“Tell the people of Israel: You will enter the land that I will give you. You will reap its harvest. At that time, you must bring in the first sheaf [399] of your harvest to the priest.
“The second holiday will be the Festival of Pentecost. This holiday will be {during the early summer time} when you begin harvesting the crops you planted in your fields.
“Celebrate the Festival of Weeks. [348] Use the first grain from the wheat harvest for this festival. And in the fall [349] celebrate the Festival of Harvest. [350]
And the first part of the harvest from every kind of crop will be for the priests. You will also give the priests the first of your dough. This will bring blessings to your house.
“I am giving the land of Canaan to your people. Your people will enter that land. At that time, I might cause mildew [214] to grow in some person’s house.
On that day, bring two loaves of bread from your homes. That bread will be for a wave offering. Use yeast and 16 cups [406] of flour to make those loaves of bread. That will be your gift to the Lord from your first harvest.
“At the Festival of Firstfruits [343] (the Festival of Weeks) use the new crops to give a grain offering to the Lord. At that time, you must also call a special meeting. You must not do any work on that day.
If the first piece of bread is offered to God, then the whole loaf is made holy. If the roots of a tree are holy, then the tree’s branches are holy too.
(During harvest time the Jordan River overflows its banks. So the river was at its fullest.) The priests who were carrying the Box came to the shore of the river. They stepped into the water.
These 144,000 people are the ones who did not do wrong things with women. They kept themselves pure. They follow the Lamb every place he goes. These 144,000 were redeemed (saved) from among the people of the earth. They are the first people to be offered to God and the Lamb.
So Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth (the woman from Moab) came back from the hill country of Moab. These two women came to Bethlehem, Judah at the beginning of the barley harvest.