This is an excerpt of a section in our analysis of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse:
Shavuot in Ezekiel
The reader’s first reaction to the heading of this section might be ‘but there is no Shavuot in Ezekiel’. That is the standard reading of Ezekiel, of course. It is said that Ezekiel ignores Shavuot in his listing of the festivals because he wrote from the perspective of exile. Shavuot, as the first fruits festival, could not be properly observed outside the homeland, so it was not relevant to the exiles. It might be true that Ezekiel did not include Shavuot in his text, but someone did.
That ‘someone’ shared the view of the author of Jubilees that Shavuot was critical to the Jewish people; as critical as Passover and perhaps more critical than some other major holidays. That ‘someone’ also shared the view of our scribe, that Shavuot should be given special attention because it conveys a message of eternal importance; a message of revelation and covenant. Our scribe used two passages in Ezekiel to help convey his larger message. How could he think to use the Ezekiel text to convey the crucial messages of the fall and rebirth of Jerusalem but allow that text to ignore Shavuot, which was also crucial to his message?
The same religious impulse or creative intelligence or essential viewpoint; and possibly the same individual; who marked (or caused the marking of) the ten special days of our message, including the two in Ezekiel, also caused a third marker to be placed in Ezekiel. That marker ‘corrects’ Ezekiel’s list of festivals to include Shavuot. The correction is found in Ezekiel 45:21 and it reveals itself by its anomalous nature.
The NRSV translation of that verse reads as a straightforward account of the requirement to observe Passover: ‘In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall celebrate the festival of the Passover, and for seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten.’
The Hebrew of that verse contains two grammatical anomalies, both of which are pointed out by Zimmerli.[1] The typical translation ‘corrects’ the apparent problems caused by those anomalies and, in doing so, it hides the message intended.[2]
To observe the unusual elements of the text we need to look at the Hebrew of the portion of the verse where they occur. Partially transliterated, the verse reads:
‘In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, yehiyeh lachem ha’pasach chag shevuot yamim matzot ye’achel’.
The first anomaly allows the phrase chag shevuot to appear in the text. In any other context we would certainly understand that to mean ‘a festival of weeks’, and we would understand that as referring to Shavuot. The subject of this verse, though, is the festival of Passover. If the word chag were intended to describe Passover, it would precede ha’pasach, not follow it. That is, the passage would read chag ha’pasach, as it is found in Exodus 34:25.
Zimmerli notes that this unusual word order is also found in the Septuagint and the Vulgate, which he finds ‘astonishing’. He suggests that this inversion of the normal word order was the intentional work of ‘a later hand’ who wanted to produce the phrase chag shevuot in the Ezekiel text.
The second anomaly is also found in the chag shevuot phrase and its purpose is the same as that of the inversion. It is the word shevuot itself. If the aim of the author was to specify that unleavened bread was to be eaten for seven days, the grammatically appropriate language would be shiv’at yamim, not shevuot yamim. The difference between the two words i.e. shiv’at and shevuot, is not merely one of vocalization. The word shevuot contains an additional letter, a consonant not in the word shiv’at. That letter, a vav, is written as a single vertical stroke of the quill that would be relatively easy to insert in the text, converting shiv’at to shevuot.
Zimmerli notes that the ‘other versions’ of the text do not reproduce the anomaly of shevuot vs shiv’at that is found in the Masoretic Text. He writes that shevuot is ‘a very secondary reading which is discernable in none of the versions and whose aim is to take account of the feast of weeks too in this festival calendar, without producing, however, a syntactically possible text.’[3]
It is possible that both anomalies were introduced into the Ezekiel text by the same editor. Since the word order inversion is found in the LXX, the text from which the LXX translators worked must have contained that anomaly. On the other hand, it does not seem that the ‘inserted vav’ anomaly was in that text. So, it could be that the word order inversion was not actually added ‘by a later hand’ but was original to the text. In that case it would have presented an opportunity to a later editor to create the phrase chag shevuot by the simple insertion of a vav in the word shiv’at. That is one plausible explanation for the inversion appearing in the LXX without the anomaly of the inserted vav.
We cannot know just how or when the LXX came to include the inversion that Zimmerli found ‘astonishing’. We know that the LXX translation of the prophetic books was completed later than that of the Pentateuch and we’ll have more to say about the question of how much later below. We’ve already seen that the Masoretic version of Ezekiel is about 5% longer than the LXX, which suggests that the text available to the LXX translators was earlier than the version that ultimately became the MT.
The presence of the two anomalies produces a very clear reference to the festival of weeks. If only the word order anomaly were present in the text the argument that the verse contained a Shavuot reference would be weak. That is, if the phrase were to read ha’pasach chag shiv’at yamim. Without the second anomaly, Zimmerli’s thesis that the inversion was intended to reference Shavuot is not persuasive.
If the word order anomaly was not present but the ‘inserted vav’ anomaly was present, the argument would still be strong, though. The word would clearly be incorrect in the context of the specification of Passover. And the edit required to produce it would have been minimal; possibly not even requiring a scribe to rewrite a full sheet of text.
But the presence of both anomalies in the MT produces a reference to Shavuot that is impossible to realistically dispute. The anomalies are found in the only reasonable place that a Shavuot reference might be expected. And, the fact that they are clearly anomalous draws immediate attention. The reference is forced and that makes it more powerful as a message. But the reference is also inconvenient – explanation is not straightforward – and so most ignore it. But it is its inconvenience that argues against ignoring it.
Shavuot is important to our scribe. It is one of the ten days that he uses to transmit his message. Ezekiel is also important to our scribe. Two of his ten marked days are in the book of Ezekiel. Our scribe might well have been a Zadokite priest as was Ezekiel. He would not want Ezekiel’s listing of festivals to be left without a Shavuot reference. If the inverted word order in 45:21 were already in the text, which its presence in the LXX suggests, the simple addition of a vav could create the reference desired. That does seem to be the most likely alternative. In any event, Zimmerli’s suggestion of a ‘later hand’ at work on that verse applies whether both anomalies were created in that way or only one.
Why is Shavuot so important to the author of Jubilees? Not because of its harvest association. It is important because of its connection to the issue of covenant.
[1] Zimmerli. Ezekiel Vol 2. pp 480-481
[2] Others, including Cook and Eichrodt, for example, maintain the typical translation and do not comment on the grammatical anomalies that draw Zimmerli’s attention.
[3] Ibid
(c) Charles R Lightner All Rights Reserved