The date of bringing the Omer

The date of the bringing of the first barley - the omer- the sheaf which was brought with a sacrifice allowed the usage of the new crop. The verse states ( Lev 23:11)" And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you; on the next day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it". The interpretation of the Rabbis has always raised questions. In their view the omer is to be brought on the day after the first day of Passover. So the question arises why is this verse unique in being the only place in Tanakh where the word Shabbat means the festival. Clearly there were other ways to interpret the verse. The Sadduccees, the Dead sea scrolls, the book of Jubilees all have a different date for the bringing of the omer. For the Essenes whom many believe wrote the dead sea scrolls, the date for the omer was the Sunday after the Passover holiday which in their calendar would have been the 26th of Nisan which would result in Shavuot falling on the 15th of Sivan fifty days later. The talmud says the same of the Sadduccees.

Rav J. Soloveitchik asks the same question about this strange interpretation. He says that the argument of the Sadduccees is a better argument than that of the Rabbis. This opinion is echoed by Nachmanides. Even the Talmud  in Menachos 66A questions its own arguments in favor of  this interpretation.  So leaving aside the question of whether the Rabbis changed the date or whether it was always the second day of Pesach (the 16th) we should ask if there was any factor which forced  the hand of Chazal in coming up with an interpretation which goes against the plain meaning of the text.

The answer may lie in two things that occurred during the second Temple period. The first is the association of the holiday of Shavuot with the giving of the Torah at Sinai. There is no explicit link between the two in Torah. In fact there is no date given for either the giving of the Torah or for the date of Shavuot. Shavuot in the Torah is a strictly agricultural holiday as opposed to Pesach which is strictly of historical significance (the liberation from Egypt.) Perhaps Shavuot is not given a date because the harvest date can vary depending on climate, geography etc. As such Shavuot is linked in the Torah to fifty days after the bringing of the omer which may have varied from place to place or year to year. When the link between Shavuot and the giving of the Torah became strong a specific date would be needed because the Torah was presumably given on a specific date. The collateral advantage is that Shavuot gets a specific date which is more desirable for a holiday than a floating date.

The second thing that happened in the second Temple period is more speculative but stands on a body of circumstantial evidence. This has to do with the nature of the biblical calendar. The Torah does not give the mechanics or the parameters of the calendar. It gives dates for the holidays based on the ordinal months- i.e. In the first month , or in the seventh month. Although the natural assumption is that the calendar was lunisolar- meaning that the months started with the first crescent of the moon, and was somehow synchronized to the solar years- there is some room for doubt. Namely , it is possible that the calendar was solar based such as our secular calendar is today. We still use the term month, derived from moon, although our months are totally disconnected to lunar phases. Similarly the Egyptian calendar had 30 day months that were not reliant on the phase of the moon. Moreover the evidence for a solar Jewish calendar in the second century BCE is incontrovertible. The sources in the book of Jubilees and in the Dead Sea scrolls , both written by Jews of the second century BCE, describe 12 months of 30 days each with an extra day every season giving a 364 day year. The months were not dependent on the lunar sighting. Since the year had 364 days , which is divisible by 7, the holidays came out on the same day of the week every year. In their calendar the first day of Pesach was on a Wednesday, the omer was brought on Sunday after the holiday (Nisan 26) and Shavuot was on Sunday Sivan 15. There is then the possibility that the Jewish calendar converted to a lunisolar calendar during the Greek period in the third or second century BCE. They would have been exposed to the Greek Macedonian calendar which was lunisolar and resembles the present day Jewish calendar in that it has lunar months and has three leap years (with an extra month) every eight years.

There is circumstantial evidence in Tanakh for the solar calendar. The flood narrative counts 150 days as five months- an impossibility under a lunar calendar. Significant events in the narrative take place on the first of the seventh month, the first of the tenth month. These days are two out of the four “ days of remembrance ” in the solar Dead Sea calendar ( They are 1/1, 4/1, 7/1 and 10/1. Note that Rosh HaShana -7/1- is still called a day of remembrance.). Some scholars also point to the length of the entire story from 2/17 to 2/27 of the next year as indicating a 364 day length. This may be problematic if the basis of the calculation is already a solar year. Also relevant is a paper by A. Jaubert on the solar calendar of the second Temple period which is further circumstantial evidence of a solar calendar.

Nonetheless, if you change from a solar calendar to a lunar one which starts with the first crescent of the moon, a significant change occurs. All dates including holiday dates no longer occur on a fixed day of the week because the first day of the month occurs when the moon is sighted. So if the day of bringing the omer was by the solar calendar on the day after “the Shabbat”- Sunday Nisan 26, under a lunar calendar that Sunday would be a different date every year depending when the month started. Since the pasuk in Shemos 19:1 says “ bayom hazeh” - on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. This indicates a specific day.

As a holiday the date of Shavuot has two requirements. It has to be 50 days after the bringing of the omer (VaYikrah 23) and it is desirable for it to have a fixed date ( Shemos 19) .

The options for Chazal were finite. They could interpret Shabbat as the weekly Shabbat or as a function of the holiday of Pesach. There are no other reasonable options for the word Shabbat. If interpreted as Shabbat in a lunar calendar the date would change from year to year although the 50 day requirement would remain intact. If interpreted as linked to the day after first day of Pesach , Shavuot would come out on the sixth day of Sivan as it has for thousands of years. ( This assumes 30 days of Nisan and 29 days of Iyar, a situation which did not necessarily apply until the fixed calendar in the early common era.) The last option would be to bring the omer after the seventh day of Pesach which would give date for Shavuot of Sivan 12 ( bringing the omer on 22 Nisan). The gemara in M. Shabbat 86B gives the chronology of events after arriving at Sinai. The conclusion is that they arrived on The Sivan 1 and did various preparations and received the ten commandments on the Sivan 6. The date of Sivan 12 would in no way fit the Talmuds chronology.

In conclusion , the established link of Shavuot with the receiving of the Torah and the requirements of a lunar calendar left only one viable option for the date of bringing the omer- The day after the first day of Pesach.