• Pentecost
    Aid to Bible Understanding

    • participants in the festival customarily went up to Jerusalem the day previous to its commencement and there prepared everything necessary for its observance. In the evening the blasts of the trumpets announced the approach of the festival day. (Num. 10:10) The altar of burnt sacrifice was cleansed, the gates of the temple were opened immediately after midnight for the priests and for the people who would bring the sacrifices for burnt offerings and for thanksgiving offerings to the court to be examined by the priests. Dr. Alfred Edersheim, in The Temple, comments (p. 228): “Before the morning sacrifice all burnt- and peace-offerings which the people proposed to bring at the feast had to be examined by the officiating priesthood. Great as their number was, it must have been a busy time, till the announcement that the morning glow extended to Hebron put an end to all such preparations, by giving the signal for the regular morning sacrifice.”

      After the regular daily morning sacrifice was offered, the festive sacrifices described in Numbers 28:26-30 were brought. Afterward came the offering peculiar to Pentecost day—the wave loaves with their accompanying sacrifices. (Lev. 23:18-20) After the loaves were waved, one of them was taken by the high priest and the second was divided among all the officiating priests.

      SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FESTIVAL

      It was on the day of Pentecost that the holy spirit was poured out by Jesus Christ on the group of about 120 disciples in the upper room at Jerusalem in the year 33 C.E. (Acts 1:13-15) Jesus had been resurrected on Nisan 16, the day of the offering of the barley sheaf by the high priest. He was, in a figurative sense, without leaven, which represents sin. (Heb. 7:26) At Pentecost, he, as the great High Priest, could present to his Father Jehovah additional spiritual sons, the footstep followers of his taken from sinful mankind and who accepted his sacrifice. The approval of God and the presentation of his sacrifice were manifested by the pouring out of God’s spirit upon them. This forms a parallel to the offering of two loaves containing leaven. At Pentecost it was first the Jews who became Christ’s spiritual brothers. Later on, Cornelius and his family would initiate the entry of a second group making up the rest of the spiritual congregation, namely, the Gentiles.—Acts 2:1-4; 10:44-48.

      The Jews traditionally hold that Pentecost corresponded to the time of the giving of the Law at Sinai, when Israel became a distinguished people. It was early in the third month (Sivan) that the Israelites gathered at Sinai and received the Law. (Ex. 19:1) Just as Moses as mediator was used to introduce Israel into the Law covenant, so Jesus Christ as Mediator of the Christian congregation now brought spiritual Israel into the new covenant. The apostle Paul draws a comparison from these two events, saying that Christians are gathered to a far greater assemblage at “a Mount Zion and a city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem,” under new covenant arrangements.—Heb. 12:18-24; compare Revelation 14:1-5.

      Jesus had announced the new covenant to his disciples on the evening of his last Passover and, just before his ascension, had instructed them to wait at Jerusalem for the promised holy spirit. Now, as the apostle Peter explained, “because he was exalted to the right hand of God and received the promised holy spirit from the Father, he has poured out this which you see and hear.” (Luke 22:20; Acts 2:33) The presence of God’s spirit was manifested in miraculous speaking in different tongues by some 120 disciples. By this means the multitudes of Jews and proselytes from all parts of the Roman Empire could hear with intelligibility the “magnificent things of God.” (Acts 2:7-11) First at this time, by means of Peter, baptism in the name of the Father, Son and holy spirit was preached, as Jesus commanded at Matthew 28:19. (Acts 2:21, 36, 38, 39) Having gone into the heavens with the value of his sacrifice, Jesus was able to bring his followers into the new covenant.—Heb. 9:15-26.

      These followers, then, with the 3,000 added that day (Acts 2:41) and others later, were not the very first firstfruits to God, for this was Jesus Christ himself, presented on Nisan 16 of 33 C.E. (1 Cor. 15:23), when the barley sheaves were waved. Rather, they were like the firstfruits of the wheat, a second crop, “certain first fruits” to God. (Jas. 1:18) They now became God’s new nation, God’s “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for special possession.”—1 Pet. 2:9.

  • Penuel
    Aid to Bible Understanding

    • PENUEL

      (Pe·nuʹel) [face of God].

      1. “Father of Gedor” in the tribe of Judah. (1 Chron. 4:1, 4) Since Gedor appears as the name of a town in Judah, Penuel may have been its founder or the ancestor of its inhabitants.

      2. A family head in the tribe of Benjamin who lived in Jerusalem; son of Shashak.—1 Chron. 8:1, 25, 28.

      3. The place near the ford of the Jabbok River where Jacob wrestled with the angel; hence he called the place Peniel (Penuel) because there he ‘had seen God face to face.’ (Gen. 32:22-31) In the time of the Judges, Gideon asked the men of Penuel for food in order that his forces might continue after the kings of Midian, but the Penuelites refused, for which reason Gideon later destroyed their tower and killed all their men. (Judg. 8:4-9, 17) Nothing more is mentioned of Penuel until King Jeroboam I “built” it again, or at least fortified it.—1 Ki. 12:25.

      Penuel is generally identified with Tulul edh-Dhahab, about four miles (6.4 kilometers) E of Succoth on the Jabbok River some nine miles (14.5 kilometers) or so NE of its confluence with the Jordan. Indications are that it was heavily fortified and strategically positioned so as to control the entrance of the Jabbok gorge leading westward down to the Jordan. Similarly spelled names are found in Assyrian and Egyptian records relating to Palestine.

  • Peor
    Aid to Bible Understanding

    • PEOR

      (Peʹor) [an opening, a cleft].

      In the account of King Balak’s efforts to get the prophet Balaam to curse Israel, the third vantage point to which Balaam was conducted is said to be the “top of Peor, which looks toward Jeshimon.” (Num. 23:28) From here Balaam could see the tents of Israel spread about on the Plains of Moab below.—Num. 22:1; 24:2.

      Some consider Peor to be the abbreviated form of the name Beth-peor. (Deut. 4:46) However, this latter place is evidently a town, included as such in the territorial assignment of Reuben. (Josh. 13:15, 16, 20) Others, therefore, consider Peor to be a summit or peak and suggest that the town of Beth-peor may have been so named because of being situated on the slopes of such summit. Both Peor and Beth-peor appear to be connected with the pagan worship of “the Baal of Peor” (Num. 25:1-3, 18; 31:16; Josh. 22:17), and it is possible that the height of Peor was a center of such immoral worship.—See BAAL No. 4.

      Balaam was first taken to Bamoth-baal, then to the “top of Pisgah,” and finally to the “top of Peor.” (Num. 22:41; 23:14, 28) The direction of movement is from S to N and seems to indicate that Peor was N of Pisgah and Mount Nebo. Based on the testimony of Eusebius and Jerome, of the third and fourth centuries C.E., the summit of Peor is suggested to have been one of the peaks bordering the Wadi Hesban.—See BETH-PEOR.