Reckoning time should be a simple subject, shouldn’t it? Well, it’s much more complicated than we might think. In our modern western world, we use the Gregorian calendar to count off twelve months of a varying number of twenty-four hour days, many named after pagan deities. In this time system, days begin and end at midnight, 12:00AM. We use this system daily and it is easy to assume that this is all there is and that anything else is unnecessary. In fact, this calendar system isn’t even that old, coming into use in America only shortly before our independence in 1752, though it was in use in other parts of the world as early as 1582. This calendar replaced the Julian calendar that had a flaw in that it calculated a year as exactly 365.25 days when a year is closer to 365.2425 days (actually 365.2422 days). This difference allows the seasons to drift through the year and given enough time Summer would eventually be in December in the northern hemisphere. We use this system daily without a second thought; it’s just how things work. There are other calendars in use around the world such as the Chinese calendar, the Islamic calendar and the Hebrew/Jewish calendar, just to name a few.
In the Bible, we see references to dates such as “The Passover to the LORD begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month.” This is from Leviticus 23:5. First, what is this “first month” spoken of? Is it January? It can’t be that because the first calendar to use such a system was the Julian and it was instituted in 46 BCE by Julius Ceasar and Leviticus was written somewhere around 1,400 BCE. There must have been another reckoning of time. Since I am referencing the Bible it probably makes more sense to look at the Hebrew/Jewish calendar. The issue here is that this is the Hillel II calendar created in 359 CE, way after Leviticus was written so there must be something prior to that.
In Genesis 1:14-19 we read, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to distinguish between the day and the night, and let them be signs to mark the seasons and days and years.’ And it was so. God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And He made the stars as well. God set these lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth, to preside over the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.” Here is the creation of the clock and calendar used in the Bible. This calendar isn’t written on paper or calculated with mathematical formulas, it is in the heavens (and we will see later, on the Earth). With the sun, we reckon days from sunset to sunset (evening comes before morning, days do not start at midnight). In Hebrew, there is no separate word for month and moon, they are the same thing. A month is from [re]new[ed] moon to [re]new[ed] moon. How do we know when to begin a year? In Exodus 12:2 we find, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.” Exodus 12 is the story of the first Passover, which is in the spring. How do we know this? In Exodus 9, describing the plague of hail, in verses 31-32, we see, “The flax and barley were destroyed, since the barley had headed and the flax was in bloom. The wheat and spelt, however, were not destroyed, because they ripen later.” The Hebrew word here translated as “headed” is aviv, or you might see abib, (אָבִ֔יב) indicating a level of ripeness of barley. The barley was aviv so it was destroyed by the hail. These events are at the time of year (season) when barley is ripening. Deuteronomy 16:1 tell us to “Observe the month of Aviv the aviv and celebrate the Passover of the LORD your God, because in the month of Aviv the aviv he brought you out of Egypt by night.” Notice that I struck out “Aviv” and replaced it with “the aviv” since the Hebrew in both cases is הָאָבִ֔יב. This is usually translated incorrectly in your Bible as it is usually translated as if Aviv is the actual name of this first month. At this point in time, the months did not have names. Also, the definite article ה, meaning “the,” prefixes aviv indicating this is not a proper noun. From all of this we can understand that at the new moon, if the barley is aviv (the “on the Earth” part from above), it is now the first month of the year.
The moon takes 29.53 days to orbit the Earth. That 0.53 days (12.72 hours) makes a mess of calculating the beginning of a month. Sometimes you can see the new moon after 29 days and other times you won’t be able to see it until the 30th day. If the new moon is not sighted on the 29th day, the month will be a full month of 30 days; it will never exceed 30 days. How do we know this? 1 Samuel 20:5 says, “Look, tomorrow is the New Moon feast.” How does David know that? Because it is the 30th day since the last new moon was sighted, after sunset that evening, when the day changes, will be the new moon. A month has to start at the beginning of a day, which is at sunset, so the moon needs to be sighted sometime after sunset. Hence the Hebrew idiom, “No man knows the day or hour.” Sounds familiar. Since the Earth takes 365.2425 days to orbit the sun, dividing by 29.53 days for the average month, we find a complete orbit of the Earth around the sun takes 12.36852353 average months. That math isn’t pretty. What do we do with that 0.36852353 part of a month? This is where that aviv barley comes in. If we count twelve months and the new moon arrives but the barley is not aviv, we need a thirteenth month to allow the barley to ripen. If the barley is aviv, the new year begins, it is the first month. The twelfth month is named Adar after the Babylonian captivity (they didn’t have names prior to that) so the thirteenth month is called Adar II or Adar Bet. This addition of a leap month is what keeps the first month in the spring; it is always self-correcting, as if it was planned that way!
We should now consider Noah in Genesis 7 & 8. In 7:11 we read, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” This is the day the flood began. Genesis 7:24 says, “And the waters prevailed upon the earth for 150 days.” In Genesis 8:3-4 we find, “The waters receded steadily from the earth, and after 150 days the waters had gone down. On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.” We see that this all began on the seventeenth day of the second months and lasted until the seventeenth day of the seventh month, exactly 5 months. We are also told, twice, that this was 150 days. 150 days divided by 5 months equals exactly 30 days per month. How do we reconcile that with the 29.53 days from above? Shouldn’t there have been some 29-day months in there? I will provide two possible answers and leave it to you to decide. First, at that time, months could have actually been exactly 30 days in length. For what I consider to be a plausible theory on this, study The Mars-Earth Wars by Donald W. Patten. Second, clouds covered the Earth so Noah could not see the sky nor the moon. Every month, after 29 days had elapsed, he would look to the heavens and not spot the moon because of the cloud cover thus making it a full 30-day month. This happened for five months in a row. But, the moon and Earth kept in their orbits and when he could finally look into the sky and see the moon, all of the missing 29-day months would be absorbed in a short month prior to the first new moon he could see after the clouds dissipated. Again, self-correcting, as if it were planned.
What’s the big deal with the barley? The spring feasts are to be in the first month of the year. At the Feast of First Fruits, there is to be a wave offering of the first fruits of the barley harvest. Hard to harvest barley if it isn’t ripe. If the barley is aviv at the beginning of the month, at the new moon, it will be harvestable by the day of First Fruits in the middle of the first month (on the day after the regular weekly Sabbath that falls during the weeklong Feast of Unleavened Bread).
This is the calendar that the Creator created. All you need is to look into the sky, look at the barley fields and be able to count to thirty. Granted, this calendar does not work well in our modern society. Try booking an airline flight two months out. What day would you actually be flying? Hard to really plan too far in advance. Our Gregorian calendar does a great job at this, which is one reason why the world uses it. But, if you fail to understand and honor the Creator’s calendar, you won’t know when to keep the Feasts of Yehovah as he has commanded.
I said that this calendar is in the heavens and on the earth, no calculations necessary. That said, it is possible to make a best guess at what the calendar will be in the future since we have very accurate calculations of the orbits of the moon and the Earth. We can calculate when the moon should be visible. But no one knows when it will be visible. You can download a pdf of the current month here and purchase an entire year of possible calendars at the same site. Since it cannot be known in advance exactly when the new moon will be seen, several versions of months are provided for cases where the moon could be seen on the 29th or if the month is a full 30 days. Even though we have this printed calendar available, the real calendar is not on paper, it is in the heavens and on the Earth so we must wait for the new moon report to know if the moon was sighted in Jerusalem on the 29th or not and we must wait on the barley report to know if the barley is aviv or not to begin the new year.
The Jews, using the Hillel II calendar, have a second New Year, Rosh Hashanah, that they celebrate each year. They celebrate this on the Biblical Feast day of Yom Teruah. This new year is not in your Bible. Follow the link to the Hebrew/Jewish calendar, which is the Hillel calendar, and read about all of the man-made adjustments they make that are not Biblical.
Just as Yeshua fulfilled the spring Feasts to the day and hour at his first coming, He will fulfill the fall Feasts at his second coming. Sha’ul, Paul, writes about this in his first letter to the Thessalonians. In chapter 5, versus 1-5 we read, “Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.” All too often, people say that since He is coming “like a thief in the night” that we can’t know when He is coming. But, read on. He tells the Thessalonians, the believers, that this day should NOT surprise them. How can that be? It is because Sha’ul had already told them, while he was with them, that Yeshua would return to fulfill the Fall Feasts. Sha’ul spent at least a few weeks with them, teaching. His letter was meant to correct some of the things he heard about them. He had no reason to reiterate everything that he had recently taught them, he just needed to remind them. He is reminding them that by keeping the Feasts, that they would be “awake and sober” as it says in verse 6, so they will not be surprised. Ask yourself this question, “Will I be surprised by His return?” If you are a believer, Sha’ul says you should not be. Did he lie? If he did, why do we listen to anything he has to say? Will you be surprised? Something to consider.
Happy New Year?
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