an apotropaic ritual, and *Qa¯s.îr* when the wheat was harvested, as a ritual of thanksgiving. And yet, this brings up a new problem: the first cut of wheat—the referent of "the first produce (*bîkkûr-*) of one's work"—would be very soon after the festival of *Mas.s. ôt*, since the first cut would take place later that same month. This hardly seems as it if were two different times or seasons.

The description of the *bîkkûrîm* grain offering in Leviticus implies that the first cut was not of ripe grain but of green ears (Lev 2:14):

If you bring a grain offering of first produce to YHWH, you shall bring green ears (*ʾabîb ¯* ) parched with fire, grits of the fresh grain, as your grain offering of first produce.

If son, *Mas.s. ôt* and *Qa¯s.îr* would have been contiguous festivals, one after the other. Good evidence of such a practice can be found in an alternative ritual that appears in the Holiness legislation. Leviticus 23–24 is a festival calendar, which begins in the spring. According to this calendar, *Mas.s. ôt* is a seven-day festival that begins on the 15th of the month, i.e., the full moon (vv. 6–8), as opposed to the new moon of Exodus 23. Immediately after this holiday, the text lays out another ritual:

<sup>10</sup> ... When you enter the land that I am giving to you and you reap its harvest, you shall bring a sheaf (*ʿomer ¯* ), the first of your harvest to the priest. <sup>11</sup> He shall elevate the sheaf before YHWH for acceptance in your behalf; the priest shall elevate it on the day after *Šabbat¯* ... <sup>14</sup> Until that very day, until you have brought the offering of your God, you shall eat no bread or parched grain or fresh ears; it is a law for all time throughout the ages in all your settlements.

The ritual here does not describe itself as a festival (*h. ag*) and yet it uses the key words that describe the *Qa¯s.îr* festival in Exodus 23, i.e., it describes what is to be done with the first cut. As the final verse forbids the consumption of any wheat products, including parched or raw wheat, it would seem that the law envisions such a cut to be taken from the very first green ears, and that the ritual of bringing the sheaf (*ʿomer ¯* ) is what permits consumption of wheat.21

The ritual logic of this offering goes hand in hand with that of the *Mas.s. ôt* festival, which is its mirror image. Both likely originated as independent rituals to ensure a good harvest. The *ʿomer ¯* is a classic offering to God of the first produce and is a variation on what the Priestly text in Leviticus 2 calls the grain offering of the first produce. The *Mas.s. ôt* ritual is before the first cut and is an apotropaic ritual also aimed at ensuring the successful harvest. Unlike the *Mas.s. <sup>ô</sup><sup>t</sup>* festival here, the *<sup>ʿ</sup>omer ¯* <sup>o</sup>ffering is not given an exact date, except for "after the *Šabbat¯* ," a vaguery that has caused no end of religious polemic for millennia.

And yet, as the Holiness Text here is making use of an older law, it seems possible that *Šabbat¯* refers not to the Priestly seventh day (as referenced at the beginning of the chapter) but to the 15th of the month. If so, then the verse does include an exact date, the 16th, and it would be the second day of the seven-day *Mas.s. ôt* Festival, which is, in fact, the day many Jewish sects (including contemporary rabbinic Jews) mark the day of the *ʿomer ¯* .

A further piece of evidence that this may have been the intention comes from a passage in the book of Joshua, which describes what happens after the Israelites enter the land and offer the paschal offering for the first time (Josh 5):

5:10 ... the Israelites offered the paschal sacrifice on the fourteenth day of the month, toward evening. 5:11 On the day after the paschal offering, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the country, *mas.s. <sup>ô</sup><sup>t</sup>* and parched grain. 5:12 On that same day, when they ate of the produce of the land, the manna ceased. The Israelites got no more manna; that year they ate of the yield of the land of Canaan.

According to this text, the Israelites ate flatbreads and parched grain on the same day, the 15th of the month, and this was their first consumption of the local grain. This appears to be a mythical origin story for the ritual of waiting until midmonth to eat from the local produce. The *ʿomer ¯* text differs only by having one follow the other; first the day in which barley flatbread is consumed (15th), then the offering of the new green ears of wheat, which permits the consumption of the new wheat of that season (16th).

Returning to the Covenant Collection legislation, if its *Mas.s. ôt* festival was originally just one day, and celebrated on the first of the month, when was its *Qa¯s.îr* festival? The text never says, but, since agricultural patterns remained relatively constant, one would imagine that it came within days or at most, two weeks or so later. Such a proximity of dates would only have been possible in a society in which local altars abounded. It is hardly surprising that as time went on, and the centralization of worship in the Temple in Judah became the official standard, the *<sup>ʿ</sup>omer ¯* ritual merged with *Mas.s. <sup>ô</sup>t.* As a consequence, the celebration of the first-produce festival was pushed off until the end of the harvest season instead of its beginning.

We can see this in the dating of the festival in Deuteronomy (7th cent.) as well as that of the Holiness school (exilic/post-exilic):

Deut 16:9 You shall count off seven weeks; start to count the seven weeks when the sickle is first put to the standing grain. <sup>10</sup> Then you shall observe the Festival of *Šabu¯ʿôt* (Weeks) for YHWH your God, offering your freewill contribution according as YHWH your God has blessed you.

Lev 23:15 And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering—the day after the *Šabbat¯* —you shall count off seven weeks. They must be complete: <sup>16</sup> you must count until

<sup>21</sup> For a discussion of the relationship between the *ʿomer ¯* <sup>o</sup>ffering and the first cut in Exodus, see (Weyde 2004, pp. 74–79).

the day after the seventh week—fifty days; then you shall bring an offering of new grain to YHWH. <sup>17</sup> You shall bring from your settlements two loaves of bread as an elevation offering; each shall be made of two-tenths of a measure of choice flour, baked after leavening, as first produce (*bîkkûrîm*) to YHWH ... <sup>21</sup> On that same day you shall hold a celebration; it shall be a sacred occasion for you; you shall not work at your occupations ...

These two texts assume that the dating of this festival should be seven weeks after the first cut. Leviticus never names this festival, but the offering is still described as *bîkkûrîm*, first produce, as it was in Exodus. However, instead of offering the first cuts of new grain, bread is offered. In other words, the festival celebrates the final product of the wheat harvest. Deuteronomy does not say anything about new produce, and simply names the festival after the counting process. Notably, Deuteronomy does have a *bîkkûrîm*-like ritual in chapter 26, though again it does not use that term:

<sup>1</sup> When you enter the land that YHWH your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, <sup>2</sup> you shall take some of every first produce of the soil, which you harvest from the land that YHWH your God is giving you, put it in a basket and go to the place where YHWH your God will choose to establish His name. <sup>3</sup> You shall go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, "I acknowledge this day before YHWH your God that I have entered the land that YHWH swore to our fathers to assign us." <sup>4</sup> The priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of YHWH your God. <sup>5</sup> You shall then recite as follows before YHWH your God ... . <sup>10</sup> ... You shall leave it before YHWH your God and bow low before YHWH your God. <sup>11</sup> And you shall enjoy, together with the Levite and the stranger in your midst, all the bounty that YHWH your God has bestowed upon you and your household.

The text never clarifies when this is to occur, and even to what products it refers when describing "every first produce," though it is hard to imagine it refers only to wheat.22 Thus, in Deuteronomy, we seem to have a total separation between the festival of *Šabu¯ʿôt*, as an outgrowth of the older *Qa¯s.îr* festival, and the practice of bringing first produce as an offering at the Temple. The text in Exodus 34:22 would seem to be a hybrid in this regard, since the name of the festival was changed to *Šabu¯ʿôt* and yet, according to the simple meaning of the verse at least, the festival is still based on the bringing of the first cuts.

In Leviticus 23, the connection between first cuts and the festival remains implied, since on this festival, *bîkkûrîm* are brought, and it is connected by this counting ritual to the earlier day, when the first cut is brought. In both cases, however, the first cut ritual and celebration are separated, with the latter being moved to the end of the season. The tension between a first-produce festival and an end-of-season festival is never really solved in this text, and it can be seen clearly in how the 3rd century BCE book of Jubilees attempts to deal with it (Jub 6:20–21):

Now you command the Israelites to keep this festival during all their generations as a commandment for them: one day in the year during this month, they are to celebrate the festival because it is the festival of weeks and it is the festival of firstfruits. This festival is twofold and of two kinds. (Vanderkam 1989, p. 40)

As stated above, having an artificial first-produce holiday at the end of the season, fifty days after the first cut ritual, is likely a result of the centralization of the cult which would have made separating a *Mas.s. ôt* festival from a first cut festival, virtually impossible for people living outside Jerusalem.

Despite the permutations *Qa¯s.îr* undergoes in its transformation into *Šabu¯ʿôt*, no biblical text connects it to a mnemohistorical event—i.e., a ritual that commemorates an event from Israelite cultural

<sup>22</sup> This problem is what lead the Qumran sect to have three separate *bîkkûrîm* festivals, each fifty days after the other (Sweeney 1983).

memory—the way *Mas.s. <sup>ô</sup>t*is connected to the story of the exodus.<sup>23</sup> Thus, *Qa¯s.îr*/*Šabu¯ʿôt*/*Bîkkûrîm* remains a purely agricultural festival in the Bible. Nevertheless, its transformation into a commemoration is only postponed; in the Second Temple Period, the festival becomes associated with God's revelation at Sinai.<sup>24</sup>
