Did Israel Offer the Wavesheaf in Joshua 5?

Pentecost is unique among God’s holy days because it requires counting to arrive at the date of the feast. However, because the instructions in Leviticus 23:9-16 appear ambiguous, there is a question as to whether “the Sabbath” (Leviticus 23:11, 16) or “the day after the Sabbath” (the day the Wavesheaf was offered) must fall within the Feast of Unleavened Bread when beginning the count.

While both the Sabbath and Wavesheaf day occur within Unleavened Bread in most years, a decision must be made in those rare years when the Passover occurs on the weekly Sabbath. In such a year, the Sabbath within Unleavened Bread coincides with the last day of Unleavened Bread, which puts the day of the Wavesheaf offering the next day, just after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The other option in those years is to use the Passover (which is not within Unleavened Bread) as “the Sabbath,” which puts Wavesheaf day on the first day of Unleavened Bread.

In 1974, while looking for a biblical example that shows when to begin the count to Pentecost in such years, the Worldwide Church of God (WCG)—at the time, the largest Christian church keeping the biblical holy days—began referring to the events in Joshua 5 to determine that the day of the Wavesheaf rather than the Sabbath must always fall within Unleavened Bread.

But does Joshua 5 really show the Wavesheaf offering being made during Unleavened Bread during a year when the Passover fell on a Sabbath?

Here is the passage in question:

Now the children of Israel camped in Gilgal, and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight on the plains of Jericho. And they ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on the very same day. Then the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten the produce of the land; and the children of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate the food of the land of Canaan that year. (Joshua 5:10-12)

First, notice two key elements that are missing:

1. There is no mention of the Wavesheaf offering being made.

2. There is no mention of the days of the week involved, specifically whether Passover was on the weekly Sabbath that year.

Where, then, does the conclusion come that the Wavesheaf was offered? It is inferred based on the instructions in Leviticus 23:10-11, 14:

Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: “When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. . . . You shall eat neither bread nor parched grain nor fresh grain until the same day that you have brought an offering to your God; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.” (Emphasis ours throughout.)

At first glance, these instructions seem to match the conditions in Joshua 5: Israel coming into the land and eating its produce. Thus, it seems reasonable that the Wavesheaf was offered first. Scripture commends Joshua as being faithful to all God had commanded (Joshua 11:15), so he presumably would have ensured the carrying out of this command regarding the Wavesheaf.

The belief that the Passover was on a weekly Sabbath in Joshua 5 follows from this premise. That is, assuming that the Wavesheaf was offered, and the Israelites ate of the produce of the land the next day, it would mean that the Wavesheaf was offered 1) on the day after Passover (Joshua 5:11) and 2) on the day after the Sabbath (Leviticus 23:11). This means the Passover would have been on the weekly Sabbath and the Wavesheaf day on the first day of Unleavened Bread—again, assuming the Wavesheaf was offered.

As noted, a large part of why it is believed that Israel offered the Wavesheaf is because of Joshua’s faithfulness to all the instructions God gave through Moses. However, this also means that Joshua would have considered the entire package of laws, some of which prohibited Israel from making that offering under the circumstances in Joshua 5.

God’s Word contains more details, instructions, and principles than Leviticus 23:11-14 that must be taken into consideration when rightly dividing the word of truth. As a later prophet put it, “For precept must be upon precept, . . . line upon line, . . . here a little, there a little” (Isaiah 28:10). If we are not willing to give equal consideration to all the instructions God gave to Moses, we must acknowledge that our study is not objective but focused on a predetermined conclusion.

“When you come into the land”

Leviticus 23:10 uses the phrase, “When you come into the land.” This phrase lies behind the conjecture that the Israelites offered the Wavesheaf in Joshua 5. The translation is straightforward, but an unwarranted interpretation can be attached to it. That is, the phrase is interpreted with immediacy, meaning “as soon as you come into the land,” or “as soon as you cross over the Jordan.” Under this interpretation, Israel came into the land under Joshua, so as soon as a spring holy day season occurred, the Israelites must have offered a sheaf of their firstfruits to comply with Leviticus 23:10-14.

The phrase, “when you come into the land” (or its cousin, “when the LORD brings you into the land”) is used some sixteen times (Exodus 13:5, 11; 14:34; 19:23; 23:10; 25:2; Numbers 15:2, 18; 33:51; 34:2; 35:10-11; Deuteronomy 6:10; 7:1; 11:29; 18:9; 26:1). God gave specific instructions that would apply when Israel was in the land, as contrasted to when they were in the wilderness. Some instructions would apply immediately, but others were conditional. In aggregate, the phrase is general, not absolute. It simply refers to Israel being in the land. It is not focused on the day or even the year after Israel crossed the Jordan because God’s other instructions, as well as local conditions, would determine when the “when you come into the land” instructions became applicable.

Indeed, in some of the usages, it was not possible to carry out the instructions immediately. For example, Numbers 35:10-11 stipulates that when the Israelites crossed the Jordan into Canaan (which they did in Joshua 3), they were to appoint six cities of refuge. If we take the phrase as an absolute, it means Israel had to do this as soon as they crossed the Jordan. Clearly, doing so was impossible, for Israel at that point did not possess any cities that could be designated as refuges. (This instruction was not implemented until Joshua 20:1-9.) Instead, the phrase simply indicates it was a responsibility once they were in the land, and it was possible to fulfill it.

Similarly, Deuteronomy 11:29 commands them to “put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal” (see also Deuteronomy 27:12) when God had brought the Israelites into the land. This also did not happen immediately upon their arrival but in Joshua 8:30-35.

Deuteronomy 26:1-3 gives a related instruction:

And it shall be, when you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you possess it and dwell in it, that you shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground, which you shall bring from your land that the LORD your God is giving you, and put it in a basket and go to the place where the LORD your God chooses to make His name abide. And you shall go to the one who is priest in those days, and say to him, “I declare today to the LORD your God that I have come to the country which the LORD swore to our fathers to give us.”

This is a typical “when you come into the land” instruction concerning “the first of all the produce of the ground”—a parallel to the Wavesheaf. Verse 1 specifies that the Israelites had to possess and dwell in the land, which did not happen until after they completed the conquest. Simply crossing the Jordan was insufficient.

Verse 2 tells them to go where God made His name abide. He did not place His name anywhere until the land was at rest, which took about seven years (compare Joshua 14:6-13 and Joshua 18:1). The same verse also clarifies that “the first of all the produce of the ground” had to come from what “you shall bring from your land.” The Israelites had not brought forth anything from the land when they crossed the Jordan—they had not plowed, sown, or cultivated. They were only able to gather.

In verse 3, God says, “go to the one who is priest in those days.” He does not say, “in that day,” but “in those days.” This instruction involves a future span of time, not just the point in time when Israel entered the land. God gave this instruction a month before Israel entered the land with Eleazar as priest, but it looks beyond to whoever the priest was when all the conditions were right.

These examples show that “when you come into the land” does not stand alone. It can be modified by other requirements, such as having a crop the Israelites had brought forth and an established place where God had placed His name.

Holy Day Work

Numbers 15:17-21 is another “when you come into the land” instruction with tremendous implications. While much attention is paid to Leviticus 23:10-14 in speculating that the Wavesheaf was offered in Joshua 5, another required offering was entirely overlooked by the WCG scholars:

Again the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you come into the land to which I bring you, then it will be, when you eat of the bread of the land, that you shall offer up a heave offering to the LORD. You shall offer up a cake of the first of your ground meal as a heave offering; as a heave offering of the threshing floor, so shall you offer it up. Of the first of your ground meal you shall give to the LORD a heave offering throughout your generations.’”

The heave offering mentioned here is not the same as the Wavesheaf, though there are similarities. Like the Wavesheaf, this offering is a “when you come into the land” instruction. And like the Wavesheaf, this offering must be performed in conjunction with eating the grain of the land. We know Israel ate from the land in Joshua 5, but this heave offering, like the Wavesheaf, also is not mentioned as being made. Why?

Should we infer that this offering was also made since Israel was in the land and eating its food? If we apply the same reasoning used by those assuming the Wavesheaf had to be offered on the first day of Unleavened Bread, the result is a significant denigration of God’s holy time:

Consider all the individual (or family) work needed to get to the “ground meal” required for this offering. There was the labor of reaping the grain. The threshing floor is mentioned here (though not in Joshua 5); threshing is certainly labor-intensive. Then, there was the work of grinding the grain. But before grinding comes winnowing to remove the chaff. We miss these aspects by being so far removed from agriculture.

Hypothesizing that the Israelites waved the sheaf in Joshua 5 on the first day of Unleavened Bread means we must also assume the Israelites performed all this reaping, threshing, winnowing, and grinding on the same holy day when they ate of the bread of the land, as these instructions for the heave offering require.

Those assumptions have profound implications because they suggest that the sanctity of a holy day is of no account. Thus, either the Israelites performed all this prohibited “customary” work (see Leviticus 23:7) on the first day of Unleavened Bread when they also (allegedly) waved the sheaf, or else they refrained because the conditions were not right.

In like manner, putting Wavesheaf day on the annual Sabbath profanes it. This is why the seeming ambiguity of whether it is “the Sabbath” or “the day after the Sabbath” (Leviticus 23:11) that must fall within Unleavened Bread is more apparent than real. God is faithful in providing the instructions His people need to meet with Him on His holy day of Pentecost. The answer is abundantly clear if we remember God’s Sabbaths to keep them holy.

Leviticus 23:10 binds the Wavesheaf offering to a harvest—a day of work. Similarly, Deuteronomy 16:9 instructs, “You shall count seven weeks for yourself; begin to count the seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the grain.” So, the day on which the Wavesheaf was offered was not just the starting point for counting to the Feast of Weeks but also the beginning of the harvest.

Setting aside the Wavesheaf offering itself for a moment, consider the day it was to be offered. When we take Wavesheaf day back to its essence, it is about reaping a harvest from what was sown by one’s own hand (see Exodus 23:16). The Wavesheaf offering then came from that harvest, but there could be no offering if there were not a harvest. At its core, Wavesheaf day was about harvesting and giving God His due—the first portion—from the harvest.

God’s intent—regardless of later practice—was that everyone cut a sheaf from his harvest, and the day that started was Wavesheaf day (the day after the Sabbath). The purpose of Wavesheaf day was for each individual to begin harvesting what he had sown. That is entirely at odds with the intent of a high-day Sabbath. Any individual harvesting on a holy day certainly would not have been held guiltless! Harvesting is servile work. The linkage between the day of the Wavesheaf offering and the underlying harvest precludes Wavesheaf day from occurring on the first day of Unleavened Bread.

Significantly, while the various Jewish sects at the time of Jesus Christ and the New Testament church (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes) did not agree on when to begin the count, one thing they did agree on was that Wavesheaf day was always a typical workday, not a holy day. Because it was the day the harvest began, they all agreed that Wavesheaf day was not fitting for an annual Sabbath.

Prepared Provisions

However, there is another significant Sabbath violation in the speculated Joshua 5 Wavesheaf. If, as proposed, the Passover (Abib 14) was on a weekly Sabbath in Joshua 5, then Abib 7 was also a weekly Sabbath. God leaves us a record of what happened on Abib 7 that year. The Israelites crossed the Jordan on the tenth day of Abib (Joshua 4:19). Three days before Abib 10 would be Abib 7. Notice what happened three days before the crossing—on Abib 7, a presumed weekly Sabbath:

Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, “Pass through the camp and command the people, saying, ‘Prepare provisions for yourselves, for within three days you will cross over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess.’” (Joshua 1:10-11)

Thus, if Abib 7 and 14 were weekly Sabbaths, it would have been on the weekly Sabbath when Joshua commanded the officers to do this significant food preparation for the upcoming campaign into the Promised Land. Such work is completely at odds with God’s intent for the Sabbath, providing yet another indicator that “the day after the Sabbath” (Wavesheaf day) does not always have to fall within Unleavened Bread because that practice would profane God’s holy time in certain years.

Were the Israelites “forced” to harvest on the holy day because they had no other food options? Certainly not. As shown in Joshua 1:10-11, the Israelites had other “provisions” they had prepared prior to crossing the Jordan. (Those provisions could not have been manna, which could not be stored.) The Israelites had been on the east side of the Jordan for some time, capturing cities (c.f. Numbers 21, 31, 32). Manna was not their only source of food.

This fact is also seen in the mention of the Passover and the unleavened bread in Joshua 5:10-11. A required element of the Passover was unleavened bread (Exodus 12:8; see Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; I Corinthians 10:16-17; 11:23-28). But where did this unleavened bread come from if Joshua 5:10-11 truly means the Israelites had grain only after a sheaf of barley was waved?

The only possible conclusion is that the Israelites already possessed grain in Joshua 5 without the Wavesheaf being offered. The Israelites were using local grain from the east side of the Jordan. No law of God prohibited the Israelites from using such grain for food; the various offering laws applied only to what the Israelites themselves had planted.

Thus, Israel already had grain for making unleavened bread for Passover and the first day of Unleavened Bread. Yet no Wavesheaf offering was required or made because it was simply food for them, not reaped from their own crops after the land was at rest, which would have necessitated their making the offerings.

The record that “they ate of the produce of the land . . . unleavened bread and parched grain” (Joshua 5:11) simply denotes where Israel’s food came from. It is not evidence that the Wavesheaf was offered, an offering neither required nor possible under the circumstances.

The mention of the Israelites eating unleavened bread “on the day after the Passover” means they either used grain from the east side of the Jordan (and thus there was no necessity for harvesting), or else they profaned the holy day by reaping, threshing, winnowing, grinding, and baking. There is no way around holy time being defiled when Wavesheaf day coincides with the first day of Unleavened Bread.

An Acceptable Offering

King David stated a foundational principle regarding offerings to God: “I will not take what is yours for the LORD, nor offer burnt offerings with that which costs me nothing” (I Chronicles 21:24; see II Samuel 24:24). An offering without personal cost, such as coming from somebody else’s labors, is meaningless (c.f. Luke 21:1-4).

When Israel entered the land, they lacked any grain that would have been acceptable to God as an offering because they had put forth no effort in cultivating it. It was theirs for the taking because God had given them the land and its food, but it cost them nothing. It was permissible for them to use the produce for themselves, but not for the priest to hold up to God to be accepted on their behalf as it was not the firstfruits of their labors.

Deuteronomy 26:1-3 stipulates that the “first of all the produce of the ground” for their offering was to come from “[that] which you shall bring from your land.” It implies their participation in the entire agricultural process, not simply the reaping.

Similarly, notice God’s specification for the offering for Pentecost, which was another wave offering of firstfruits: “. . . and the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field” (Exodus 23:16).

God is very clear that the Pentecost firstfruits offering had to be from their own labors, specifically, from grain they had sown in the field. Did God relax the standards for the alleged Wavesheaf offering in Joshua 5, allowing it to come from the Canaanites’ labors while requiring that the Pentecost wave offering come from Israel’s own sowing and reaping? On the contrary, God is consistent in His requirements, one of which is that the offering must come from one’s own labors, including the sowing.

In addition to offerings needing to come from one’s personal labors, another critical aspect is the quality of the material being offered and even its origin. Regrettably, little heed is paid to the overarching principles of the sacrificial system—especially holiness—even by many within the church of God. While some may reason that none of what follows specifically applies to the grain of the land in Joshua 5 (that is, there is not a direct “thus says the LORD” statement), for those who understand God’s intent for the offerings, the following principles further explain why a presumed Wavesheaf offering from Canaanite grain would not have been acceptable.

In Leviticus 22:24-25, God declares,

You shall not offer to the LORD what is bruised or crushed, or torn or cut; nor shall you make any offering of them in your land. Nor from a foreigner’s hand shall you offer any of these as the bread of your God, because their corruption is in them, and defects are in them. They shall not be accepted on your behalf.

God’s intent for an acceptable offering is that only the best of what His people have righteously worked for is acceptable as an offering to Him (see Malachi 1:12-14). Nothing with a defect could be offered, whether from an Israelite or a foreigner (i.e., there was one law). Something offered to the holy God cannot have any defect or corruption, whether the offering material comes from an Israelite or a non-Israelite. While non-Israelites could bring offerings (see Numbers 15:14-16), the same laws applied to all.

The word translated “defects” is used in one of Moses’ prophetic songs to describe a moral blemish—namely, idolatry (Deuteronomy 32:5; see also Job 11:15; 31:7; Song of Songs 4:7). The Canaanites were blatant idolators, which was a primary reason God commanded Israel to drive them from the land. They had defiled the land (see Leviticus 18:24-28). Looking back on Israel preparing to enter the land, Ezra described it this way:

The land which you are entering to possess is an unclean land, with the uncleanness of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations which have filled it from one end to another with their impurity. (Ezra 9:11)

Because of the defilement and uncleanness of the land, God commanded that when Israel came into the land and planted trees, the fruit would be considered unclean (“uncircumcised”) for three years, and its fruit would be holy in the fourth year (Leviticus 19:23-24).

Tainted Offerings

Offerings from the labor of the Canaanites would have been tainted by their “defects”—their abominations. Haggai 2:10-14 reiterates this principle:

On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came by Haggai the prophet, saying, “Thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Now, ask the priests concerning the law, saying, “If one carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and with the edge he touches bread or stew, wine or oil, or any food, will it become holy?”’” Then the priests answered and said, “No.” And Haggai said, “If one who is unclean because of a dead body touches any of these, will it be unclean?” So the priests answered and said, “It shall be unclean.” Then Haggai answered and said, “‘So is this people, and so is this nation before Me,’ says the LORD, ‘and so is every work of their hands; and what they offer there is unclean.’”

Through Haggai, God declares that an offering ordinarily acceptable to Him is rendered unacceptable if it touches something unclean. Spiritual defilement is transferable; holiness is not. In this prophetic rebuke, the problem is not whether the offerings were physically disfigured or blemished. Rather, the offerings were unclean—unacceptable to God—because the people making the offerings were unclean.

Similarly, offerings from male or female prostitutes, though the offerings might have been physically perfect, were still an abomination to God (Deuteronomy 23:18). There was a moral defect and taint in the origin that made the offering unacceptable. The fatal incident of Nadab and Abihu teaches that God is deadly serious about the source of things—in that case, the source of the coals used on His altar. They did not come from Him, so He considered them profane. Origins matter!

The fields of grain in Joshua 5 belonged to Jericho. God commanded Joshua and the Israelites to not only burn the entire city but to kill all the inhabitants, including the livestock. The animals of Jericho could have been used as offerings to Him, but instead, He said to destroy them all. The “accursed things” (Strong’s #2764) in Joshua 6:18 are explained in the previous verse: the things doomed to destruction, which in the case of Jericho, was the whole city except for Rahab (and her family) and the precious metals.

This instruction sets up a strange circumstance where everything inside the city (including the innocent animals, as well as already-harvested grain—see Joshua 2:6) was doomed to destruction, yet Jericho’s barley would ostensibly be acceptable to God as an offering. (Interestingly, in Deuteronomy 32:32, the Song of Moses links the vines and fields of a wicked city as producing the same fruit as the city: “For their vine is of the vine of Sodom and of the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter.”)

Something similar occurred when God commanded Saul to destroy Agag and the Amalekites, including their livestock (I Samuel 15:3). But Saul and the Israelites spared the best of the livestock “to sacrifice to the LORD your God” (I Samuel 15:9,15, 21). This infraction was so serious that Saul lost the kingship for his disobedience (verse 23). This occasion is also the origin of the well-known dictum, “To obey is better than sacrifice” (verse 22). God did not consider the animals from these wicked people to be fit for sacrifices to Him. He was far more interested in obedience.

Given these principles, would God accept a firstfruits offering (which foreshadowed the Messiah’s acceptance by the Father on behalf of His people) from grain that His people had not sowed, for which they had not labored (except for gathering), and instead had been cultivated by idolators in a defiled land, as the Israelites were poised to profane a holy day (if they had not already done so) through widespread and sustained manual labor?

Joshua had Moses’ record of God rejecting Cain and his offering of the fruit of the ground (Genesis 4:3-5). Joshua also undoubtedly remembered what happened to Nadab and Abihu when they transgressed by using the wrong fire in the worship of God (Leviticus 10:1-3). God’s electrifying words on that terrible occasion must have rung in Joshua’s ears perpetually: “By those who come near Me I must be regarded as holy; and before all the people I must be glorified.” In his faithfulness, Joshua surely took God’s holiness and prescribed worship details into far more consideration than we moderns do.

Centuries later, God executed Uzza because the national leadership ignored His instructions regarding the handling of His Ark. Later still, God executed Ananias and Sapphira for duplicity in their offering. While Joshua did not have these later stories to warn him that God is deadly serious about offerings and other things involving His worship, we do have those grave testimonies, which should keep us from shrugging off any of God’s words!

An Acceptable Time and Place

Returning to Deuteronomy 26:1-2, recall that God specifies that “the first of all the produce of the ground” was to be offered when Israel possessed the land God was giving them. Also, the offering had to be at “the place where the LORD your God chooses to make His name abide.” These requirements—at God’s designated place after Israel possessed the land—stipulate that certain conditions had to be met before the firstfruits (including the Wavesheaf) could be offered. Those brief instructions summarize a much longer passage in Deuteronomy 12:5-11, 13-14:

But you shall seek the place where the LORD your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place [the Tabernacle]; and there you shall go. There you shall take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, your vowed offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. And there you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice in all to which you have put your hand, you and your households, in which the LORD your God has blessed you.

You shall not at all do as we are doing here today [in the wilderness]—every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes—for as yet you have not come to the rest and the inheritance which the LORD your God is giving you. But when you cross over the Jordan and dwell in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to inherit, and He gives you rest from all your enemies round about, so that you dwell in safety, then there will be the place where the LORD your God chooses to make His name abide. There you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, and all your choice offerings which you vow to the LORD. . . . Take heed to yourself that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see; but in the place which the LORD chooses, in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you.

God instructs Israel not to make offerings wherever it seemed good to them (such as the one that accompanied the Wavesheaf offering; Leviticus 23:12-13), but only at God’s chosen place. In other words, God would decide where He wanted His dwelling place to be—where the Tabernacle would be erected—and where sacrifices and offerings were allowed to be made.

Further, this would not occur until He had given Israel rest from their enemies because the conquest was complete. But in Joshua 5, the tribes did not possess their inherited lands (the Canaanites did), nor was the land at rest. The Israelites were not yet dwelling in safety.

These instructions in Deuteronomy were given roughly a month before the Israelites entered the land, and they heavily modify the “when you come into the land” instructions of Leviticus 23:10-14. They effectively prohibited them from being followed until all the conditions were satisfied, not just the one regarding Israel having crossed into the land. Deuteronomy 12 clarifies that they were not free to follow the Leviticus 23 instructions until certain matters had been accomplished.

All these conditions were not satisfied until much later than Joshua 5. In Joshua 9:27, God’s choosing of a place was still future—it was not at Gilgal, where Israel kept the Passover:

And that day Joshua made [the Gibeonites] woodcutters and water carriers for the congregation and for the altar of the LORD, in the place which He would choose . . ..

The first mention (of several) of Israel having rest is not until Joshua 11:23 (see also Joshua 14:15; 21:44; 22:4; 23:1). The Tabernacle is not recorded as being set up until Joshua 18:1:

Now the whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh, and set up the tabernacle of meeting there. And the land was subdued before them.

The only mention of the Tabernacle in the book of Joshua is in Shiloh (also see Joshua 19:51). This is significant because it shows that Israel was in a different mode of operation once they came into the land. In the wilderness, the Levites would set up the Tabernacle, the two altars (the altar of incense/golden altar and the altar of burnt offering/brazen altar), and the various furnishings (including the Ark) each place they camped, then pack it all back up when the cloud moved.

However, the instructions in Deuteronomy 12:5-14 show that a change would occur once Israel entered the land: They would not set up the Tabernacle (and thus the altars) until God had chosen a place after they completed the conquest. Until then, the Levites would continue to carry the packed-up Tabernacle and its furnishings but not use any of them—including the altars. God went with the Ark (see Numbers 10:33-35), and He would go before the people, particularly when going into battle (which the bulk of Joshua is about), but the Tabernacle service is never shown while Israel was subduing the land.

Rather, the record in Joshua is of the Ark being outside the (packed-up) Tabernacle while the conquest was taking place (Joshua 7:6; 8:33), not being housed in the Tabernacle at each stop. Thus, the bronze altar (on which to offer the burnt, meal, or drink offerings that God stipulated must accompany the Wavesheaf offering) was not in use.

(While Joshua constructed an altar of stones in Joshua 8:30-35, it was to fulfill the instructions given in Deuteronomy 27, not because the Tabernacle was in use. If the Tabernacle had been in use, the priests would have used the brazen altar they had been transporting.)

“The Very Same Day”

Joshua 5:11 contains an oft-overlooked but significant phrase: “And they ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on the very same day.” There is something unusual in the Hebrew here. The word translated as “same” is the Hebrew esem (Strong’s #6106), which is used in Scripture over 120 times and almost always translated as “bone.” However, there are a dozen places where esem is used to describe a specific day, in which case it is translated as “same day,” “very same day,” or, as the King James has it, “selfsame day.”

How does the concept of a bone fit into this? When a body decays, the final part to decay is the skeleton. The bones remain, providing evidence of something significant (a person) from an earlier time. The bones, then, are the enduring substance—a memorial that proves something existed previously.

In the same way, a “bone day” (its literal translation) is significant by itself, but it is also a memorial, a piece of enduring evidence pointing to something special that came sometimes centuries before. The “bone day” is what remains to testify of something earlier. Frequently (though not always), the esem day fell on the same calendar date as the earlier event or proclamation.

Notice God’s and Moses’ emphatic language when describing the day the Israelites left Egypt by using this rare and curious Hebrew idiom:

» So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. (Exodus 12:17)

» And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years—on that very same day—it came to pass that all the armies of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt. (Exodus 12:41)

» And it came to pass, on that very same day, that the LORD brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt according to their armies. (Exodus 12:51)

In these verses, the day in view is not only an annual Sabbath but also significant because of the much-anticipated event of God bringing Israel out of Egypt. Verse 41 shows that the day of Israel’s exodus came at the end of a specific period of time: 430 years from the covenant God made with Abram. Thus, this esem day was not only noteworthy by itself, but it also reflected on something that happened previously. The “bone day” was the capstone and memorial of something that came before.

This example testifies of God’s precise timing, for when we put together the events of the exodus and the sequence in Genesis 14 and 15 when the covenant was made, everything indicates that this “bone day” was the very same day on the calendar as the day when God made the covenant with Abram (Abib 15)!

The Esem Day in Joshua 5

The esem day in Joshua 5:11 is a significant day by itself. But there are two questions we need to answer: First, why is this day significant? And second, to what previous event does this “bone” day look back?

The day’s significance can be found by zooming out. It is not about coming into the land, which took place on the tenth day of the first month (Joshua 4:19). That was when they crossed the Jordan on dry land in an echo of crossing the Red Sea. It was a significant event, taking up all of Joshua 3 and 4. But this “bone day” does not have to do with coming into the land at all. It has to do with eating:

And they ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on the very same (esem) day. Then the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten the produce of the land; and the children of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate the food of the land of Canaan that year. (Joshua 5:11-12)

Clearly, these verses are about food—about eating—and, more importantly, God’s providence.

So, what does this “very same day” of God’s providence of food look back on? The answer is found in Exodus 16:35: “And the children of Israel ate manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land; they ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.”

The children of Israel ate manna for forty years. Joshua 5:11-12 is the enduring substance, the last remnant, of forty years of God’s miraculous provision of food every day, including a double portion on the preparation day for the Sabbath. For forty years in an inhospitable area, God provided for their needs. They were not happy, of course, because they were Israelites, and high expectations and a sense of entitlement are prominent in the Israelite gene pool. But they witnessed God’s presence every single day. They could not deny that God was there nor rightly accuse Him of neglecting them.

For forty years, God tested Israel with the manna, and for forty years, Israel tested God with their responses, yet God still proved Himself to them. The final day of the fortieth year was the very same day they ate of the food of the land—food that was acceptable to eat but not acceptable to offer.

But now notice the critical time element of Exodus 16 when God started sending the manna:

And they journeyed from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came to the Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they departed from the land of Egypt. (Exodus 16:1)

The fifteenth day of the second month is when God announced the manna, which began the following day! Forty years later, on the very same day—the sixteenth day—the Israelites ate common food, and the manna then stopped. But if the manna started in the second month (as it says) and it continued for forty years (as it says) and ended on “the very same day,” Joshua 5:11-12 took place in the second month. Therefore, the Passover mentioned in Joshua 5 is the second Passover (outlined in Numbers 19:11), not the typical Passover of the first month.

But does not the unleavened bread mentioned in Joshua 5:11 indicate the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Not necessarily, because unleavened bread can simply indicate bread prepared in haste, bread made quickly because it does not have to rise. It is a vital component of the second Passover, just as much as it is for the regular Passover. What is more, under Hezekiah, Judah observed Unleavened Bread in the second month after they kept the second Passover (II Chronicles 30:13).

The Circumcision in Joshua 5

But another aspect of this scenario makes the second Passover even more plausible: the circumcision that occurred before the Passover (Joshua 5:1-9). The basic time-marker is in Joshua 4:19, which says Israel came up from the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month. Given the logistics of moving the whole nation, the crossing would have taken all that day. It is doubtful that Joshua would have started the task of national circumcision at the end of the crossing day, so the eleventh day seems to be the earliest the circumcision would have begun.

Consider the realities of circumcising 600,000 grown men. With modern equipment, circumcision of a baby boy is pretty quick, but remember that the Israelites were using flint knives, and they were unpracticed. How much time was involved in finding suitable flint and fashioning an untold number of surgical scalpels? What about preparing antiseptics (wine and honey, perhaps) and bandages?

As an exercise, suppose the Israelite circumcision factory was ultra-efficient, and each circumcision took ten minutes, including sterilizing the flint scalpel, disrobing, cutting, bandaging, re-robing, and limping out of the tent so the next Israelite could come in. If an Israelite “doctor” performed six such circumcisions per hour and worked a nine-hour day (with no breaks), each circumciser could perform 54 circumcisions in a day.

Thus, for all 600,000 Israelite men to be circumcised in a single day—which is not stated, incidentally—there would have to be over 11,000 circumcisers with their handcrafted flint scalpels. This is not to say it was impossible to circumcise the whole nation in a day. Still, it does give some idea of how much time and effort would be involved in circumcising the whole nation, particularly when nobody was practiced in this delicate surgery. Not every Israelite was cut out to be a surgeon.

It seems more likely that circumcising the whole nation took more than a day, but the Bible does not provide enough information to know for sure. However, we must consider the matter of recovery and readiness for the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month. A longtime church member whose wife was a nurse in Australia during the 1960s-1970s related to this author that, at the time, Australia had compulsory military conscription, and all new recruits were required to be circumcised. Those circumcised—adult men—were hospitalized for four days for observation and regular changes of dressings to prevent infection. Full recovery was about three weeks.

Genesis 34 relates the account of the men of Shechem being circumcised as part of a deceptive agreement with Jacob’s sons, and it reinforces the matter of recovery time. Genesis 34:25 states Shechem’s men were still in pain on the third day, so much so that their fighting abilities were seriously degraded. Just two of Jacob’s sons were able to kill all the males in the city. This type of surgery has a debilitating effect on grown men, and they had not recovered enough on the third day to defend themselves, even though their very lives depended on it!

Based on these examples, even if all the men of Israel were circumcised on the eleventh day of the first month, the men would have still been recovering from the pain on the fourteenth day of that month and restricted in what they were able to do. While there is no prohibition against keeping the Passover while in pain, it does not seem like what God would have planned for them.

However, there is a relevant Passover requirement: The men had to be ceremonially clean to keep the Passover (see Leviticus 7:20; 22:3; Numbers 9:6-13; II Chronicles 30:17-20). Leviticus 15 gives the law regarding running sores, such as what could develop from an open wound. One translation refers to it as “seepage.” Even after the seepage stopped, the man had to count seven days before being considered clean again. If he was not ceremonially clean, he could not eat the Passover.

What are the chances a significant percentage of the Israelite men, circumcised by inexperienced brothers with handcrafted flint scalpels—hopefully dipped in some kind of disinfectant between uses—might have ended up with an infection and thus produced some seepage that would make them unfit to keep the Passover in the first month?

Because of this, it is quite possible, even probable, that the circumcision and complete recovery took much more time than we can fit between the eleventh and the fourteenth days of the first month. When we combine that with the fact that the manna began in the second month and continued for forty years, right up to an esem day, the probability is quite high that Joshua 5 records the second Passover. And if Joshua 5 took place in the second month, it adds yet another reason to a growing list of why the Wavesheaf is not recorded.

The Sanctity of the Sabbath

The instructions for when to begin the count to the Feast of Weeks require some interpretation, particularly in a year when Passover occurs on a weekly Sabbath. If the instructions were crystal clear, there would not be the current disagreement within the church of God, let alone between the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, stretching back to the time of Christ.

But what the Jewish groups in antiquity at least had in common is that none of them put Wavesheaf day on the high holy day of the first day of Unleavened Bread. They understood Wavesheaf day to be a common workday, a harvest day.

What we commonly overlook today is God’s intent that the harvest begins on the day after the (weekly) Sabbath. That was when God commanded the sickle to be put to the grain. If we observe Wavesheaf day on the first day of Unleavened Bread, even though we personally may not be violating the sanctity of a high holy day by harvesting, we contradict God’s original intent for Israel. Because He does not change and clearly stipulates one law for His people, He would not have the count start one way for Israel but another way for the church. Instead, the church is shown as grafted into Israel. Indeed, there is no record of the first-century church counting to Pentecost in a new way, such as how the post-1974 WCG did.

If we protect the sanctity of the annual Sabbath, it eliminates the first day of Unleavened Bread from being Wavesheaf day. This puts Wavesheaf day outside Unleavened Bread on rare occasions. Even so, there is neither a scripture nor a principle that requires the day of the Wavesheaf to be within Unleavened Bread, let alone one that would override the gravity of holy time.