The Jewish festival of Pentecost, also called Shavuot/Weeks, or Receiving the New Law (Hag ha-Bikkurim (First Fruits), the Law at Sinai – Hag Matan Torateinu)  (Sivan6/7- June end/early May):

“You shall count for yourselves — from the day after the Shabbat, — seven Shabbats, they shall be complete. Until the day after the seventh sabbath you shall count, fifty days… You shall convoke on this very day — there shall be a holy convocation for yourselves — you shall do no laborious work; it is an eternal decree in your dwelling places for your generations.” Leviticus 21:15-16, 21

Like the other three major festivals enumerated here, Pentecost (Gk. Pentecostos = fifty) too has both historical and agricultural significance:

Agricultural context: “…Also called Hag HaKazir, the “Feast of the Harvest”, the festival marked the end of the barley and beginning of the wheat harvest in the land of Israel. In gratitude for their wheat crops, farmers would bring an offering of two loaves of bread to the Temple. Many would also bring thanksgiving offerings of the first fruits that had ripened on their trees. Giving the festival yet another name: Yom HaBikkurim, “Days of the First Fruits”” (pg 157 FKJD). (fn- Jesus is described as the “first fruits from the dead” (1Cor15:23).)

Historical Signification: Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, and is therefore also known as Hag Matan Torateinu. It is customary to stay up the entire first night of Shavu’ot and study the Torah, then pray as early as possible in the morning. (fn – the “Simchat Torah” the “Joy of Torah” is a separate festival of the completion of the annual reading cycle of the Torah, where joy is expressed by dancing etc. rather than the overnight reading.) It is possible to trace the time of the “Fifty days” that are appointed by the Lord in Leviticus 21 as the period from the original Passover event in Egypt to the Day of the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai, for the Israelites are thought to have left Egypt on the 15^th of the month of Nisan, which is the day appointed for the celebration of the Passover, and they reached Mt Sinai “in the third month”(Ex 19:1). The fifty day period would take us to the first week of that third month (Sivan) as time of the arrival at Sinai. Geographically too, this is the appropriate time period required for the journey. (fn- although some translations like the NRSV say “on the third moon”, rather than on the third month”)

New Testament fulfilment

“Now when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place” (Acts 2).

There are rich parallels between the Jewish and Christian Passover events.

It is on the fiftieth day following Jesus’ Passover which is the Crucifixion that the Holy Spirit comes upon the apostles.

Prior to the Law being given at Sinai, which event is the historical signification of Pentecost Jewish, God commands the Israelites to observe three days of preparations and purification. The appearance of the Lord upon the mountain “in the sight of all the people” is truly tremendous (Ex 19:16-24, 24:15-18).

Jesus rises from the dead on the third day, and on the Apostles’ Pentecost the Holy Spirit come as “the rush of a violent wind, descending upon the apostles as “tongues of fire” (Acts 2:2,3).

So if we take Jesus’ Death and Resurrection as the Christian Passover event and fulfilment (which it is), then 50 days later the Holy Spirit comes upon the apostles in a great Sign from Heaven, while in the case of the Israelites, on the 50th days the Law was given them, also with a great Theophany on the Mountain.

When Moses comes down from the mountain with the stone tablets to find that the Israelites have apostatized and are worshipping a Golden Calf. The Lord puts to death three thousand of their number that day. But when the Holy Spirit comes in the new Pentecost, on the very first day there are 3000 converts to Christianity.

Thus we see the complete fulfilment of the “new covenant” prophecy of Jeremiah (its the only place in the OT where the term “new covenant” is mentioned). Jesus has already fulfilled in at the Last Supper, in his words, the “my Blood of the New Covenant”, but at Pentecost the Grace is poured upon the faithful.

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)