Grace and peace to you all from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Greetings from Church of God Woodstock out to all the brethren who are joining us
here live and who will be watching this later.
For those who may not know, I am Brian Heck, and I will be talking today on the
Aviv, the Omer, the Harvest, and the Biblical New Year of 2019.
For some background with me, I have been studying, I've been a student and a
teacher of the calendar in the Scriptures, in the historic calendar within Judaism,
within Christianity, for the last 20 years.
As far as Aviv search, first time I actually traveled to the land to do the
Aviv search was 2008.
I have not gone every year, but I've gone to 2008, went in 2012, and again here in
2019.
Just so you know my experience there on the land and what I'm studying.
Again, though, I am a teacher, I am also a student of the Word,
of the land, and continue learning.
In fact, what I had just done on an eight-part series on the calendar within
the last couple of months, I've been doing ongoing teachings on the calendar.
I've actually increased in knowledge with this past Aviv search.
I've come to recognize another assumption that I accepted that is not necessarily
biblical.
In fact, it's not biblical, just some of the parameters in which I look at things.
So it's always great to re-examine.
I always appreciate when the Father teaches us and teaches us so gently.
And I hope that's the case that we learn that example from Him as well.
That we learn to walk in love and speak the truth in love one to another.
Because we can be full of knowledge, but if we have not love, we are nothing.
So we can know this calendar perfectly, but if we're not walking in love,
we're nothing.
So, I said there are some things I want to address today.
What is Aviv?
Is the Kirite New Year Determination Method fully scriptural?
And let me say here why I'm saying this.
And by no means am I denigrating who they are as people, as individuals.
I'll mention Nehemia Gordon, I'll mention Yocha Levy.
I'm not speaking against them as people.
I'm just addressing the things that are being taught.
I have great respect for Joel.
He's an honest, genuine man.
I haven't had too much interaction with Nehemia.
But please understand I'm not attacking them when I'm addressing things that are
being taught.
And I hope that other people aren't attacking anyone.
We may have differences on understanding, but at no point should we be smiting with
the fist of wickedness.
Some other things we'll be looking at is what is Zadok's scale?
Should we look to Egypt because of Exodus 9?
That's when the first mention of Aviv is talked about.
So some people say, why don't you search in Egypt instead of searching the land of
Israel?
We'll look at that briefly.
Would hail destroy the current crop is one of the things people asked on the Biblical
Calendar Forum, the Facebook group that I run.
We'll look at that.
How much barley is required to determine the year?
This is probably one of the biggest questions people are asking.
As well as what constitutes the wave sheaf and should Leviticus 23, 10, 11 through 14
be understood?
And how should Deuteronomy 16.9 be understood?
How should they be understood together?
That's one of the biggest hinge points that makes the distinction between the
current care right method and how we're operating today.
And I said I'll address, I'll be presenting several Jewish sources
regarding the interpretation of these verses in this presentation here.
Yeah, a question came up.
Anders had asked about parching.
Parching is what happens with aviv barley.
You can't parch it prior to being aviv because that's in a milk stage and there's
no substance.
It would just evaporate and you have an empty hole.
It has to be at least aviv or it has some substance to it.
And being that all the barley doesn't grow at the same exact time across the nation
of Israel.
Like for example, this year we found stuff as young as like boot stage where that's
like the head is, like you see, like the ears of grain you picture barley.
The ears of grain are just coming out of like the fold of the leaf.
So you see the head first coming out into flowering and then all the way up to aviv.
And so that's across the land of Israel like that.
So it doesn't all happen at once.
So as these other ones, you know, the harvest may start and then eventually
these other ones that are boot and flowering, they'll hit aviv too.
And that can also be parched at that time.
So thanks for the question.
And so you know, I do have 160 slides today.
So I hope you're comfortable in your seat.
Not too comfortable where you're falling asleep, but comfortable enough to go
through 160 slides.
I know it's a lot, but there's a lot that's being questioned and people looking
for answers.
And I know there's a lot of new people who are coming around to, hey, I'm going to go
by the aviv this year.
I'm going to go by the barley.
And then they see there's two pathways on the barley.
What's happening?
What should we do?
And so I want to help clear the confusion on that.
All right.
So as far as the land of Israel, they were told in Deuteronomy 11,
10 to 12, it says, This land where you're going in to possess it.
It's not like the land of Egypt from where you came out, where you sowed your seed,
you watered it by the foot as a garden of herbs.
But the land where you go in to possess it is a land of hills and valleys,
and it drinks waters of rain of the heaven.
And it's a land which the Lord your God cares for.
The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year.
It's me-reshit ha-shana.
Ma is the word for from, reshit, the beginning.
Ha, the, shana, year.
Even until the end of the year.
Ve'ad akarit shana.
So this is the beginning to the end.
So we know there's a beginning and an end of the year that's talked about in
Scripture.
And that God's talking about this cycle of harvest and rain and harvest, seed time
and harvest that's happening.
And that He's in control of.
Happening here in the year.
We know from 2 Samuel 21.9.
It says,
So the beginning of the year is with the harvest.
The first days of the harvest being the beginning of the barley harvest.
And this is one of the reasons why we focus on barley.
When we go in there to look at the year to see, look at the land and survey what's
happening with the year.
Has the new year begun?
Are the signs here?
So one of the things that has been found from antiquity is something called the
geyser calendar.
This was written back in paleo, Hebrew.
And this is around the time of Solomon, it's believed.
And so what we have here, it says,
It's believed to be basically like a slate for, they believe they were teaching a kid
the agricultural year.
Again, they don't know, they guess at a whole lot of stuff and say this is this.
Another great example for us to watch our assumptions.
I did want to state in here as well, some of the things I'm going to address
are some of the assumptions.
I've mentioned several times that at some point I want to do a sermon on the
calendar's new clothes.
In the vein of Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes, where the
emperor was sold a set of clothes that didn't really exist.
And he's walking about naked thinking that he's clothed and glorious.
And many brethren are dressed in that same type of clothes when they think that
they're walking around with the biblical calendar.
There's many assumptions that are made and it's not really as telling as a lot of
people think that it is.
So some of those facets will be coming up.
Barley from wheat harvest is essentially seven weeks.
The start of the barley harvest starts at Wave Sheaf.
We'll get into that today.
And it will continue on until the wheat harvest begins at Pentecost.
The wheat that we see growing in Israel today that's being farmed is not the same
type of wheat they grew before.
And again, you're not really finding... we look at wild barley because it's not being
touched by man.
It's not being irrigated.
It's not being chemicaled.
None of that stuff's happening.
The wheat, we can't look at it the same way because that's man-adjusted.
It's been altered as far as the seed and all that.
So we can't really go by the wheat and the land.
So what I did here is I took the Geyser calendar and I lined it up with the
concept, the basic concept of the Gregorian calendar with it.
The two months of harvest and the two months of planting would go from circa
August slash September and September slash October to October slash November and
November slash December.
And then the two months of late planting would be December into January,
January into February.
The month of hoeing flax would be February into March.
The month of barley harvest is March into April.
And the month of harvested feasting would be April into May.
Two months of pruning would be May into June, June into July.
And then the month of summer fruit is July back around to August.
So here's the 12 months of the year.
And this is, again, just a loose thing because you also got to figure in the
moon, which marks the start of the months.
So there's some fluctuation in here, slight fluctuation.
That's why I just keep it basic there without any particular dates.
In the scriptures, there's only two seasons.
We tend to, you know, we grew up with the idea of four seasons.
Spring, summer, fall, or autumn, and winter.
Whereas the scriptures only speak of two.
In Genesis 8.22 it says,
What we have is that there's seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter,
which if I were to put them all in order, it'd be seed time, cold, and winter are
all the same.
Harvest, heat, and summer are all the same.
So what we talk about as being the spring holy days and the fall holy days are
biblically the summer holy days.
The holy days all fall within the summer.
The summer essentially goes from the first month through the seventh month,
and then the winter starts because the eighth month is called the month of Bul,
which is rains, because rains marks the start of winter.
And it goes into the last rains, which then thin out at the start of the
year again.
As we'll see right here.
Song of Solomon chapter 2, Behold, the winter is past, and what are the
signs?
The rain is over and gone.
One of the signs is the rains of winter end, and it starts drying out.
It doesn't mean that there's no rain.
This means that the heavy rains have stopped.
The flowers appear on the earth.
We found that... I believe what Solomon was talking about there in particular is a
red anemone that appears at this time of year every year.
I'll have pictures of that later on.
The time of singing has come.
The voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land.
The fig tree ripens her green figs.
The vines are in blossom.
They give forth their vague fragrance.
So these are other signs that we look at based on what the scripture is saying.
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear.
The time of the singing has come.
The time of the turtle dove, the fig tree ripens her green figs.
The vines are in blossom.
They give forth their fragrance.
These are some of the things, other aspects that we're looking at besides just
the barley in the state of its maturity because the scripture defines more,
gives other examples of markers of the year besides just the barley.
Here's a picture if you look on the top of that hill with all that red up there.
That is the red anemones.
This is not from this year.
This is actually just from an article I grabbed just to give an example.
But we did see red anemones all over the place.
They're everywhere.
Matthew 24, verse 32, Our Lord said in the Olivet Prophecy, he says, Now from the fig
tree learn this parable, that when its branch has now become tender, and he puts
forth its leaves, you know that summer is nigh, or summer is near.
This is also an event that we look for.
What's going on with the fig trees?
Have they put forth their leaves?
Are they putting forth fruit?
And those are things that we have seen in evidence this year.
And I think we'll have some pictures of that later.
I forget if I have pictures of that or not.
Exodus 12, 1 to 2, Specifically, we come in here, The Lord spoke unto Moses
and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be to you the
beginning of the months, this shall be the first month of the year to you.
So we know the first month of the year, laying all these scriptures upon each
other, we know that in the first month, the winter is over, the rains have
stopped, the birds are migrating, coming back into the land, the fig trees
are putting forth their leaves, the fig trees are putting forth figs,
the grapevines are putting forth their leaves, and it's the time of harvest.
We know that this month is the month of the Passover, it's the month of unleavened
bread.
So we know that there needs to be lambs for the Passover.
That's another aspect that we look for.
Have the herds been bringing forth their lambs?
Because if they have a lamb, a male of the first year, under the Mosaic covenant was
what was needed to have the Passover.
So that's another aspect we look at.
And then, of course, within unleavened bread, we have the day of the way sheaf
offering, which I will put forth marks the start of the harvest, that is the first
day of the barley harvest.
And I know that's one of the big areas of discrepancy between where we're making our
determination and the Karaites are making theirs.
And so I'll be addressing that more today.
So Leviticus 23 says, I'm going to speak unto the children of Israel, saying unto
them, When ye be coming to the land which I give unto you, ye shall reap the harvest
thereof, bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest.
He shall wave the sheaf for the Eternal to be accepted for you.
On the morrow after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.
Okay, I am not... let me just put this out here today.
I am not going to be addressing the difference in doctrine between the
Pharisees and the Sadducees regarding the count to Pentecost.
Okay, I'm going to put forth much Judaic material which emphasizes a Nisan 16,
start to the count, or an Aviv 16.
Nisan is the name of the month.
It's like the month of HaAviv.
It's the first month.
And they'll begin their count to Pentecost on the 16th, the second day of Unleavened
Bread.
Okay, I'm not even going to argue that point today.
That's not what I'm talking about, but you will see it come up in here.
Okay, I don't agree with it, but I'm not going to argue that right now.
That's not the point of today's teaching.
So what we see, though, is in this month when they come into the land, which we do
see fulfilled in Joshua, we'll get there later today, that they were to reap the
harvest, and they were to bring a sheaf to the priest as an offering, an omer
offering before the Lord.
The word behind the word sheaf is the Hebrew word omer, and it's a measure of
grain, or it could also refer to stacks in the field.
We'll go over that in a little bit, too.
Leviticus 2.14 refers to the firstfruits offering.
It says, Now, it ain't talking about maize.
Corn, being an American concept, maize?
No, that's the word for grain.
In the New Testament, it talks about a corn of wheat.
Corn is just a general term for grain, and green ears of grain there is the
Hebrew word aviv.
But it says, The Hebrew word khali or khalui, depending on where it's being
used, or even grain beaten out of full ears, which is the Hebrew word karmel.
And we'll be getting into this a little bit more as well.
So this is some of the facts that we've got to go through.
These are the bare bones of piecing together how they understood the reckoning
of time in Scripture.
It's not as fleshed out as people may desire, or people may think it is.
Now, as I just mentioned, that first month is also known as the month of Nisan.
In the book of Esther, chapter 3, verse 7, this is the first month that is
the month Nisan, or Nisan.
Or in the book of Nehemia, chapter 2, verse 1, it came to pass in the month
Nisan.
Okay, so what is Nisan?
Nisan is from the Akkadian Nisanu.
It's the first month of the Babylonian calendar, corresponding to parts of March
and April.
But it comes from the Sumerian Nisag, first fruits.
So they call this month the month of Nisan because it's the month of the first
fruits.
In other words, it's the month of the weishif offering.
And I find that Nisan then also ties in with the month of Aviv, because I believe
that's referenced also to the first fruits offering.
Because Leviticus 2.14 says that first fruits offering can be Aviv, that is
parched.
So two references here that mark the month is that it's the month of first fruits,
Nisan, Nisag, and it's the month of the Aviv, which the first fruits offering is
to be at minimum Aviv stage.
So what is Aviv?
I'll begin with the Karaite definition.
Because this is where many in the body have begun as well.
They've learned much of this stuff either currently through Devorah's date tree on
Facebook.
Devorah Gordon is the ex-wife of Nehemia Gordon.
Nehemia Gordon used to operate a page called Karaite Corner.
Then he eventually kind of shut that down and switched everything over to Nehemia's
Wall, and does some stuff from there.
This particular image here was made by Dev when she was operating the New Moon and
Aviv Burley in Israel forum that became her Dev's date tree in 2016, after the
whole 2016 debate.
Because the same debate that's happening today in this year happened three years
ago.
Because in 2016 we also declared Aviv, and they declared a 13th month.
So, again, let me reiterate, I am not picking on Devorah Gordon when I use her
material.
I'm just saying here's their basis of what they believe, and we're going to contrast
these beliefs with Scripture.
So she says, Aviv does not mean green ears.
Aviv is mistakenly translated in some Tanakhs.
Tanakh is just the acronym from Hebrew Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketchuvim.
That's the law, the prophets, and the writings.
So the Hebrew Old Testament.
It's mistakenly translated in some Tanakhs as green ears.
This couldn't be more inaccurate.
When a grain stalk is in its earlier stages, it is dark green and flexible.
I agree with that.
As it ripens, it becomes lighter in color, dry, and brittle.
I agree with that.
In Exodus 9, 31-32, we are told that when the hail hit, the barley was Aviv and the
flax was Gevul.
They were destroyed by the hail because they were already dry and brittle and
broke under the beating of the hail.
In contrast, the wheat and the spelt were not destroyed because they mature later,
and they were in their earlier stage of development, Afilot, which means dark.
Now when the hail hit them, they were still flexible enough to bear the beating
without being destroyed.
Okay, is this completely biblical in what she's talking about?
Is there any assumption in what she's saying here?
Okay, I find she's making an assumption when she says they were destroyed by the
hail because they were already dry and brittle and broke under the beating of the
hail.
The scripture does not say that.
It says they were Aviv, but it doesn't define what Aviv means.
It doesn't say Aviv means brittle.
It doesn't say that the barley broke in its head, that it shattered because it was
dried out.
Okay, another meme, we'll come back to that concept.
Another meme that she made, she said, I'm a stage in the development of the
barley crop, and she put up an image of the Xadox scale, which we'll look at
briefly.
She says, not yet, I'm too young, and she showed some young barley.
Then again, she says, I'm brittle enough to break in a hailstorm.
Exodus 9.31.
I'm dry enough to be parched in a fire.
Leviticus 2.14.
I'm mature enough to be harvested in two weeks.
Leviticus 23.10.
And I know when to start the new year.
Okay, in this, I agree with 1, 2, 4, and 6.
Essentially.
Do not find that I am brittle enough to break in a hailstorm is a legitimate
assumption that should be made.
And we'll get there, we're going to come look at Exodus 9.
And I'll remind you, this is not just a hailstorm.
And we're going to see that.
And concept number five, I'm mature enough to be harvested in two weeks.
Okay, aren't you mature enough to be harvested in part four?
I'm dry enough to be parched in a fire?
Unless you're lighting your field on fire, how are you parching that grain?
Obviously you harvested it, otherwise you couldn't parch it.
So there's an assumption being made there that's not congruent with the earlier
answer from Leviticus 2.14.
You have to be able to harvest aviv to be able to parch it.
So aviv is harvestable barley, it's harvest-ready at aviv.
They're making a distinction between aviv and harvest-ready when aviv is
harvest-ready.
If it wasn't harvest-ready, how can you offer it for an omer?
If it isn't harvest-ready, how can you parch it?
Logic should tell us that.
And again, I don't say that to denigrate, but rather to instruct.
Nehemia Gordon, in his article, Aviv Barley in the Biblical Calendar,
from Nehemia's wall, he says, The month of Aviv is the month which commences after
the barley has reached the stage of aviv.
Is that anywhere found in scripture?
I'm going to be asking that question later.
The month of Aviv is the month which commences after the barley has reached the
stage of aviv.
I don't find that in scripture.
That's an assumption.
Two to three weeks after the beginning of the month, the barley has moved beyond the
stage of aviv, and is ready to be brought as a wave-sheaf offering.
His assumption is that the omer has to be fully ripened barley.
What he refers to is the Hebrew word karmel.
And that the national offering of the omer must be karmel stage.
But that's not what Leviticus 2.14 says.
And there's no other scripture that says anything to the contrary of Leviticus
2.14.
It says, The wave-sheaf offering is a sacrifice brought from the first stalks
cut in the harvest, and is brought on the Sunday which falls out during Passover,
Chag HaMatzot, which is the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
This is described in Leviticus 23.10-11.
I agree with that, that it's the first stalks cut in the harvest.
This is still up on his wall, but he has shifted his understanding regarding some
of these things.
And therefore, his definition of aviv is kind of on shaky ground for him,
because he's changed his position on the meaning of Deuteronomy 16.9 and when the
harvest must occur, which was part of his evidence when he went to figure out what
aviv means.
So Nehemia, he's here from America.
He grew up in Chicago under his father, who was a rabbi.
He eventually made it over to Israel in the 80s, and he got together with some
other Karaites who started to try to understand these things in the land and
understand about the barley.
And so throughout the 90s, he was trying different things, trying to understand.
And he went through an example, I forget if it was just a live teaching or
a video I've watched from him, or just his articles, but he went through
and he talked about how he would go through the fields and he would slap the
barley as an imitation of the hail plague.
And he was seeing, okay, at what point do I destroy the barley, slapping it?
Is it at this age?
And this is kind of how he went about determining what aviv means.
Then he went through and he's picking it and saying, at what point can I parch it
and find out if it'll shrivel up or still be something that's edible.
And then his third one is, okay, I know if I can get it to this stage,
if it takes two to three weeks, because he wants to find what he calls
aviv before the new moon, because from the stage then up until what he wants to find,
Carmel, takes two to three weeks.
So he really is, his concept is he's not shooting for aviv, he's shooting for
Carmel, and he's projecting what will get me the Carmel that I need for the way
sheaf.
If it takes me two to three weeks to get there from this stage, therefore I believe
this stage is aviv and I need it by the twelfth month, before the twelfth month
ends.
And I need that because this is where I find I can parch it, and this is where I
can slap it.
Okay.
So this is how he began his understanding, and I appreciate the work that he's done
on that because it's given a basis for a lot of Brethren to come and understand
these things.
But as I look at these things, I'm finding some of those assumptions he
made are wrong assumptions to make and a wrong method to determine these things.
So he says, he quotes Leviticus 23, 10 to 11.
When you come into the land, I give you harvest at harvest.
You will bring a sheaf at the beginning of your harvest to the priest.
Notice the way he quotes Leviticus 23 here.
It's different than the way he wants to quote it.
Now, it's not the beginning of the harvest.
Now you just harvest your harvest whenever you want, and you bring the omer later.
But he will wave the sheaf before Yehovah, so you will be accepted on the morrow.
After the Sabbath, the priest will wave it.
From this, it is clear that the barley, which was aviv at the beginning of the
month, has become harvest-ready 15 to 21 days later, i.e., by the Sunday during
Passover.
Therefore, a month of aviv cannot begin unless the barley has reached a stage
where it will be harvest-ready two to three weeks later.
See, here's how he defines it.
In 2016, he kind of took us to task saying, How can you guys know if you're
going to have aviv if you don't have it now?
How do you know what's going to happen two to three weeks?
Well, the funny thing is, that's how he operates.
He operates as if he's not looking for aviv two to three weeks.
He's looking for Carmel.
So we just have different targets we're aiming at.
He projects just like we project.
And it's known because we know how barley grows.
And farmers who are growing this stuff know at what stage they're going to be and
how much longer they expect before it reaches maturity where they can harvest
it.
It's a known thing.
It didn't take Jan Zadok to come up with a form in the 1900s for people to understand
that.
It's been understood for centuries, for millennia.
He says that the barley must be harvest-ready two to three weeks into the
month of aviv is also clear from Deuteronomy 16.9, which states,
When the sickle commences on the standing grain, you will begin to count seven
weeks.
From Leviticus 23.15, we know that the seven weeks between Passover, Chag
HaMatzot, and Pentecost, Shavuot, which means weeks, begin on the day when
the way sheaf offering is brought, i.e., the Sunday which falls out during
Passover.
And he quotes, You shall count from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day you
bring the sheaf of waving, they will be seven complete Sabbaths.
He says, Therefore, the sickle commences on the standing grain on the Sunday during
Passover, i.e., two to three weeks after the beginning of the month of aviv.
If the barley is not developed enough so that it will be ready for the sickle two
to three weeks later, then the month of aviv cannot begin, and we must wait for
the following month.
See what his end goal is?
His end goal is not aviv in the twelfth month.
His end goal is Carmel on way sheaf day.
And so he's using aviv in understanding how barley progresses, how it matures,
to reach his goal.
So his manner in that regard is not different than ours.
It's just, what are you shooting for?
He's still predicting.
Okay?
It should be noted that not all barley ripens in the land of Israel at the same
time.
Let me repeat that.
It should be noted that not all barley ripens in the land of Israel at the same
time.
All right?
It'll happen.
There's seven weeks to the harvest.
It'll happen over the course of that time.
He continues...
Okay,
now look what he just introduced here.
He says,
When he says harvest ready, you can assert the word Carmel, because that's what he
means by harvest ready.
It's the Hebrew word Carmel.
What scripture says that the omer offering Leviticus 23 must be Carmel?
Not a single scripture says that.
So he has made up his own distinction between the national offering and a
personal offering, and says, well on the one hand Leviticus 23 shows what Aviv
means, or Leviticus 2.14 shows what Aviv means.
It doesn't define a national sacrifice, because the national sacrifice has to be
Carmel.
No scripture says that.
No scripture makes that distinction.
It's an assumption, and it's an assumption that is not backed up by scripture.
Not only by prescription, but even by description in the scriptures,
as we'll get into when we look, for instance, in the book of Ruth or the
book of Joshua.
He says, so he quotes Leviticus 2.14, when you bring a first fruit offering to
Yehovah, you shall bring your first fruit offering as Aviv, parched in the fire,
or crushed Carmel.
Carmel is grain which is hardened beyond Aviv to the point where it could be
crushed or coarsely ground.
It says all the above passages have been translated directly from Hebrew.
It's worth noting the King James translators seem to have only understood
the various Hebrew agricultural terms very poorly.
In Leviticus 2.14 they translate Carmel as full heirs and Aviv as green heirs,
but in Leviticus 23.14 they translate Carmel as green heirs.
Now, to be sure, go back and read Leviticus 23.14.
They ain't telling you that the Omer has to be Carmel, but it tells you you cannot
eat parched or Carmel or bread until the same day you made the offering.
So it ain't telling you that the offering has to be Carmel.
Yes, Aviv and Carmel are both ready for eating, according to the scriptures.
They are both ready for harvest, according to the scriptures.
So he says, in summation, barley which is in the state of Aviv has three
characteristics.
One, it is brittle enough to be destroyed by hail and has begun to lighten in color,
i.e.
it is not dark.
Okay, I agree with part of that.
I agree that, yes, it can be destroyed by hail, and especially the hail that
happened in Egypt in Exodus 9.
We'll get there in just a moment.
And I agree that it generally does begin to lighten in color.
It's not dark, whereas the wheat and the spelt were dark.
They're offalote.
Two, that the seeds have produced enough dry material that it can be eaten parched.
I agree it can be eaten parched, and there's other scriptures that show
that manner of it being parched.
Joshua, Ruth, as it is mentioned.
But I find the definition, and I'll get into this in a moment, The Leviticus 2.14,
that it's dry enough that it can be made into flour, to be made into an offering
for firstfruits.
So not only can it be eaten parched, it can be parched and made into a flour to
be offered.
Three, it is developed enough that it can be harvest-ready two to three weeks later.
Again, I will tell you that is an assumption, a false distinction that's
made, that's nowhere defined, that you must have caramel for a waysheaf offering.
Okay, so the question comes up.
Does the barley need to be brittle in the head to be a veaf?
On his thing, he says it's brittle.
And this is not only from Nehemia Gordon.
We see Devorah Gordon continues to teach that same concept in the means that she
had made.
Says, does the barley need to be brittle in the head to be a veaf?
Is it brittle enough for the head to be destroyed by hail?
Now that's often what people are picturing.
They're picturing that it's coming in and it's hitting the head and it's shattering
the heads.
Here's some modern examples of hail hitting barley.
See some hail in there and you see it ain't that the heads are shattered all
over.
The grain's still there, the kernels are still there in the head.
What's happening is the stalks themselves are breaking.
They're getting snapped at the nodes, at the nodules.
And I believe this is the case of what happened in Egypt.
It ain't that it was brittle.
So even this green barley in these pictures are getting destroyed by this
hail.
Now if it got destroyed by that hail, how much more so the hail that hit Egypt?
Exodus 9, 18-19 says, Behold, tomorrow about this time I will cause it to rain a
very grievous hail, such as not has been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even
until now.
Send therefore now and gather your cattle and all that you have in the field,
for upon every man and beast that will be found in the field, that shall not be
brought home, the hail will come upon them and they will die.
That's a pretty grievous hail.
Nehemia walking through the field slapping them, if he happens upon a man or beast,
it ain't going to kill the man or beast.
That is not a congruent test to Exodus 9.
Everyday hail is not this hail.
This is like, sounds like Revelation hail, like the 175 pound hail, you know?
Hail, the stuff that's coming down in killing man and beasts.
Alright, continue in verse 22, The Lord said unto Moses, Stretch forth
your hand towards heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt,
upon man, upon beast, upon every herb of the field, throughout the land of Egypt.
Moses stretched forth his rod towards heaven.
The Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran along the ground.
The Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt.
There was hail and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous.
There was none like it in all the land of Egypt, since it became a nation.
The hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt.
All that was in the field, both man, both beast, the hail smote every herb of
the field and broke every tree of the field.
Have you ever tried to break a tree slapping it?
It ain't going to happen.
Alright, it ain't going to happen.
This was a very grievous hail.
This is what destroyed the aviv barley.
This is what destroyed the bold flax.
Alright, so we can't just go and say, I'm going to repeat that and slap barley.
And again, I'm not mocking Nehemia in doing that.
I appreciate the attempt, but it's not thinking this thing thoroughly through.
And it took me even up until this year, and I said this is something I've been
doing for 20 years, to really have that hit home to me and say, wait a second.
You can't do a slap test to imitate the hail, because this is not just hail.
This is hail.
I mean, this is intense judgment.
Killing man and beast and snapping trees.
So, here's one of the assumptions.
I mean, I checked out on the must-have aviv by the end of the 12th month.
I checked out on that back in 2005, if not earlier.
But I didn't, at that point in time, put the hail test to the test.
But I recognize his number three, that it takes two to three weeks to reach
mature harvest, was not biblical.
But here, so here's something I learned this year.
This is just reiterated to me.
This is not an ordinary hail, and you cannot use a slap test to prove what aviv
means on this basis.
This is, like I said, this is like a revelation definition of hail,
that you read about what's going to be happening.
Nehemia had continued in his Aviv Burling to Biblical Calendar.
This article is on Nehemia's wall, by the way.
This is the same article he used to have back on his Karite Corner, when he had
that website.
It's the same material.
He says in here, Aviv indicates a stage in the development of the barley crops.
This is clear from Exodus 9.31-32, which describes the devastation caused by
the plague of hail.
The flax and the barley were smitten, because the barley was aviv.
The flax was givul.
The wheat and the spelt were not smitten, because they were dark.
They were aphelot.
He says the above passage relates that the barley crops were destroyed by the hail,
while the wheat and spelt were not damaged.
To understand the reason for this, we must look at how grain develops.
When grains are early in their development, they are flexible and have a
dark green color.
As they become ripe, they take on a light yellowish hue and become more brittle.
I agree.
This is true.
But that doesn't necessarily mean this is what was happening in Egypt.
The reason the barley was destroyed and the wheat was not is the barley had
reached a stage in its development called aviv.
I agree.
That part's true.
And had become brittle enough to be damaged by the hail.
Now, if you remember, this was the regular hail I showed you with the conglomeration
picture.
Green barley wasn't aviv.
That little hail that doesn't kill man or beast or break trees.
Broke that.
So you can't say, oh, that is because it was dry and brittle.
That is not the case.
That's an assumption and it shouldn't be made.
We have evidence, modern evidence, that shows that's not the case.
With a much lighter hail.
No fire.
You know?
The description of the wheat is spelt as dark.
Afilo indicates they were still in the stage where they were deep green and yet
begun to lighten to a yellowish hue which characterizes ripe grains.
In contrast, the barley had reached the stage of aviv at which time it was no
longer dark and at this point it was probably begun to develop golden streaks.
I can accept it was no longer dark and probably started to get golden streaks.
Yes, that's probably true.
But to say it was brittle is not the case.
So I looked up regarding afilote.
I took a look at Adam Clark's commentary.
He says, Mr. Harmer, referring to the double harvest in Egypt mentioned by Dr.
Pocock, says that the circumstance of the wheat and the rye, or spelt, being
afilote, means dark or hidden as the margin renders it, meaning that they were
sown but not grown up.
Shows that it was Indian wheat, or sergo raso, mentioned in Exodus 9.31,
which with the rye escaped while the barley and flax were smitten because they
were at, or nearly at, the state of maturity.
Yes, they were at the state of maturity, they were aviv.
What is intended by the words in the Hebrew text we cannot positively say.
There is a great variety of opinions on the subject, both among the versions and
among the commentators.
There are different ways it's been translated, different ways that the people
have commented on it, what it means.
So what is afilote?
Afilote, with jastro, says that it's slow to ripen, it's late in the season,
it's a late produce, that it's something that develops late in the season.
So they say one of the means could be dark, or in that case, hidden.
If we're looking at it, we're seeing things that would indicate that the wheat
would be in the Zadok's 1-4 stages.
Meaning that the head had not come out of the boot yet, but it was still in the
grass stage.
There probably wasn't even head development of the boot yet.
So stages 1-4, that it was dark green grass.
And that's why it was not destroyed, because there was no nodules to snap on
the plant, as there is with the barley that is aviv.
So, talking of Exodus 9, should we look to Egypt for aviv?
Well, here's what the scripture says.
Leviticus 23, 9-10 The Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak to the children of
Israel, saying, When ye become into the land which I give to you, and ye reap the
harvest thereof, then ye bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the
priest.
So the wave sheaf is to come from the land that Yehovah gave unto the children of
Israel.
It's not to come from Egypt, it's not to come from any other place, but the land in
which they were given.
And while I'm here, let me say, some people say it can only come from
Jerusalem.
No, they reap it from the harvest thereof.
Of what?
Of the land.
Anywhere within the land.
In fact, when they came in, in the book of Joshua, they were at Gilgal.
They were not at Jerusalem.
And that's where they came in, circumcised the children, ate the
Passover, and then they came in and ate the parched of the land.
And they didn't have Jerusalem until the time of David.
So it wasn't even taken and making part of Israel at that point in time.
So the concept that this is about Jerusalem is not true.
And in fact, even in a New Covenant sense, our Lord said that the time is coming and
now is, when it is not to be at Mount Gerizim or at Jerusalem, but it's those
who worship in spirit and truth.
And I know that's a different concept of what we're getting into here, but I want
to say it's not all just Jerusalem-centered.
This particular verse here shows that this is the harvest of the land.
So anywhere within the land could be where the Omer offering comes from.
So what is aviv, scripturally defined?
So we see from Exodus 9, 31-32, "...the flax of the barley was smitten,
for the barley was in the air, which in the air is the Hebrew word aviv."
The flax was bold, which we saw was gevol.
The wheat and the rye were not smitten, because they were not grown up.
They were afilot, they were yet dark.
So, as I just went over, we see from here that the wheat and the rye weren't
destroyed because they were like a dark green grass stage, where the barley is
past that.
In fact, it's in the air.
And I think in the air is actually a pretty good description of it,
if they're going to translate it into English, because now it's aired,
it's out of the boot.
It's at a point where you have the head, it's flowered, it's past that.
In fact, it's not just in there, you have substance to it.
It's at the head of grain.
It's there.
Alright, so that's one definition.
Two, you shall offer a meal offering of the firstfruits unto the Eternal.
You shall offer for the meal offering of your firstfruits green ears, which is the
Hebrew word aviv, of grain dried by fire.
Kalui, parched.
So you offer parched aviv.
So we know that the barley is parchable.
Any stage before that, it ain't going to provide substance.
It ain't going to be able to make flour, it ain't going to be able to be that chewy
food.
So, here's an example because it says green ears.
Here's green barley.
But if you notice the head, pull it open, it's got no substance in it.
This would be like a flower stage, there's no substance yet.
It hasn't got the watery ripe, hasn't gone in the milk.
That's like a Zadok stage six.
Over on the right, oh, you say, oh, look at that barley, that's like
Carmel.
No, that's dead.
There's no substance to those either.
Those died somewhere around that stage, as the green one there, and it never
developed.
This is why we don't only just look at pictures, or just look at a field and say,
oh, look at the aviv.
No, we go out there, we break open the heads, we look at the kernels to see,
is it really developed?
Could this be made into flour?
Here's an example of filled heads.
These are aviv kernels.
Yeah, they look kind of like bugs.
But that's barley kernels that are aviv.
At the top here, we have aviv barley, which is gathered from the Temple Mount,
and fully ripened barley down below.
And there should be no contest from the Karaites on these last two pictures,
because I actually borrowed them from old Karaite corner aviv reports.
So they will tell you that the last picture of the two bugs, the barley
kernels, were aviv, and this is aviv, and this is what they call in Hebrew,
Carmel.
This here is a picture of barley that has been parched.
This was parched barley.
This was, again, from an old Karaite report.
I think it was from 2002 of barley, showing that at this point, you can dry
these things and they don't shrivel up and become empty.
They actually have substance to them.
And I'll provide pictures here.
For example, this is a picture from Brian Convery.
One year, he's grabbed there, he took the barley he collected, took mortar and
pestle, ground up the barley, and made flour out of it.
You follow that around clockwise, you know, at the stop at the, I don't
know, 11 o'clock, 10 o'clock, out there, and come around 1 to 5 to 7, and you see
that it was ground into flour.
So we know that that barley is Leviticus 2.14, parchedable, and being able to be
made into flour.
This, by the way,
as I understand it, yes.
The picture by picture.
Yeah, that's the flour that developed from those kernels.
Yeah, that's him dipping into the flour.
Yep, so what's interesting, and I'll have this picture in later, again, and in case
I don't remember to say it then, I'll say it now.
This particular barley, that he had, this is something he had gathered,
because what Brian will do, he'll go through and he'll gather it, and we've
done the same thing.
We'll gather it up and bring it back to our room and let it sit there in this dry
by itself or whatever.
This was 8.3 on Zadox, which is soft dough.
The current standard, I believe, that the care rights are using would
equate to an 8.9, maybe an 8.7.
But here, this shows that 8.3 soft dough can be turned into flour.
So, again, there's some room to grow and some understanding as we're putting these
things to the test and testing our hypothesis.
Okay, so, this is, as I said, I'm a student of these things, too.
So, I actually, just recently, in the eight-part series I've done on the
calendar, I've used this definition, is that a beeb scripturally defined,
a beeb defined by scripture is referenced a barley that is no longer dark in color,
that is brittle enough to be striped by hail, and is mature enough to make into
flour.
Since this is a beeb search, I find that brittle enough to be destroyed by hail is
not one of the biblical definitions that should be used, because that was a freak
super hail that happened and cannot be replicated in the manner of going around
slapping barley.
And when I first came into this understanding, too, I was getting the
notion that it was talking about heads, not understanding that it's talking about
no snapping at the actual stalks, and that's how it was destroyed.
So, I find that the scriptural definition is, it's no longer dark in color.
This is one of the aspects I agree with out of Exodus 9, but it's mature enough to
be made into flour.
It could be parched and eaten just as parched kernels.
It'll have substance to it.
So, one last thing here with Nehemia, when he says, it's developed enough so it
will be harvest ready two to three weeks later.
I've said this before, that's his target on what he's shooting for with his arrow.
You're not going to find that in the scripture.
This is shoot the arrow, paint the target.
You're not going to find a scripture that says the Omer offering must be Carmel.
But that's what he did, and so therefore, his arrow's there.
I need to find Carmel.
I'm going to paint a target around it.
Okay, if I go back a week, if I go back two weeks, if I go back three weeks,
oh, the barley's in this stage at that point.
Therefore, this is what we need in the 12 months.
It's shooting the arrow, painting the target.
One of the things that I've been asking for several years now, though many
brethren didn't really hear it even as I asked it up until 2016, and some didn't
hear it then or are hearing it now, what scripture requires the barley to be
aviv at the end of the 12 months in order to signify the new year?
And I've asked this.
And sometimes I might receive, oh, Exodus 9 shows the barley was aviv,
and that's before Exodus 12.
No, again, you're not taking Exodus into account of what it's saying.
It's not just a linear report of what happened, as in linear of time.
It isn't chronological from Exodus 9 to Exodus 12.
There's some zoom in, zoom out that's happening within there.
I've gone over that in other examples.
Like I said, I have 160 slides today, so I don't want to belabor that so much
today.
But I can show from scripture that it is possible and even plausible that the hail
plague of Exodus 9 happened around the eighth day of the first month.
And I can show that working backwards through the plagues, because we know the
Passover happened on the 14th.
The three days' darkness bring you back.
You can go through the plagues and just count the days and go backwards,
and you're going to find that it's possible and even plausible that the
barley was aviv on the eighth day of the first month, and I'm not talking about
12-month barley.
Other than that, there's just a description.
Exodus 9 is a description of the barley.
It's not a prescription for what must happen.
You know what the difference is?
The difference is something's describing what happened.
Ron ate a sandwich.
That's a description of what Ron said.
Ron must eat a sandwich is a prescription.
One is something that's required, one is something that just happened.
So we can't take a description and say this is now the requirement or the rule.
All right?
Now, so I say no Scripture illustrates this requirement.
There is no requirement anywhere.
Not only does Scripture not come out and say you must find barley that is aviv
before the 12th month ends, there is no illustration of that in Scripture.
We're going to see in Joshua, when we get there, there's aviv barley there in the
middle of the month that they're eating parched.
They're not eating caramel on Waysheaf Day.
So things along those lines.
There's nothing that illustrates this third definition of how they came to
understand what aviv means.
There's nothing that illustrates it in Scripture.
Okay?
So I got that addressed in other parts of the calendar series if you want to go back
and watch those.
What I do find by prescription, not just description, prescription is
given in Leviticus 2.14 that requires firstfruits offerings to be either aviv or
caramel.
So by scriptural prescription, the barley does not need to be aviv until
firstfruits offering day.
At minimum.
This is what we know.
This is the minimum standard.
They ain't saying this is what must happen, that it must always only be aviv,
it can't be caramel.
No, we know it can be caramel.
The Scripture says it can be caramel.
But at minimum, by prescription, that is by requirement of Scripture,
the barley must be aviv by Waysheaf Day.
Not by new moon, not by the twelfth month, but by Waysheaf Day is when the Scripture
requires it to be aviv.
At minimum.
Alright?
One of the points I've made, I stated, I did a little bit of a Q&A last week
after the message, after just getting home from Israel.
One of the points I stated then there is, another thing to consider, which month is
called the month of Aviv?
Is it the twelfth month or the first month?
It's the first month.
So, but by Karaite teaching, the twelfth month should be the month of Aviv,
because that's when they say Aviv is needed, and Carmel is needed in the first
month.
So the first month should be the month of Carmel.
But it's not called the month of Carmel.
It's called the month of the Aviv.
Why?
Because Aviv is needed for the Waysheaf offering.
Just like it's called the month of Nisan, because Nisag is the first fruits.
Alright?
Okay, so let's take a historical look at intercalation.
Intercalation is just a big word saying when they added a thirteenth month.
Arthur Speer in his book, The Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar,
says, When the fruits had not grown properly, when the winter rains had not
stopped, when the roads for Passover pilgrims had not dried up, when the young
pigeons had not become fledged, the Council on Intercalation considered
the astronomical facts, together with the religious requirements of Passover and the
natural conditions of the country.
So they're saying they stop and they look.
Okay, have the signs occurred?
Have the winter rains stopped, as it says in Song of Solomon chapter 2?
Has the fruit... is the fig tree putting forth its leaves?
Is the grape putting forth its scent?
Are the roads ready for the... I mean, are they still all wet because of winter
rains?
Can the people even come up to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast?
What's going on with this?
Are the pigeons fledged?
And so they look at these things, besides just looking to the astronomical
to say, the moon is in this position, here's month...
is this the thirteenth or the first?
And they had to take other aspects into consideration.
Now, some of these are strictly biblical.
Some of them, maybe not so much.
It doesn't tell us that the young pigeons had to become fledged.
I don't know what scripture they'd be referencing for that.
If anyone has an idea, please let me know.
Like I said, I'm a student.
I'd love to hear anything further on that.
In C.
Thoreau's... his editing job of the Judaica, the Sacrament of Judaica on
Article Calendar, he says, in 19 years, the solar cycle exceeds the lunar by about
209 days, which are approximately seven months.
In temple times, this intercalation was decided upon in individual years according
to agricultural conditions.
And they cite the Tosefta, Sanhedrin 2.2, and Sanhedrin 11b, which are portions of
the Talmud.
The Talmud is basically two books.
It's the Mishnah, which is a commentary on the Torah, and the Gemara, which is a
commentary on the Mishnah.
I don't take those as authoritative, but I will use them for historical
reference to say what was on the minds and what was the practice that was happening
with these people.
It is not scripture, it is not on par with scripture, but it does show what was
happening historically.
He continues, he says, the intervals of intercalation were at first irregular,
because they follow what's called the Metonic Cycle, where the 3rd, 6th,
8th, 11th, 14th, 17th, and 19th years, out of every 19-year cycle, they add a
13th month.
It's just a mathematical thing to add in, with a 13th month 7 times every 19 years.
But before they put that into mathematical motion, they used to, like I said in the
last quote, it would happen every year, they would have to individually decide is
this a 13th month or not.
Intercalation was in part due to the prevailing state of the various
agricultural products.
So again, they weren't just looking solely at barley.
Various agricultural products.
They'd look at the barley, they'd look at the trees, they'd look at the grapes,
they'd look at the various products.
Astronomy was, however, always a powerful fact, as the state of the crops is
ultimately determined by the sun's position in its annual path.
So when we're talking about astronomy, like they did in the previous quote,
astronomy isn't just talking about, well, it's the new moon.
Astronomy in this case is talking about the sun and the moon together,
what becomes known as the equinox.
And so they would use the equinox somewhat into their figurines, but it wasn't the
main factor.
In fact, if there were two other factors, they probably didn't even care about the
equinox.
If the barley was ready and the animals were ready, that was enough to declare it.
Even if the feast fell before the equinox, as it were.
A second media of religion and ethics says, records dating from the closing
years of the second temple inform us that at the time of the new moon, it was fixed
on evidence of observers who declared that they had described, that is, seen,
the crescent in the sky.
Similarly, the leap year was decided upon only when required.
The main factor in question being the state of the young crops.
It was desired that the Passover should coincide with the airing of the corn,
the chodesh ha-aviv.
Chodesh is month, the is ha in aviv, the reference for the barley.
The intercalary month was always, therefore, an Adar.
Adar is the twelfth month, so they would, if you come up, oh, let's have a second
Adar.
So they just did a second Adar.
It was not until a later day that the position of the sun was also taken into
account.
So they didn't originally count on the equinox.
That's something that came in later.
This procedure was continued after the destruction of the temple.
From the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 11b says, It happened once that
Rabban Gamaliel was sitting on a step on the temple mount, and a well-known scribe,
Yochanan, was standing before him with three cut sheets of parchment lying before
him.
Gamaliel said unto Yochanan, And take the third sheet, and write to our brother in
the exiles of Babylon, to those in Media, and to all the other exiled sons of
Israel, saying, May your peace be great forever.
We beg to inform that the doves are still tender, the lambs are still young,
Aviv is not yet ripe.
It is advisable to me and to my colleagues to add thirty days to this year.
So here's an example from Gamaliel, writing a letter like this.
Another example from Rabban Gamaliel.
He gave the following example in Law of Operation.
He quotes from Rabban Gamaliel's letter to the communities.
We beg to inform you that the doves are still tender, the lambs are still young,
the grain has not yet ripened.
I have considered the matter and thought it advisable to add thirty days to the
year.
From Sanhedrin 11a.
Okay, so here's some examples.
Modern day Roy Hoffman, he operates with the Israeli New Moon Society.
Back in 2005, at the time of the Aviv search happening in March, he had stated
there are three major criteria that may be used, and it turns out that all three may
be relevant this year.
One, if the 16th of Nisan would fall before the Evernal Equinox, then a month
is added.
This year, the 16th of Adar 2, March 27th, is a few days after the
Equinox, March 20th.
So we continue to the next criterion.
Two, will there be enough barley ripe to reap on the eve of Nisan 16, grind in the
flour, and sacrifice on the next day?
Roy is an Orthodox Jew, by the way, and he goes by the pharisaic method of
counting from the 16th, along with these other pharisaic understandings.
He says, for this, three regions are taken into consideration, Judea, Samaria,
and the east bank of the Jordan.
I received reports that there are a few pockets of barley in Judea that will be
ripe enough a few days before the 16th of Adar 2.
However, this is so marginal, it's unlikely there will be ripe barley in
Samaria, which is cooler and wetter and questionable, also on the east bank of the
Jordan, because it's wetter than Judea.
If ripe barley is not available in Judea, then an extra month is added.
If barley is available in Judea, then at least one of the other regions,
then no extra month is added.
If barley is available only in Judea, as one might be the case this year,
the third criterion comes into play.
Are the fruit trees that are normally blossomed in Nisen, are they in flower by
the end of Adar, in order to provide first fruits in time for Shavuot?
So this is one of the reasons they're looking also at the trees, because they're
saying this has to provide first fruits for Shavuot.
So this is an interesting thing right here that was happening in 2005.
Again, Roy does not go by this.
Roy still follows the rabbinic calendar because he's orthodox, and he feels until
there's a ruling Sanhedrin that can change the calendar, he has to abide by the last
Sanhedrin.
But he's gathering information to prepare for when they change, because he knows
that calendar's wrong.
So here's some things he's looking at.
Philo, Philo Judeus, was a first century Jew.
He lived in Alexandria, Egypt, but he also, of course, went into the
land.
He says in his Life of Moses 2, he says that Moses put down the beginning
of the vernal equinox as the first month of the year, attributing the chief honor,
not as some persons do to the periodical revolutions of the year in regard of time,
but to the graces and the beauties of nature, which it has caused to shine upon
men, for it is through the bounty of nature that the seeds which are sown to
produce the necessary food of mankind are brought to perfection.
A lot of people want to cite Philo and say, look, we've got to go by the equinox,
equinox, equinox.
He says, well, yeah, equinox is at that time, it's a general rule of thumb,
but the chief honor is to what's happening because of the time of equinox,
the sun shining, making these seeds that were sown to produce the necessary food.
In other words, we're looking to the time when we're ready to harvest.
And that indicates when the month is, when the year begins.
How much barley is required to be aviv?
This is, again, one of the big questions that always comes up.
You probably don't like my answer.
Scripture does not state an answer to this.
There is no section in the Torah, the prophets, the writings, the New
Covenant writings, that say, here is how the calendar operates.
You begin by going out to look for a crescent moon.
When you see the crescent moon facing this direction, that marks day one of the
month.
You count twelve months, then you go out and you look for barley.
There's nothing that says any of that stuff.
It doesn't tell us, you must find this much barley to declare the year.
There's assumptions that are made.
In rules, man-made rules, that are put in force by opposing forces of what's to be
done.
So, I find that a lot of times, going through these things in the
Scriptures, it's like being, we're like biblical archaeologists.
We're going through and we're digging up bones, and we're trying to understand how
the bones go together, and how the flesh goes on, and what the flesh looks like,
and not trying to colorize it with our own biases, but allow the Scriptures to say as
much of it as they can.
And then recognizing the distinction between the bones of Scripture and the
flesh we put on it, which is our assumptions.
And it's very important, you can have assumptions.
Assumptions should have a basis for them.
It should be a logical assumption.
It should be something that's a safe assumption, that can throw things off
kilter.
So be careful in what you assume.
But also keep in your mind the distinguishing between your assumption and
what the Scriptures actually say.
Because what the Scriptures actually say, that should be unshifting.
Your assumptions, now you've got room to move and grow.
Because assumptions, your assumptions aren't rock-solid.
That's not in cement that can move, that can grow.
That's good.
So, Scriptures not state in the answer directly to this.
Here's what we do know.
Leviticus 23, 10-11 Speaking to the children of Israel, saying to them,
When you come into the land which I have given to you, you shall reap the harvest
thereof.
You shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest.
He shall wave the sheaf before the Eternal to be accepted for you.
On the morrow, after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it.
We also know that seven weeks should get numbered.
They begin to number seven weeks, from such time they begin to put the
sickle to the grain.
As I said earlier, we know that that word sheaf in Leviticus 23 is the Hebrew word
omer.
And it's a measure of grain, we'll get to that here in a moment.
And so we begin to see some of our minimum of what's required.
At minimum, we need an omer of barley by wave sheaf day.
That's the minimum requirement of Scripture.
Without assumptions, without adding to or taking away.
Now here's some of the things we'll see here.
We do see examples.
Now again, I said there's prescriptions and there's descriptions.
So what we find in descriptions in the book of Ruth, chapter 2, Ruth the Moabite
said unto Naomi, Let me go into the field and glean ears of corn after him,
in whose sight I shall find grace.
And she said, Go, my daughter.
And she went and came and gleaned in the field after the reapers.
And her half was to light upon part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the
kindred of Elimelech.
Okay, so there's some field, this sounds like some sizable field, because Boaz
doesn't own it all.
He owns part of the field.
But again, we're assuming, was Boaz rich?
Was Boaz not?
How much did he own?
We don't know.
He owned part of this field.
If we're going to say the field was this big or that small, that's assumptions.
We don't know.
Can you say from this that the whole field was at minimum of eve?
Or at minimum Carmel?
You can't, because the scripture doesn't tell us.
We just know they went in to glean in the field.
Okay, it's just a description, and we don't know every aspect of what was
happening, because it's not all described.
Now, Yohalevi, he's a fellow searcher.
He lives in Israel.
One of his things he runs, he runs Hebrew in Israel.
He's a fellow searcher who goes out.
He's a new moon spotter.
He's been doing it for several years.
He and his colleague, he didn't name who he was this year, but him and another
gentleman went off, and they also did the Aviv search this year.
One of the things he posted back on March 10th, he said some important notes I've
been thinking about.
Here, let me switch over to...
I got it typed out, so it's a little easier to read.
Some important notes I've been thinking about in regards to the Aviv search.
I hope to publish this in a much more detailed way in the future.
Yohale is very much a student of the Scriptures.
He is not a believer in Yeshua or Jesus as Messiah, but he is a believer of Scripture
and a student of it, a student and teacher of Hebrew and other languages.
But here's what he said.
He said, one of the most important things to know about the Aviv is that finding
small amounts or amounts which are less than 70-80% of a field means that one has
not found Aviv.
So you're starting to see what his standard is for declaring Aviv,
that there must be 70-80%, if not more, that is Aviv for him to declare it.
Now, what Scripture says that?
None.
And again, I'm not picking on Yohale whatsoever in saying this.
I'm just taking this and saying, let's ask what Scripture says this.
Then who sets the standard?
Who decides that's the case?
Now, I will state, I do look at fields, and that's one of the things I said,
both online and what I said here on the broadcast last week.
I do take into consideration the whole land of Israel, because I do believe that
whole land of Israel has to be harvested within seven weeks.
It doesn't all happen at once.
So when I look at all the barley around, all the land, I say, can this barley,
the youngest barley I found, can it be harvested within the seven weeks of the
harvest?
And that's the case I find this year.
It can.
I don't just look, oh, is there... some people will label me or Brian Connery or
others, oh, they're just the will-be cherry pickers, there will be enough for a
handful for an Omer offering.
No, that's not all I'm looking at.
That doesn't really define what I'm looking at.
That's an unfair characterization of what I'm looking for.
Back to Yoel.
Yoel says, the reason is due to the fact that the farmer has to bring in workers to
harvest, and he would not harvest part of a field but the whole thing.
In Mishnaic sources, such as Peah, we have a living description of how a
harvest was done.
The workers would work in lines, reaping the whole field, and other workers
would make sheaves behind them.
This description, regardless of the source, is how work was done for thousands
of years in the farmland.
And before we continue in there, I have an example here.
This is an illustration, of course.
This is not from this year.
Don't let anyone be...
Oh, yeah, Brian was showing me this.
No, this is not from 2019.
This is not realistic.
This is an example of what it means to gather sheaves and stack them.
It's several sheaves that are being stood up next to each other.
So, as I said, sheaves have two definitions.
There's a sheave, which is a bundle grabbed together, and there's sheave,
which is a certain amount, an omer, of flour.
So, something to stop and think on with this.
When they're cutting these in the field and laying them up and standing them up
there, what's happening with that barley?
Why are they doing that?
Would they be doing that with Carmel?
Would Carmel be sitting there to dry, or are they doing that with pre-Carmel to
cut it and to let it dry in the field as they're stacking it?
And, yes, that description is also the same type of description we see in the
Book of Ruth.
Boaz has several workers who are going through his field.
He tells his workers, hey, drop some handfuls on purpose for Ruth as you're
setting these there, setting your sheaves.
Let her glean even around the sheaves.
So, yes, the description in the Tractate of Peah has also found that description is
in the Book of Ruth.
So, back to what Joel was saying.
He says, when reading the text in Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16,
one can see clearly that it is about bringing a sheaf out of a whole harvest
and not just a random sheaf.
Saying they're not just going to go in, cherry pick, oh, I got one stalk here,
wait, there's a stalk over there, oh, wait, 20 feet over there's another
stalk.
Obviously, that's not the case, and that is not what we presented in
pictures that we've shown and what we declared a view on.
Here's what I found interesting here.
He says, a field in biblical times could be small.
The minimal field was 24 square meters.
This size is determined by the minimal amount of grain that one can sow,
which is one-fourth of a seah.
This number is again taken from Mishnaic sources, but it does describe an
agricultural reality that never changed until the 20th century.
So, he's saying, you just don't go cherry pick a field, it has to be a field.
Then he goes on to find that the smallest field could be 24 square meters.
Alright, here's blue Todd far away, Ron.
I did not include this picture in our report.
In our report, we had Todd sitting in the field.
That picture was from Wednesday.
Todd and I went back the next day.
We went over to Jerusalem, we found an 8 hardware in Jerusalem, and bought a metric
tape measurer, and went to the field and measured this golden plot.
This golden plot from left to right, if you see my shadow there, left to right
was 10 meters.
From the start of the golden plot back to the end of the golden plot was 40 meters.
That's 400 square meters.
The minimal size field, according to Mishnaic sources, what qualifies as a
field is 24 square meters.
This is 400 square meters.
This field more than qualifies as a field, amongst even rabbinic sources.
As I said in the report, this barley here is Zadok's 8-9.
It's a beef.
Even by the hard standard of an 8-9.
So there's more than enough here that qualifies the Vodicus 214 Omer of
Firstfruits offering.
The barley in this field around the golden plot was Zadok's 8-3 to 8-5.
It's soft dough.
Which we saw 8-3 in that flour, the mordant pestle, 8-3 could be made into
flour.
And there's a second field just feet away that's also in the low to mid-8 Zadok
stages.
Some in the upper 8's.
I found several besides what the goats got to.
But I found several areas where there was aviv barley in the second field.
And then fresh barley growing up around it because the goats came in and now growth 2
was coming up.
So right here we have enough barley.
More than minimal size field.
And it's ready to go.
And that was on March 6th.
And we still at that point had 18 days until way sheaf.
Some more of the barley we had seen in the area.
Here is Chance who was with Brian Convery, the Beaver God crew.
In another field where the barley was all there turning.
It was in the 8's.
Soft and hard doughs.
Yep, there's a man outstanding in this field.
So the question comes up, will this current barley crop be ready for harvest
within the next 2-3 weeks?
And let me answer that with yes and no.
What do you mean by that?
I'll reiterate.
The whole land of Israel isn't harvested at once.
So it isn't that the whole barley crops harvest ready in 2-3 weeks.
It's can the harvest start in 2-3 weeks and can it be completed within 7 weeks?
And the answer is yes.
That barley was ready to start harvesting now.
Way sheaf will be next week.
Fields will be ready.
The barley harvest can start.
I want to go over the idea of how we know these things.
Again, like I said, a farmer knows his crops.
He knows how much further it has to grow.
He knows how long it takes because it's what a farmer knows.
I've seen several farmers who have attested to this.
They know it will go from this stage to this stage.
And they may not use Zadok scales.
Like I said, people were farming for thousands of years before Jan Zadok came
along and made a scale.
Or Feeks or Hahn or any of the other styles of cereal growth codes.
Here's the standard that was being used in the year 2000 from the Karaites.
Grass stage is when the heads or the ears have not yet appeared.
The barley looks like tall grass.
Hedge stage is when the heads of the grain have begun to appear and the seeds haven't
begun to form yet.
Three is cotton stage.
The seed shells are filled with cotton-like substance which gets over time
replaced with seed material.
Fourth is water stage.
The seeds have begun to grow but when squeezed, liquid comes out.
Five is worm stage, smear stage.
It's between the water and the wax.
The seeds are forming but when squeezed, the worm-like insides come out of it.
In some strains, the seed never gets very large.
It's difficult to distinguish between four and five.
In these species, the seeds smear when squeezed in both four and five.
Six, the wax stage.
These seeds are fully formed and have fattened.
They do not break when squeezed and are like soft wax.
This stage is our working definition of a bead.
Notice here, too, I want to state this.
This is our working definition of a bead, meaning that he was stating there was
still flexibility.
He was still learning in the year 2000 about what a bead is.
I've read an article that was done called Modern Searches for Barley.
It referenced Nehemia Gordon and his work in there.
Nehemia basically says any reports prior to 2000 are unreliable.
That's when they came and spent the 90s trying to figure these things out.
So anything prior to 2000 are unreliable reports and shouldn't be used.
Those weren't the things that were made public.
So people want to sit there and say, well, he has 30 years' experience behind
him.
Yeah, but how much of that was the learning curve?
When he says those reports aren't reliable, they're not reliable.
So they would put him going from 2000 to 2016 teaching these things when he
stopped.
7, he says the seeds are like hard wax and are ready for harvest using ancient
methods.
So that's what he would call Carmel.
This is out of CareWrite Newsletter 30, a bead report, 2000, number 2,
in March of 2000.
So what is Zadok Scale?
People hear this and I want to tell you it is no reference to Zadok of the
scriptures.
This is not something that David's man was using or that's been around.
Zadok Scale is from Jan C.
Zadok.
It's a cereal development scale proposed by the Dutch phytopathologist Jan C.
Zadok.
It's widely used in cereal research and agriculture.
Farmers will use it.
They use it to know when they should be spraying this or doing this or adding this
fertilizer or whatever.
They'll use it because they understand the barley growth cycle.
And so they know when to apply certain things they want to apply to their crops.
We can utilize it also to know the barley growth cycle.
Though we're looking at wild barley.
So Zadok Scale, it's a decimal growth scale.
It's based on 10 cereal growth stages.
Zero is germination.
One, and then sometimes you'll see one dot something.
Like 1.1, 1.3.
Or sometimes it'll just say 11, 13.
11 is no different than 1.1.
13 is no different than 1.3.
It depends on who's saying what.
Just so you know when you're seeing these things.
So zero is germination.
One is the seedling growth.
There's leaves on the main stem.
Two, it's tillering.
Three, there's stem elongation.
Where you get the nodes, where I tell you where it snaps.
Four, you get the booting.
So it's starting to develop in the boot.
Five, it comes out, the ear emerges.
Six, it's flowering stage.
Seven is milk development.
Eight is dough development.
And nine is ripened.
These are primary.
But then there's secondaries from there.
Each one has a point going through, like I said.
So we got examples here, like a Zadox 0.05 or 0.07.
This is now the seed starting to germinate and get its little roots to come out.
And it's a calliptophile up there to start going up.
Then we see a 1.
We see a 1.2.
Now he's starting to recognize it as above ground.
It's got its grass and it's in a grass stage.
But a lot of those things people aren't knowing.
You're not really knowing what grass you're necessarily looking at until it
starts to give you some indication of its heads.
So we come into... let's come around to five.
You're getting head emergence here in five.
This is four and five here.
Four, you see the boot stage.
The boot gets swollen as the head starts to come out of it.
The picture on the top right there, that is what is described by the CARAT
group as worm stage.
And you'll see in our reports that we did, that Todd Palmer and I did, we used both
Zadox and we also used the known terms like worm or cotton to describe these
things as well.
And then you've got the individual kernels here.
ABCD going across.
This is 7-1.
If you squeeze that, it's like water in there.
B-7-7 is a late milk.
It's a little harder to squeeze, but it's kind of getting there.
8-7 is a hard dough and 9-2 is what he considered Carmel.
Here again is the picture of the worm stage.
And again, we get this idea of days after emergence.
And there's a concept called growing degree days.
And it has to do with what's the high temperature for the day, what's the low
temperature for the day.
And you do this mathematical formula to figure out when it's going to reach the
next stage.
And so that's how we can do these things, is looking at the growing degree days,
what's happening, and how long it should take to get to the next stage.
The growth and development guide for spring barley, I do have a copy of it in
the files on the biblical calendar form on Facebook.
You can download it from there.
It goes a lot of the stuff in the Zadok's, understanding it.
They do say the first period of kernel development is designated as the watery,
ripe, and the milk stages that last about 10 days, generally speaking.
Again, this is them dealing with cultivated barley.
It's not wild barley.
So it's going to have some difference in what's happening.
It says, although the kernels do not gain much weight during this phase,
it's extremely important because it determines the number of cells that will
subsequently be used for storing starch.
Kernels crushed in this stage initially yield a watery substance, which later
becomes milky.
Kernels that are storing starch and growing rapidly are characterized by a
white semi-solid consistency termed soft dough.
This period usually lasts about 10 days following the milk stage.
Finally, as the kernel approaches maturity and begins losing water rapidly,
its consistency becomes more solid termed hard dough.
This is when the kernel loses its green color.
When the kernel moisture has decreased to about 30 to 40 percent, it has reached
physiological maturity and will not accumulate additional dry matter.
The final yield potential has been established at this time.
So, whereas they reap at a much lower percentage of moisture these days,
in the old times they would reap more at this 30-40 percent because sickling,
when it's that dried out, you're killing all your seed.
You're shattering it all.
And it ain't going to get any more.
The final yield potential is already established.
You're not going to get any more grain if you wait a week.
You're not going to get any more grain if you wait two weeks.
You're going to get grain spilled all over the place because you didn't harvest it.
As an example, this is from 2016.
Like I said, this was the last time this debate came up.
During the Abib inspections on March 8, 2016, on your left-hand side, this is a
field at the head of the Jordan and Jezreel Valleys up in the north.
And it says that it was only in the flowering stages and early milk stages.
So, flowering was Zadox 6, early milk is early 7 on the Zadox.
Most of what we reported seeing was flowering stage and above.
There was some in boot stage right below it.
So, essentially what we're seeing this year is consistent with these pictures on
the left.
But notice what happened in 2016.
That same field, look how golden it got.
One picture was taken March 8, 2016.
The other picture March 20, 2016.
In 12 days, this barley went from flowering Zadox 6 and Zadox early 7 to
Zadox late 8.
It was Abib.
And four days later,
on March 24, it was falling apart in hand.
Becca Biderman went through the field that day with a video and you hear all the
grains crunching under her feet as she's walking through the field.
How quickly can this stuff change?
From 12 days to four more days.
So, 16 days it went from flower in early milk to falling off the stalk.
I remind you, most of what we have is flowering in boot.
Is it going to sit there and wait?
Is it going to wait until April 21st for a potential way sheaf?
No.
It's going to be gone.
Again, this barley grinds into flower.
This was 8.3.
The stuff that we looked at in the fields was at least 8.3 in that field we were in.
Around the golden plot.
To tie the instance between the CareRite code and the Zadox code, grass stage is
Zadox 4 and earlier.
Head stage would be Zadox 5, which is boot when it's starting to come out.
Cotton stage would be when it's flowering, Zadox 6.
Water stage would be like a Zadox 7.1 to 7.9, bringing in milk.
Worm stage would be like a soft dough, like a Zadox 8.1 to 8.5.
There might be some play on that.
And then wax stage appears to be like a Zadox 8.7 to 8.9, and with Carmel being
8.9 to 9.1.
So just to get a comparison between Zadox and the CareRite scale or a farmer scale.
Alright, so here's the big thing.
Is harvesting barley forbidden before the OMER offering?
This used to be the understanding that Nehemia Gordon had.
At some point, first I knew that he switched a bit, was 2016.
But he still has articles claiming that Dude Army 16.9 is referencing to the OMER
offering as the start of the harvest.
He hasn't gone back and changed them yet, though in videos he stated a different
position.
I understand we all have changes in doctrine, and again, I'm not picking on
him for that, but I do think that's a change that he should not have made.
So his stance is that the only thing that's forbidden is the eating of the
barley, not the harvesting of it.
You can harvest it whenever you want, then you offer it on OMER offering day,
and then you can eat it.
And I do not find that anywhere in Scripture.
As I said, I'm going to share several Judaic sources.
I have not found anywhere in Judaic sources anything that ties with that
doctrine.
In fact, I have found Judaic sources all say that there is no harvest to be done
until Wave Sheaf.
So it actually stands against what he has been teaching since 2016.
So let's proceed in this.
2nd Kings 4.42 says,
He said, So a man came and brought this to the man of God.
He brought him the bread of firstfruits.
It was barley, and the full ears of corn is Carmel.
Now, I can sit there and I can make the assumption that, look, this proves the
firstfruits aren't Carmel because the Carmel is separate.
Could be.
But that's a bit of an assumption, and it may not be rightly dividing the
word.
There's nothing that says the firstfruits were aviv, or pars, or anything that says
it was bread of firstfruits.
And then there's also Carmel.
Maybe because the Carmel is separated, because this is Carmel that was just
unprocessed.
So we've got to watch our assumptions.
I don't want to assume anything to misguide myself or anyone else.
I'll bring this one up for that notice, and also for something out of Sanhedrin
12a.
It says,
And it's the verse testifies that he brought him bread of the firstfruits.
Now, lest you say this verse speaks of wheat, which ripens close to the time of
the festival of Shavuot, the verse states barley.
Now, lest you say the incident took place before the Omer offering was sacrificed,
the verse states, give to the people that they may eat.
As they were permitted to eat, it must be that the incident was after the
Omer offering was brought.
Now, this is actually one of the things I've seen brought up and mentioned from
some of the CareRite crew as evidence that all that's restricted is eating.
Well, that's only part of the story.
This does not negate our stance that no harvest is restricted.
This does not say anything to the contrary.
In fact, they're saying this shows that it has to be after the Omer offering because
people are eating.
So it doesn't tell you anything about the harvest.
So you can't use this to say, oh, this proves our way.
Okay,
it's the main concept in here.
So that's their argument is saying, well, they're pitting this against
Deuteronomy 16.9.
And they're saying, well, you can't take Deuteronomy 16.9 literally at what it says
because this appears to say you can reap your harvest and then you bring to sheaf.
Okay, it can be read that way, but is that the proper way to read it?
Is that proper exegesis of what's being stated?
Shouldn't it be line upon line?
Shouldn't it be that we rightly divide the Word and that the Word doesn't disagree
with itself?
And so what we're reading in Leviticus 23 should not conflict with what we read in
Deuteronomy 16.9.
And that what they're both talking about is the selfsame day, that morrow after the
Sabbath, that you begin this count of the seven weeks or the 50 days.
So couldn't we understand that Leviticus 23, when it says harvest the harvest,
isn't talking about you brought everything at home, everything's all been harvested
now, but that when you begin the harvest.
How do you begin the harvest?
With the wave sheaf.
That when you harvest this harvest, you bring a sheaf.
You begin that first of that harvest to the priest.
Is that eisegesis into the text?
Is it a possible, even plausible understanding of the text?
Yes, and I'll tell you that's not only my position, it's the position of Judaism,
as I will show.
Rightly dividing Leviticus 23.
We just read this text, so as I just said there, I believe this shows that the omer
could be what it's talking about.
You harvest the harvest, you're starting the harvest, and when you start the
harvest, it has to be that you bring the sheaf first.
So this is talking about the omer, like I said.
Strong says it's, he numbered it, James Strong in his Hebrew dictionary
numbered it 60-16.
Says it's from 60-14, properly a heap, a sheaf, also an omer or as a dry measure.
I also find that when you go into the Septuagint, in the Greek there,
the word is translated as much as one can grasp.
A handful, a toss of corn, so that's when they're gathering their sheaf,
as much as they can grasp is basically what a sheaf was, a sheaf in the field.
So we have different examples of omers.
We have here in Exodus 16, this is the thing that the Lord commanded.
God had gathered every man according to his eating, an omer for every man,
according to the number of your persons.
And take every man for them which are in his tents, and the children of Israel did
so.
They gathered, some gathered some more, some less, but when they met with an omer,
he that gathered much had nothing over, he that gathered little had no lack.
Everyone had it to an omer.
So how much is an omer?
In this case, omer wasn't a handful of stocks.
This omer was talking about an omer of manna they collected.
And it was a measure, a dry measure.
So in this case, the dry measure, it's enough, it's a man's daily
sustenance, it's his daily bread.
Give us this day our daily bread.
How much is the daily bread?
It is an omer.
Omer of manna was the daily bread that they got for 40 years in the wilderness.
An omer is not a whole lot.
So again, we come back to Leviticus, what does it require of us?
It requires an omer.
It's not a whole lot.
We see on Preparation Day, they were given two omers for one man, because it's the
bread of two days.
Because they were going to have it for them, they were going to bake it,
boil it, make manna donuts, do whatever they're doing with it, and lay it up for
Sabbath.
Because on Sabbath, there would be none, and it would all be ready, made on
Preparation Day.
He goes on to say, an omer is a tenth part of an ephah.
So it's telling you how much it is.
It's a dry measure.
On the other hand, we also have omer, in Deuteronomy 24, 19, when you cut down
your harvest in your field, and you've forgotten an omer, as the Hebrew behind
here, in the field, you shall not go back again to fetch it.
It's not saying they had bowls of flour sitting in the field.
This is talking about the gathering the handful, tying it off, and leaving it
there to dry.
If you forgot an omer in the field, don't go back to fetch it.
Let the stranger, the widow, the orphan, whatever, come eat it.
Okay?
But this is what Deuteronomy 24 is referencing.
This is the same type of thing we see in Ruth.
Let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheafs.
She wasn't asking, let me go along your bowls of flour, your bags of flour.
It was the sheafs that were standing there in the field.
So we see that she did sit beside the reapers, and he reached her parched corn,
she ate.
Let her glean even among the sheafs.
So she's there, having parched corn amongst the sheafs.
And the sheafs, again, are not flour, it's just stacks of stalks.
So let's look at some Judaic understanding of Leviticus 23, 10-14.
I've got a big series of stuff here.
Philo, again, first century Jew, in his Special Laws 2, says, there is also
the festival on the day of the Paschal Feast, which exceeds the first day,
which is named the sheaf, from which takes place on it.
For the sheaf is brought to the altar as a first fruit, both of the country,
in which the nation has received it for its own.
Also of the whole land is to be an offering, both for the nation separately,
also the common one for the whole race of mankind.
In other words, he's saying, this offering is a national offering.
The Omer offering... that's not for you to ask.
Was there 12 Omers, one for every tribe?
Was there thousands of Omers, one for every farmer?
There was one Omer offering of Leviticus 23, 10, When ye be coming to the land,
and ye harvest its harvest, ye bring an Omer to the free.
And it wasn't to individuals to bring an Omer.
This was a national offering for the whole of the people.
In Ein Yerkov, Glick Addiction, Rosh Hashanah 1, 9, says we are taught in
a Beretha, that Ra of Judah, taught in the name of Ra Akiba.
Why does the Torah command, Leviticus 23, 10, the sheaf of the first fruits to be
brought on the Passover?
Because Passover is a season when judgment is passed with respect to grain.
And the Holy One, praise be He, said, Offer before me the first sheaf of
grain on Passover, so that the grain on the fields may be blessed.
Okay, now let me break that down for you.
He's saying that the first sheaf of grain is offered Passover, Passover week.
So this is referencing, again, the Wave Sheaf Day.
But He says it's done, so the grain in the fields may be blessed.
Okay, if the interpretation of Leviticus 23 says you harvest everything,
then you do the offering.
This makes no sense.
There is no grain in the fields to be blessed.
Sifra, Yimor, Section 10.3, You reap its harvest, the first of your harvest.
It must be the first of all that is harvested.
Okay, so the Omer has to be the first of all that is harvested.
Rashi, on Leviticus 23.10, says, The first fruits of your harvest.
This means that it, the Omer, shall be the first thing to be harvested.
Okay, so you're going to keep hearing this over and over again.
The first thing that's harvested is the Omer.
Siftei Chachamim, The first of the harvest, i.e., The Jews may not reap their
fields until the Omer is reaped first, before of all everything else that is
being reaped.
Rashi is not saying that the first fruit of your harvest means you should only
bring an Omer only from the first of your harvest, and not from the end or the
middle of the harvest.
He's saying,
when Rashi says it must be the first thing harvested, it doesn't mean that Rashi is
only concerned with when that Omer is offered, or when that Omer is taken.
He said that it has to be the first part before anything else is reaped.
Sanhedrin 11b, The sage is taught in a bereithah, Tosefta Tutu, The court may
intercalate the year for three matters, the ripening of the grain, if it is not
yet time for the barley to ripen, for the fruit of the trees, if they have
not yet ripened, and for the equinox, to ensure that the autumnal equinox will
precede Sukkot.
If two of these concerns apply, the court intercalates the year,
even if the third factor does not apply.
But only for one of them, the court does not intercalate the year.
The bereithah continues, When the ripening of the grain is one of the concerns,
everyone is happy.
Since the grain is not yet ripe, the people do not mind waiting an extra
month for Nisan.
If the grain is already riped, however, the extra month would simply
prolong the period during which the grain may not be eaten, due to the prohibition
of the new crop, as the new crop may be harvested and eaten only after the
sacrifice of the Omer offering on the 16th of Nisan.
So not only it cannot be eaten until then, it cannot be harvested until then,
according to the bereithah, taught by the sages.
Rashi in Leviticus 23.10 says, the tenth part of Ifa, this is the name.
Omer has not the meaning of a sheaf, as it is the meaning of the word in
Deuteronomy 24.19, but it denotes a certain measure.
We find in Exodus 12.19 they did measure it with the Omer.
The debate comes up about what is an Omer, were they waving a stack of barley,
or were they waving a bowl of flour?
All in all, it really makes little difference in deciding how the year
starts.
So I will not spend much time on that today.
I've discussed that in times past.
Menachot 7db.11 says, the Mishnah further teaches with regard to the five grains
that it is prohibited to reap them prior to the Omer offering.
It is prohibited to reap them prior to the Omer offering.
Not just the Omer reaping, the Omer offering.
But the barley harvest can't start until then.
I'll try to go through these a little quicker here.
There's much material.
Menachot 71a.10 says, Gamara, with regard to the ruling of the Mishnah that one may
reap a crop that grows in an irrigated field in the valleys, the Gamara cites
that which is taught in the Beretta.
Rav bin Yamin says that one verse states, When you come into the land, I give you
and reap its harvest, and you shall bring the Omer.
Leviticus 23.10.
This verse indicates that one may reap his grain before bringing the Omer offering,
but it's also written in the continuation of the same verse, the first fruits of
your harvest to the priest, from which it may be inferred that the Omer is brought
from the first reaped grain.
So here's where some of the discussion starts coming in of what's happening with
this.
Menachot 72a.
The Mishnah teaches one may reap crops prior to the Omer due to potential damage
to saplings growing along the crops or due to the place of mourning to create room
for these consoling the mourners who had blessed them in their return from the
cemetery and due to the need to create room for students to study, this failure
would lead to the dereliction of Torah study in the study hall.
The Gamara asks then, what is one reason permitted to reap prior to Omer offering
in these instances?
Well, they say that you can bring your sheep or your first fruits before the
harvest of the priest.
The use of the term your harvest indicates the Omer offering reaping must precede any
personal harvest.
So they're coming to the reasons of why certain people might be able to reap if
it's going to cause harm to this or harm to that.
But the rule that they know is you cannot reap before the Omer offering.
Mishneh Torah, Daily Offerings and Additional Offerings, Psalm 713.
It is forbidden to reap any one of the five kinds of grains in Eretz,
Israel.
Eretz is just the word for land or earth.
Eretz, Israel, before the reaping of the Omer, the sheaf of the wave offering,
as it is written, is the first of your harvest.
Leviticus 23.10, meaning that it should be the first of all that's harvested.
Sabbath, Epistle, First Gate, beginning of the year.
When we investigate the Torah's year, we find written, this month shall be for
you the beginning of the month, Exodus 12.2.
So it is the first of the month of the year.
It is also written, this day you depart in the month of ripening.
Notice the way they translate Aviv as ripening.
Observe the month of ripening, Deuteronomy 16.1.
The explanation is Israel counts by lunar months, and the months in which the barley
ripens in the land of Israel is the first of the year's months.
The beginning of the month is the beginning of the year whether Equinox has
passed or not.
In order to perform the weaving of the Omer, the court should ensure that the
Passover will occur when the barley has ripened.
That the Passover will occur when the barley has ripened.
What does ripen mean?
Ripen means Aviv.
Notice that.
Most years the ripening coincides with the Equinox.
Sometimes they are separated slightly because of advanced rain or because of
drought.
Sefer HaChinok says this, I'm going to go to the blue.
This sacrifice of the Omer is called the offering of firstfruits.
It is a hint to this.
When he may be blessed, says, you shall bring an offering of the firstfruits to
the Lord, new, roasted, with fire.
So, here you are seeing they are saying that the Omer offering, the national Omer
offering, is not Carmel, but it's Aviv, roasted with fire.
Leviticus 2.14 So the standard that Nehemia Gordon has set, that is nowhere
found in scripture, is shown here in this case, that they are saying it's Aviv.
Melechot 64b, Gamara asks, what is the reason the barley reaped for the Omer meal
should be ideally brought from the fields approximate to Jerusalem?
Gamara answers, if you wish us to say this, verse 8, if you bring a meal
offering the firstfruits to your Lord, you shall bring for the meal offering the
firstfruits, grain in the air, parched with fire, even groats of the
fresh air.
Carmel, Leviticus 2.14 This indicates that the grain should be soft and fresh.
Consequently, if it was brought from close by, not from a place where it might become
stale and hardened during a long journey.
Once again, I don't have it in here.
I was going to include it in another section on what do the writings say about
how far they gathered it from, and I can show they went all the way
basically over by Tel Aviv and other places where they've noticed that they had
grabbed the wave sheaf from.
So it's not restricted to the area of Jerusalem.
There are, once again, Leviticus says when you come into the land.
Going to some other stuff here.
Minicodes 71a, Rav Yoshia said, Where do we derive, you ask, the source
that has written, you shall bring a meal offering of the firstfruits to the Lord,
you shall bring a meal offering of the firstfruits, grain in the air,
parched with fire, even groats from the fresh air.
Cannot one learn from here by inference that although the Omer offering must be
fully formed grain, that there is less developed grain at an earlier stage that
is not grain in the air, grain that may not be used for the Omer offering,
but is nevertheless permitted by the Omer.
In other words, what he's saying is when they're doing the Omer offering,
they're calling the Aviv fully formed grain, and at the same time there may be
in the field grain that may be younger than that, that cannot be used for the
Omer offering, because the Omer offering has to be at minimum Aviv.
There could be other grain that's younger that now is permitted, once you offer the
Omer, now you can cut that grain.
In other words, everything doesn't have to be Aviv to be harvestable.
Now it's permitted, once you've done the Omer, you can have lesser grain.
They don't want it that old when they're cutting fodder for their animals,
so now you can even cut it for your animals.
But it has to be that you've offered the Omer first.
Now again, what's he mean by barley ripens?
Regarding the Aviv state of barley, Rashi in Exodus 9.31 writes, it has
already ripened, and it's standing in its stalks, and they have been broken and have
fallen.
So when he's describing the barley that's in the air in Egypt, he says it's already
ripened.
And how did they get destroyed?
It was standing in the stalks, the stalks broke, and it fell,
the same thing we saw earlier.
So Rashi says, Aviv barley is already ripened.
The Scriptures say that it's already ripened, because otherwise you wouldn't be
harvesting it, you wouldn't be parching it, you wouldn't be making it into flour
and offering it.
Now rightly dividing, Deuteronomy 16.9.
Okay, how do these two agree with each other?
The only way that these two agree with each other rightfully is if they're
talking about the self same day.
That the wave sheaf day, the Sunday during Unleavened Bread, or in the case of the
Pharisees, the 16th day of the month, that that self same day they offer the
Omer and they begin the count to Shavuot, to Pentecost.
And that's when the harvest begins, that's when the sickle is put to the
grain, the Omer is the first thing offered that day.
These two verses harmonize with that.
If you take a different position, there is no harmony, there is discord
between the two verses.
And discord with all of the Judaic sources, as we've already looked at and
will continue to look at here.
So here's the Judaic understanding of 16.9.
Nehemia Gordon, again, I quoted this earlier, he says the sickle commences on
the standing grain on Sunday during Passover, two weeks at the beginning.
So he's saying that this sickle commencing upon the grain is reference to the reaping
of the Omer, and it happens during Unleavened Bread.
In other words, you can't reap the Omer until Unleavened Bread.
So this is what he understood before.
And apparently, though he has not changed his article, he has shifted on that.
Josephus, Flavius Josephus, first century Jew, in his book Antiquities of the Jews,
he's a Jewish historian, he says, they offer the first fruits of their
barley, and that and the man are following.
Take a handful of the ears, they dry them, they beat them small, they purge the
barley from the bran, they then bring one-tenth deal to the altar to God.
Casting the handful upon the fire, they leave the rest for the use of the
priest.
And, notice this, after this, it is that they may publicly or privately reap their
harvest.
After this, after the Omer is offered, after the first fruits are offered,
now you can publicly or privately reap the harvest.
First century witness.
Okay, Menachot 66a, you should count seven weeks, start to count seven weeks when the
sickle is first put to the standing grain.
Again, I want to recognize this is talking about standing grain.
It ain't, you harvested all your harvest, the way Leviticus 23 is being read,
and now you take an Omer of that, no.
You start with standing grain, that grain still has to be on the stalk,
in the ground.
On wave sheaf day.
And that's where the harvest begins.
Therefore, the verse says, seven weeks you shall number for you from the time the
sickle is first put to the standing grain.
You shall begin to number seven weeks.
Deuteronomy 69.
This verse indicates that the counting should commence upon the reaping of the
grain for the Omer offering.
If one would just read this verse, as from the time the sickle is first put
to the standing grain, you should begin to number.
One might have thought that one can harvest and count and then bring the Omer
offering whenever he wishes.
Therefore, the other verse, Leviticus, states, from the day that you have brought
the sheaf of the waving, you shall number fifty days, which indicates that the
counting should start on the day the Omer offering is brought.
In other words, they harmonized Deuteronomy 16 and Leviticus 23 right here
in Melchot 66a.
It's the same way we harmonize it today.
Menachot 71a-4 says rather, Shemuel said that this halakha was derived from a verse
discussing the counting of the Omer.
Seven weeks you shall number for you.
From the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain, you should begin to
number seven weeks.
Deuteronomy 16-9.
Can one not learn from here by inference that there was grain at an earlier stage
that cannot be cut with the sickle, which nevertheless is permitted by the
Omer offering?
This description applies to grain that has taken root.
The Gemara rejects this claim as well.
Perhaps the inference is to grain at an earlier stage that cannot be cut with a
sickle but is actually fodder, produce that has grown stalks but is not
yet ripe.
So this is much like the other one I read earlier, which talks about aviv is fully
mature, that's the time to sickle it, but there could be other younger barley
that now, once you do the Omer offering, now you can even harvest the younger
barley.
Your choice.
Menachot 71a, 5.
Rabbi Yitzhak said one can derive that grain that has taken root is permitted by
the Omer offering from the term the standing grain.
Deuteronomy 16-9.
Can not one learn from here by inference that there is grain that is too soft and
unable to stand, which may not be used for the Omer offering, yet is permitted by the
Omer?
The Gemara rejects this claim as well.
Perhaps the inference is to grain that is unstable to stand but is actually soft
grain like that of a marsh that's grown somewhat but is still soft enough that it
bends rather than stands.
So again, they get into a lot of nitpicky stuff, but they're saying that this wave
sheaf has to come from standing grain.
Yes, the wheat ripens around Shavuot, that's why Shavuot is the feast of the
first fruits of the wheat harvest.
In Bava Metzia 87b6, the Gemara answers, the matter is derived by means of a verbal
analogy between the term standing, written here, and the term standing
written elsewhere.
It's written, when you come into your neighbor's standing grain, Deuteronomy
23-26, here it's written with regard to the harvesting of barley for the Omer
offering, seven weeks you shall count for yourself in the time the sickle is first
put to the standing grain.
So just as there, in the verse referring to the harvesting of the Omer,
is the owner of standing grain who is obligated in the mitzvah of Halah,
the barley is one of the five grains, so here, with regard to a laborer
discussing the standing grain, whose owner is obligated in the mitzvah of
Halah.
Targum.
I've talked about the Targum in times past.
Targums are Aramaic translations, or paraphrases of the scriptures,
essentially, that they did after the Babylonian captivity coming back into the
land.
Targum Yonathan, Deuteronomy 69, reads, seven weeks number to you from the
time when you begin to put the sickle to the harvest of the field after the reaping
of the Omer, you shall begin to number the seven weeks.
So, how is he understanding it?
He's understanding the same harmony of Leviticus 23 in Deuteronomy 16 that we're
understanding, that you begin to count after you put the sickle to the harvest of
the field, after you reap the Omer, then you begin to number your seven weeks.
So the Omer is the first thing reaped, then you begin your harvest, and it
happens, that's when you begin your seven weeks count.
Sepharimor, chapter 12, 6, from the day that you bring, you shall count,
from the day that you bring, you shall count.
He says, I might think that he can bring the Omer and count and harvest whenever he
wished.
Therefore it is written, Deuteronomy 16, 9, from the time you put the sickle to the
standing grain, you shall begin to count.
So, what they're going through is saying, you know, someone might misinterpret this
and say you can harvest whenever you want, but therefore, it spells it out here in
Deuteronomy 16, 9, it says, no, no, no, you harvest now and begin to
count.
Wave sheaf day is the same day.
And he goes through that more in here.
Rebbeinu bah-yah, Deuteronomy 16, 9, you are to start the count from the
time the sickle began cutting on the standing crop.
This teaches that cutting the barley and beginning the count of the seven weeks is
to occur simultaneously.
So the cutting of the barley, the start of the harvest, begins the same time the
count of the seven weeks.
Simultaneous.
Goes into more there, I won't spend time reading it all today.
Sephorno on Deuteronomy 16, 9, 1, it says in the standing barley,
which is to serve as an Omer offering.
We already know from Exodus 9, 31 that the barley crop ripens in spring.
Seven weeks elapse between the beginning of the barley harvest and that of the
wheat harvest.
Hence, you are to count these seven weeks.
That's the seven weeks that you have to basically wrap up your barley harvest.
And then start your harvest of your wheat.
Siftei ha-kamim says from the time that the Omer is cut, i.e., it does not depend
on the beginning of the harvest, but rather upon the time that the Omer is
cut.
But since the harvest begins with the Omer, the scripture says from the time the
sickle begins felling the standing grain.
The harvest begins with the Omer.
And that's the time to start counting.
Based on biblical timing, this is, again, another Judaic source, but this was
Kerite, Nehemia Gordon, Kerite Corner Newsletter 205 from March 27, 2005.
He says, based on biblical timing, Leviticus 23, 10, Deuteronomy 16,
9, the day of the wave sheaf offering marks the beginning of the barley harvest
when the sickle begins upon the standing grain.
Deuteronomy 16, 9.
The wave sheaf offering itself consists of the first sheaf harvested with a sickle
from the barley harvest.
Amen.
I agree.
And I desire that he would come back and agree with himself here as well.
Because this is more on point.
Not a more on point.
So Ruth.
Let's look at it scripturally as well.
In Ruth chapter 1, we see Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her
daughter-in-law, was with her.
They returned out of the country of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem, the house of
bread, at the beginning of the barley harvest.
So here they are at the start of the barley harvest, and what happens?
Boaz says unto her, while she's out there, because she's out gleaning in the fields,
Boaz says unto her, at mealtime, come here, eat of the bread, dip your
morsel in the vinegar.
And she sat beside the reapers, and he reached her parched grain,
and she ate, and was sufficed.
Parched grain is referenced to Aviv.
Kalui.
You don't parch Carmel.
You can't parch anything more immature than Aviv.
So he's giving her parched grain, here in the beginning of the harvest.
So that means they're harvesting Aviv, for one.
And two, she ate it.
So what does that tell us of this harvest?
That tells us that the Omer offering had to have happened, even by the Kirite rule
of you can't eat until.
Because she's eating the parched barley.
Ruth 2, 15-18, when she was risen up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men,
saying, Let her glean even among the sheafs, reproach her not, for let fall
also some of the handfuls of purpose for her.
Leave them, that she may glean them, and rebuke her not.
So she gleaned in the field, until even, and beat out, that which she had gleaned,
and she took it up, and she went to the city, and her mother-in-law saw what she
had gleaned, she brought forth, gave to her that which she had reserved,
after she was sufficed.
So here again, they're eating more of this barley that they're harvesting,
that they're gleaning.
And here's what I have, I'm full, you can eat more.
So she's feeding herself, and feeding her mother-in-law, with barley of that
harvest.
Her mother-in-law said to her, where have you gleaned today, and where
did you work?
Blessed be he that did take knowledge of you.
And she showed her mother-in-law with whom she had worked.
The man's name who I worked with today is Boaz.
And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, Blessed be the Lord, who has not left His
kindness to the living and to the dead, left off His kindness to the living and to
the dead.
Naomi said to her, the man is of near kin to us, he's one of our nest kinsmen.
So Ruth the Moabite said to me also, that I should keep fast by his young men
until they have ended all the harvest.
Naomi said unto Ruth, her daughter-in-law, It's good, my daughter, that you go out
with his maidens, that they meet you not in any inner field.
So she kept fast by the maidens of Boaz, to glean to the end of the barley harvest,
and of the wheat harvest, and dwelt with her mother-in-law.
Notice the barley harvest wasn't a one-day event, it wasn't a two-day event,
it was a matter of time, even here, just harvesting Boaz's field.
So I can sit there and say, okay, logically, Boaz did not have the minimum
size field.
He definitely had more than 24 square meters going on here that took this long
to harvest and glean what's going on.
So it sounds like Boaz did have a sizable field, or fields, that he was there,
and it took time to harvest all this barley.
And not just the barley, but also the wheat harvest, yes.
So basically, she's there coming in at Passover time, through Pentecost,
and thereafter, with the wheat harvest.
Now another example is looking here in the book of Joshua.
Thank you all for your patience with this, by the way, we are getting closer to done.
That's 130 slides of the 160, so only about 30 left, so we're going good.
So then to the interest in the Promised Land.
So the first Passover in the land happened in Joshua chapter 5, 10-12.
The children of Israel in Kempt and Gilgal, they kept the Passover on the 14th
day of the month, at even in the plains of Jericho.
They ate the produce of the land on the next day after the Passover.
Now note, when they're talking about the Passover, they're talking about the
Passover sacrifice.
That's why it says, they kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month, Ba'arev.
It's talking about the time of the sacrifice.
And then the next day after the Passover, Mimacharot HaPesach, is talking about the
15th.
And we'll show that here in a moment.
But on that day, the 15th, they ate unleavened cakes and parched grain in the
same day.
And the manna ceased that day after they had eaten the produce of the land.
Neither had the children of Israel manna anymore, and they ate the fruit of the
land of Canaan that year.
So what we have happened is that they kept the Passover, the Pesach, on the 14th day
of the month.
As I said, Ba'arev, which is the end of the 14th, it's the same time that's
described in Exodus as the start of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
And they ate of the... the King James says old corn.
The Hebrew word is avior.
It does not mean old corn.
There's nothing about it that means old.
In fact, because we see that they ate parched.
Parched grain is never going to be old grain.
Parched grain would be moldy grain.
They wouldn't eat that.
Parched grain indicates it was new.
And they did this on Mimach HaRab HaPesach, the morrow after the Passover.
So it says... this phrase, the morrow after the Passover, is only used two
places in Scripture.
It's here in Joshua 5.11.
It's in Numbers 33.3.
And it's the exact same phrase not only here in English, but it's also in Hebrew.
It's the Mimach HaRab HaPesach.
And what we see from Numbers 33.3, because it defines it doubly.
It says they departed Ramses in the first month on the fifteenth day of the first
month on the morrow after the Passover.
The children of Israel went out without a high hand.
Hebrew often speaks in doublets.
It'll say the same thing twice in just different words to establish what it's
saying.
So what Numbers 33.3 is saying, on the one hand, they're saying they
departed Ramses in the first month on the fifteenth day of the first month.
In other words, the children of Israel went out without a high hand in the sight
of all the Egyptians on the morrow after the Passover.
It's two phrases meaning the same thing.
They left Egypt on the fifteenth day of the first month.
The fifteenth day of the first month is Mimach HaRab HaPesach.
So what happened, we know they crossed the Jordan on the tenth day of the month,
Joshua 4.19.
They came and kept the Passover and then they ate the produce of the land.
And we know that the Omer was offered because they were doing a precise
fulfillment of Leviticus 23.10-14.
Leviticus 10-14
They ate parched grain on that selfsame day, and therefore, and we see that he was
also blessed throughout it all.
So like I said, prescription and description of it being fulfilled.
Prescription you shall eat neither bread nor parched grain nor fresh airs into the
selfsame day.
They did eat the produce, unleavened cakes, and parched grain in the selfsame
day.
Even the phrase, in the selfsame day, is there.
You can look at it this way.
Bread, parched, you will not eat until this very day.
One, two, three, four.
And they ate, three, you will not eat.
And they ate, bread, would be the matzo, parched, parched, on this very day,
on this very day.
It's a direct fulfillment of Leviticus 23.
As I said, the word translated in the King James is old corn, it's the Hebrew word
avior.
It just means grain, produce, offering.
There's nothing in it that means old.
That's a false translation in there that shouldn't have been stated.
And looking at that idea, consider this.
If they were able to eat the produce at any time, why didn't they eat it in the
selfsame They had access to it back on the 10th.
They crossed the Jordan, they're there, but they didn't eat produce.
Not only did they not eat produce, manna was still being given.
Why was God still supplying manna if they were free to eat the produce at any point
in time?
So we see six days that they're in the land, the 10th, the 11th, the 12th,
the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th, that they were there before they ate the
produce of the land.
Why wait if they were free to eat it at any point in time?
They weren't.
They had to do it when the Omer was offered.
Yeah, nice.
And Eve did get it right.
So another important thing to recognize here is that they ate the parched.
Now what day did we say this was?
It's the next day after the Passover.
The Passover is talking about the sacrifice.
The sacrifice happens on the 14th.
The next day, therefore, is the 15th.
Here they are.
They've just spent 40 years eating manna.
They get their first chance to delve into grain.
And they're going to take the time...
Let's not grab the fresh stuff we can just eat.
Let's grab the stuff we've got to parch.
Obviously, what they were eating was parched grain, because that's what was
available, and it was the 15th day of their first month.
So, now, if it was the 15th day of the first month, what was the state of the
barley two weeks earlier?
Three weeks earlier?
When the Karaites, if they existed in that day and age, would have gone and done a
barley hunt and decided the year started.
We find here that they were eating aviv during unleavened bread.
They were eating aviv on wave sheaf day.
It wasn't caramel.
It was aviv that they were eating.
Now, Nehemia Gordon himself will tell you that aviv, happening there in Joshua,
was fresh grain.
He says, we know from several passengers that barley, which is in the state of
aviv, has not completely ripened, but is ripened enough so its seeds can be
eaten parched in fire.
And it can be made into flour, and so, therefore, it's harvestable.
But parched barley was a commonly eaten food in ancient Israel.
You'll find it throughout scriptures.
It's mentioned in numerous passages, he says, in the Hebrew Bible, aviv,
parched, kalui in the fire, Leviticus 2.14, or abbreviated form, just as
parched, kalui or kali, Leviticus 23.14, Joshua 5.11, 1 Samuel 17.17, 1 Samuel
25.18, 2 Samuel 17.28, Ruth 2.14, which we just saw.
But he says, while still early in its development, barley has not yet produced
large enough and firm enough seeds to produce food through parching.
This early in its development, which would be pre-aviv, when the head has
just come out of the shaft, so it's five into six, the seeds have not substantial
enough to produce any food.
At a later stage, the seeds have grown in size and have filled with liquid,
Zadok 7, at which point the seeds would just shrivel up when parched and only
produce empty skins.
Over time, the liquid is replaced with dry material, and when enough dry material is
amassed, the seeds will be able to yield barley parched in fire.
I agree.
Again, in his article on the truth about Shavuot from Nehemiah's Law, he says
parched grain, in Hebrew, kali, refers to the nearly ripe grain that is
still slightly moist.
Let me pause here for a second and remind you that not only do I state it,
but Rashi and several other Judaic sources say that aviv is ripe grain.
It's already ripe grain.
The farmers would harvest this...
wait a second...
The farmers would harvest this, but he just said barley is not... well,
he didn't just say it, but he says over and over in other places that barley is
not harvestable in two to three weeks after aviv, but here they're harvesting
aviv.
So we see it here.
The farmers would harvest this moist grain early and parch it in the fire to make it
crunchy and delicious.
Parched grain can only come from a freshly harvested crop, not from old grain.
Joshua 5.11 says the Israelites ate parched grain on the Mauer of the Passover
on the morning of the 15th day of the first Hebrew month.
The unleavened bread could theoretically have come from old grain, as Ibn Ezra
suggested, but the parched grain had to be new grain.
Year-old moist grain would go bad, so parched grain can only be new grain
from that year's harvest.
This new crop would be forbidden to eat until the waving of the Omer, which took
place on the Mauer of the Passover, which Ibn Ezra knew from Numbers 33.3 is
the morning of the 15th day of the month.
So, Joshua 5.
That parched grain is aviv.
It's the 15th day of the month, and the barley that these hungry children
of Israel had been waiting to eat, something different from manna,
the barley that they eat is parched.
Sounds to me like there wasn't Carmel available.
It was aviv.
And it was the 15th day of the month.
So if it was aviv on the 15th day of the month, it was not aviv two plus weeks
earlier at the last couple days of the 12th month.
Just like this year.
Well, this year we actually had some aviv in the last days of the month,
so we're actually more advanced this year than what's happening in the year at the
end of the land.
So the witnesses we saw to the new year, to the biblical summer of 2019,
as remember there's two seasons.
There's summer and there's winter.
So when Nisan begins, when aviv begins, it's the start of summer.
So we're in summer.
And the witnesses that we saw, Exodus 9.31 says the flax and the barley
were in the air, and the barley was in the air, the flax was in bloom.
Have we seen the flax in bloom?
Yes, we have seen the flax in bloom.
Becca Biderman posted back on March 8th that the flax is now just beginning to
appear in the areas that do not qualify as hot zones.
So she's seen it in all her years that are hot zones.
Places that are not hot zones, it's there.
Two weeks our hills in Galilee are going to be pink with very tall blooming flax.
Isn't it interesting?
The flax in the north is keeping time with the barley in the south.
Supernatural.
Becca lives up in the north, she lives by the Galilee.
And so she got the flax from up there.
I also had found flax, took a picture of it, I grabbed one hand at the top,
hey, this is flax.
And then we're showing how you can pull on it, how strong the stem is of it.
You know, it's going to make linen out of.
So is the flax ready?
Yes, the flax is there.
Flax is in bloom.
Song of Solomon 2.11-13 says for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and
gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of the birds has
come, the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land, the fig tree puts forth
her green figs, the vines with a tender grape will give a good smell, arise my
love, my fair one, come away.
So what do we see?
We got the vines putting forth their leaves, the grapes are seen, the figs are
seen, the lambs are plentiful.
I shared, this is one that Brian Convery had captured down at Beersheba.
I grabbed several pictures out of Raim.
And then even before I went down there, I got some examples from the people who
are doing Jacob sheep, where they already started lambing in February.
The birds are plentiful.
Here's the storks making their migration north.
Barley is plentiful.
Again, the minimal field is 24 square meters.
Our golden plot was 400 square meters.
Plentiful.
There's plenty of barley all around, ready to harvest.
Todd's blooming.
Bloom where you're planted.
As I said in the wrap-up of the Abib report on March 6th, I said, sum it all
up, that we have witnessed barley as young as emerging boot stage, Zadox 5,
on through Aviv, Zadox 8.
We have seen a bunch of lambs.
We have seen the white storks.
We have seen swallows in swift in their end-of-winter migrations.
I didn't include there that we saw the grapes, and we saw the figs, and these
things.
So what does all this mean?
It means that winter is ended.
Biblical summer is beginning.
Again, there's only two seasons in Scripture.
The heavy rains have stopped.
Yes, there's going to be occasional rains.
It doesn't mean that the winter is still happening.
I continued in the report.
I said there are seven weeks to complete the barley harvest, from Omer Offering Day
to Pentecost.
From now, that was March 6th, so ten days ago, I said from that day until Omer
Offering is two and a half weeks.
Eighteen days at that point.
Now we're down to eight days.
But I said we have eighteen more days before the harvest begins, and then
another seven weeks after that to complete it.
There on March 6th, we have barley that was ready right then for an Omer Offering.
More than enough.
Again, 24 square meters, minimal field, versus 400 square meters that was in our
field.
And that was just a golden plot.
There was the field beyond that.
And all that field is harvestable now.
I said in eighteen days at Omer Offering, when the harvest begins, Leviticus 23,
Deuteronomy 16, we'll have a whole lot more than we saw when we were there a week
ago.
Then within the seven weeks of the harvest, all the rest of the barley land
is going to mature to harvest.
The youngest we saw was boot stage.
That's going to mature enough within the next seven weeks.
Well, eight weeks, because we've got eight days until that, then seven weeks from
there.
So in the next eight-plus weeks, all the barley in the land is going to be
harvestable to complete the barley harvest.
As I said, if one waits another lunar month to start the year, then the harvest
is put off for six and a half weeks from now.
That means much of the barley across the land would be lost.
The current of eave would be long gone.
The various dough, milk, and flowering barley would be dead in the field.
Most of the barley simply cannot wait the long.
It would just go to seed and be gone.
Now, I realize that this concept has been... several people have balked at it,
and said, no, no, because you can harvest whenever you want.
Again, I don't find that Scripture allows that.
I don't find it anywhere in Scripture that it allows such a thing that you can
harvest whenever you want.
I don't find Judaic interpretation allows that.
They likewise say, Omer is the first thing to be offered, first thing to be cut,
and then you can cut the rest of the harvest.
First century witness, Josephus, right in there, who's there with the
temple, who sees how it operates, says this is how it was.
Now, in spite of this being our position, and a funny thing, let me remind you too,
on that, how it only took twelve days to go from flowering and early milk to aviv.
We're seeing boot of the youngest flowering as the main, and we had eighteen
days at that point.
This took twelve.
The majority of everything is going to be ready.
And you got seven weeks after that.
Now, what I find interesting is that when the shoe was on the other foot,
in the year 2005,
Nehemia had made a similar claim that I make there at the end of my report.
Because in 2005, Nehemia had declared aviv.
Brian Convery of Aviva God and his search crew that year declared no the thirteenth
month.
And we got to wait a month.
So it's just the opposite of what we're having this year and what we had in 2016.
But part of Nehemia's challenge to Brian Convery that year was this.
I challenge these people to come back to Israel and show me one field of wild
barley anywhere in the country which has reached harvestable maturity according to
their time frame without shattering.
If they are right, there will be fields of wild barley on April 24th, the day of
waysheaf according to their false reckoning, which will be harvest-ripe that
will not have shattered.
I challenge them to come to Israel to harvest this barley with a sickle and show
me that this is somehow more valid than the barley grown in the Judean desert of
the Jordan Valley.
So, again, we see what his standard was in 2005, that it has to be sickle-ready on
waysheaf day and that's when the harvest has to begin.
So he is arguing in 2005 you can't delay this a month because the barley is going
to shatter the barley is going to fall down.
If you try to sickle-harvest it, it's going to shatter if you wait until
April 24th.
I'll make the same argument and the same challenge today.
If you're waiting a month as you are waiting a month, that barley is going to
be gone.
It will have gone to seed.
You can't harvest it whenever you want.
The Torah and the sages in agreement with the Torah say you cannot harvest until
waysheaf.
It's simply how it is.
Here's what happened again.
If they waited four more days it went to seed.
It's falling off the heads.
Shattering.
So that is it.
Please think on these things.
Pray on these things.
I'm not teaching these things for division.
In fact, I'm teaching these things that there could be unity.
That people would most importantly be unified with our Father and that walk in
line with the light of the Scriptures.
And that there be love amongst each other even if we have disagreements on these
things.
That we still walk in love and not be mud-slinging.
So please prayerfully consider these things.
If you're in opposition to the things I presented please... I pray you that you
take time to pray about it.
And chew on these things.
And maybe lay them up in your heart.
You may not come to a different understanding this year perhaps maybe
years down the road.
But ponder these things.
And don't be hard-hearted on them.
Don't be stiff-necked.
I continue as a student of the Word a student of the land myself.
And I'll continue to grow in grace and knowledge of my Lord Jesus Christ and
understanding of His Word and understanding how these things operate.
And I pray to be pliable in His hands in these things and that we're all pliable in
His hands in these things.
Again, if you guys have any questions on these things or things you'd like to see I
do plan to make much of the stuff available article format as well because I
know there's so many questions.
We are going to have this up on YouTube, up on our channel, by tomorrow and it'll
be ready for you to be able to share it from there.
As far as Passover, we're looking at Passover the 14th is going to be starting
the evening of Thursday March 21st.
This coming Thursday, March 24th will be the start of the 14th so Thursday to
Friday will be the... Thursday sunset to Friday sunset will be the 14th.
The 15th will begin and coincide with the Sabbath.
Friday sunset to Saturday sunset will be the 15th.
Again, any questions on these things, you can reach me Brian, B-R-I-A-N,
at totw.org or if you want to contact me, Ken, and Ron on these things and include
them as well, you can use info, I-N-F-O, at totw.org or contact me on
Facebook, on our group, or personally.
Thank you guys very much for joining me and thank you for your patience.
I know it's been a long message.
I appreciate your patience.