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PENTECOST (ἡ πεντηκοστή) was one of the three great national festivals of Israel at which all the males of the people were required to present themselves every year before the Lord their God, with an offering according to their means (Exodus 23:17; Exodus 34:23, Deuteronomy 16:16-17, 2 Chronicles 8:13). There is evidence that in the time of Christ multitudes assembled for the Feast of the Passover, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, not only from all parts of the Holy Land, but also from the Jewish communities scattered throughout the Roman Empire. The attendance at the Passover would probably be the largest, while the numbers at Pentecost would embrace more Jews from foreign countries, the season being more favourable for travel. All three feasts have (1) a basis in the agricultural life of Canaan, (2) a reference to the history of the nation, and (3) a spiritual and typical significance. Of the three, the Feast of the Passover came first in the natural year, signalizing the commencement of the barley harvest and the dedication of the first ripe sheaf by waving it before the Lord; commemorating the deliverance of the people from Egyptian bondage; and pointing forward, by the lamb without blemish sacrificed on the occasion, to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. Of the series, the Feast of Tabernacles was the last, celebrating with great rejoicings the completion of harvest and vintage; commemorating, by the erection of booths in which the people dwelt for the week, the wanderings of their fathers in the wilderness on the way to settled life in Canaan; and having its antitype in the rest that remaineth for the people of God, or, better perhaps, in that great Harvest Home yet to come, when there shall be gathered before the throne a multitude which no man can number, out of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, clothed in white robes and with palms in their hands.

Between these two national festivals came Pentecost. As Passover signalized the commencement of the grain harvest, Pentecost marked its conclusion; and as Tabernacles was a great national thanksgiving for the completed vintage and fruit harvest of the year, Pentecost was a thanksgiving for the completed grain harvest.

1. Names.—The actual word ‘Pentecost’ does not occur in the canonical books of the OT, but it is found in Tobit 2:1 and 2 Maccabees 12:32. Neither does it occur in the Gospels, where the Feast itself is not mentioned. It occurs in NT three times outside the Gospels (Acts 2:1; Acts 20:16, and 1 Corinthians 16:6), and in these passages it is employed not as a numeral adjective, but as a substantive. The Feast is called Pentecost because it fell on the fiftieth day counted from Nisan 16, the day after the Passover Sabbath (or festival day), and fulfilled the ancient command: ‘Ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave-offering: seven sabbaths (or weeks) shall be complete: even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days, and ye shall offer a new meal-oftering unto the Lord’ (Leviticus 23:15-16 cf. Deuteronomy 16:9). The names by which the Feast is known in the OT proper exhibit its basis in the agricultural life of the people. It is the ‘Feast of Weeks,’ called from the seven weeks reckoned from the morrow after the Passover when they began ‘to put the sickle to the corn’ (Exodus 34:22, Deuteronomy 16:9-10, 2 Chronicles 8:13); the ‘Feast of Harvest,’ ‘the firstfruits of thy labours which thou hast sowed in the field’ (Exodus 23:16); the ‘Day of First Fruits,’ a day of rest and holy convocation (Numbers 28:26, cf. Exodus 23:16; Exodus 34:22), although, like the other Feasts, it was actually of a week’s duration. By later Judaism it was styled Azereth (‘conclusion’), which appears in Josephus as Ἀσαρθά; and ‘Day of the Giving of the Law’ in commemoration of the revelation of the Divine Will to the people at Sinai (Hamburger, BE, ‘Wochenfest’; Edersheim, The Temple, p. 227).

2. Agricultural basis.—The distinctive features of the ritual observed at Pentecost are those of a harvest thanksgiving. When barley harvest was begun at Passover time, the omer or sheaf was brought to the priest to he waved by him before the Lord; and this was followed by a burnt-offering of a ‘he-lamb without blemish of the first year,’ with appropriate meat-and drink-offerings (Leviticus 23:10-14). When the grain harvest which had been proceeding through the following seven weeks reached its completion at Pentecost and the thanksgiving celebration for it took place, a larger offering was prescribed. Instead of the omer of barley—whether presented in the sheaf or, as would appear from later practice, threshed and parched and made into flour—there were now two wave-loaves of the finest wheaten flour to be brought by the people out of their habitations and offered as a new meal-offering unto the Lord. In contrast to the Passover bread, which was unleavened, these two loaves, forming the peculiar offering of the Day of Pentecost, were ‘baken with leaven,’ which, as the Mishna informs us, was the case in all thank-offerings. These loaves are declared to be ‘the firstfruits unto the Lord’ (Leviticus 23:16-17), and formed with the peace-offering of two lambs the public thank-offering of the nation to God for His goodness. Instead of the single lamb of the Passover, there were now to be presented as a burnt-offering ‘seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams,’ with appropriate meat-and drink-offerings; whilst a kid of the goats was to be sacrificed as a sin-offering (Leviticus 23:18-19). It was in keeping with an occasion of national thanksgiving that freewill offerings were to be brought by the people, each as the Lord had prospered him: ‘And thou shalt rejoice before the Lord, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are among yon. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt: and thou shalt observe and do these statutes’ (Deuteronomy 16:11-12). Although the festival proper, as we have seen, was confined to one day, it continued in a minor degree for a whole week, and was celebrated with gladness and rejoicing. All this made it peculiarly popular; and the season of the year being favourable, as we have seen, for travel, it seems from notices in Josephus, and from references in the Acts of the Apostles, to have been frequented by a large concourse of pilgrims from all the lands of the Jewish Dispersion. It is now the custom among the Jews to decorate the synagogue at Pentecost with trees and plants and flowers,—a modern substitute for the harvest festival of former times (see Jewish Encyc., art. ‘Pentecost’; Rosenau, Jewish Ceremonial Institutions, p. 86).

3. Historical reference.—Whilst the notices in the OT, mainly in the Pentateuch, regard Pentecost simply as a harvest festival, it came to be regarded among the. later Jews as commemorating the giving of the Law at Sinai. The Book of Jubilees, in the 1st cent. a.d. (Schürer, GJV [Note: JV Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes.] ^{3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred]} iii. 277), makes the Feast of Weeks as old as Noah, and associates it further with the later Patriarchs. Josephus and Philo do not mention the giving of the Law among the associations of the Feast, yet many authorities, like Edersheim (loc. cit.) and Ginsburg (Kitto’s Cyclopœdia, ‘Pentecost’), hold it to be certain that the Jews as early as the time of Christ commemorated the giving of the Law at Pentecost. With this was incorporated the legend of the Law being delivered in seventy languages, the number of the nations of the earth, and therefore meant for all the families of mankind. (See Spitta, Apostclgeschichte, pp. 27, 28.)

4. Antitypical significance—Giving of the Holy Spirit.—As the Passover has its antitype in the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, Pentecost has its antitype in the shedding down of the Holy Spirit, by whom the Law is written upon fleshy tables of the heart, and the bonds of intercourse between God and man are re-knit in a spiritual and enduring communion. St. Paul describes the Pentecostal gift as ‘the first-fruits of the Spirit’ (Romans 8:23), in accordance with the purpose of the day. Of this momentous event we have the record in Acts 2. If in Jewish tradition the first Pentecost after the great deliverance from Egypt was, through the giving of the Law, the birthday of Judaism, in Christian history the first Pentecost after the true Passover Lamb had been slain was, through the outpouring of the Spirit, the birthday of the Church. The presence and working of the Spirit within the Church form the distinctive characteristic of Christianity. Gracious and beneficent as was the presence of the Master with His disciples, it was better, so He Himself declared, that He should go away (John 16:7), and that in His stead the Paraclete, with His threefold conviction for the world, should come (John 16:8-11). ‘Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you,’ said Jesus to the Eleven and them that were gathered with them as He was about to ascend up into heaven; ‘but tarry ye in the city till ye be endued with power from on high’ (Luke 24:49). Then, as the Evangelist records, He led them out until they were over against Bethany; and while His hands were lifted up in blessing, He parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. ‘And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: and were continually in the temple, blessing God’ (Luke 24:52-53).

The Temple was the chief resort of the disciples, during the period of tarrying which their Master had enjoined; but they continued also to frequent the Upper Room, now hallowed to them by its memories of the Lord (Acts 1:13 f.), continuing ‘steadfastly in prayer, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.’ And so they waited and prayed; and, lest anything should be lacking to their readiness for the promised blessing, they filled up, by the questionable arbitrament of the lot, the place in the number of the Twelve rendered vacant by the fall of Judas. It was now the eve of the second return of the Resurrection-day since the Lord had ascended, and the city was crowded and astir with the pilgrim bands which had come up to Jerusalem for the great annual harvest thanksgiving. No doubt they had counted the days; and they may well have divined that on Pentecost, the fiftieth day since their Lord had suffered as the Passover Lamb, their expectations would be fulfilled (Baumgarten, Apostolic History, i. p. 41).

‘The day of Pentecost was now come,’ and at an early hour the disciples, filled with anticipations awakened by the day, were all together in one place. That this place was the Temple seems natural, considering the occasion. It is a fair inference from the passage in St. Luke already quoted (Luke 24:52-53), and it harmonizes with the statement that ‘the multitude came together’ (Acts 2:6) when the descent of the Spirit became known abroad. It is said that the sound heard from heaven filled ‘all the house’ (ὅλον τὸν οἶκον) where they were sitting,—an exaggerated form of expression if only a private dwelling is meant, whereas ‘house’ is the regular designation of the Temple in the LXX Septuagint and in Josephus. Hallowed as the Upper Room had become by the institution of the Last Supper and the fellowship the disciples had there enjoyed with the Risen Lord, there was a significance beyond even that in the Temple, which had been so long the earthly dwelling-place of Jehovah, now being the place of the inauguration of the dispensation in which the believing soul is to be the temple and dwelling-place of the Spirit.

To those praying disciples, and to the Church of which they were the representatives, came on that eventful day the fulfilment of ‘the promise of the Father.’ Suddenly a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind fell upon the ears of the expectant band, and filled all the house where they were sitting. It does not appear that there was an actual wind, but only the sound of it pervading all parts of the house. Then, as they looked around, they beheld tongues like as of fire distributing themselves through the building, and alighting each upon a disciple’s head. ‘And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.’ ‘They were all filled with the Holy Spirit’ is the supreme and enduring blessing of Pentecost. It is the central fact of this remarkable narrative. Side by side with the Incarnation, and the Atonement, and the Resurrection, and the Ascension of the Lord, stands the Mission of the Comforter in the gospel scheme. As the Mosaic dispensation was inaugurated with miracles and supernatural signs, it was meet that the dispensation which replaced it should likewise be ushered in with miraculous manifestations.

These manifestations must be briefly noticed. Wind and fire are elemental emblems of the Spirit occurring from time to time in the OT. ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire’ (Matthew 3:11) was the Baptist’s prediction concerning the Messiah, now clearly fulfilled. ‘The wind bloweth where it listeth … so is every one that is born of the Spirit’ (John 3:8), was the Lord’s own shadowing forth of the Sprit’s power to Nicodemus.

To the miraculous associations of Pentecost belong the ‘tongues’ with which the Apostles spake. Not unknown tongues, however, nor such ecstatic utterances as became familiar afterwards at Corinth and in the early Church, but tongues in which the strangers from distant countries, who had come to Jerusalem for the Feast, at once recognized their own speech, and heard the mighty works of God proclaimed. That the gift of tongues was a permanent endowment of the Apostles for their great work of proclaiming redemption to all the kindred of mankind, cannot be maintained. There is no proof that any of the Apostles of whose labours we have a record in the Acts was thus saved the trouble of acquiring foreign tongues, and supplied with the linguistic qualifications necessary for ministering to people of other races than their own. In fact, within the Roman world of that day such tongues were by no means indispensable. The Roman world, whithersoever the Apostles went on their missionary journeys, was to all intents and purposes of one speech, and they could make themselves understood in Greek in almost every ordinary case. It was only when they travelled to the far East, or to the bounds of the West, or away up the Nile, that their message required another tongue. The Jews who had come to the Feast at Jerusalem, or perhaps, as was the case with some, were sojourners in the Holy City, from out of every nation under heaven, recognized at once the vernacular of the several peoples among whom they were scattered—the tongue of Parthia, of Mesopotamia, of Phrygia, of Egypt, of Arabia—on the lips of one or other of the Apostles; but Greek was yet the lingua franca by which they could almost everywhere make themselves understood. ‘The tongues’ served the immediate purpose on this historic occasion of conveying to the assembled multitudes the great facts of the completed redemption, in familiar speech, yet with unwonted impressiveness and solemnity. But they were, over and above this, a supernatural sign, not only affording a striking proof at the moment of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit with the Apostles, but also furnishing a symbol of the universality of the new faith, and pointing forward to the proclamation of the glad tidings of great joy to all the families of mankind. Thus the legend of the giving of the Law in seventy languages on Mt. Sinai was matched by the fact of ‘the tongues’ at Pentecost; and the preaching of the gospel, first in all the lands of the Jewish Dispersion and then in all the earth, was emphatically shown forth.

5. Abiding significance.—The gift of tongues which marked the effusion of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was only one of several extraordinary gifts bestowed at first upon the Church by the Ascended Lord. These gifts continued through the Apostolic Age, and were not only varied in their character, but wholly distinct from the ordinary quickening, sanctifying, and ministerial gifts which abide in the Church through all her history. They have passed away, and though in an Edward Irving and other saintly and gifted souls some of them may seem for a little while to reappear, it is His gifts of quickening, sanctifying, and enabling that are the abiding blessing of the Holy Spirit to the Church, and that perpetuate the grace of Pentecost. The permanent blessing is not for a few, but for all believers. The Spirit had at the Creation brooded over the face of the deep; He had moved holy men to utter the oracles of God; He had rested upon anointed kings, like Saul and David; and He had dwelt without measure in the Incarnate Son of God. Now the blessing was to be for all. ‘They were all filled with the Holy Ghost,’ is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel (Joel 2:28-29). It is the realization also of our Lord’s promise (John 7:37-39). And St. Peter in his discourse to the multitudes on the day of Pentecost confirms the universality of the gift (Acts 2:38-39).

Whilst the experience of the disciples on the day of Pentecost shows the universality of the gift, it also attests the working of a new power of spiritual quickening and transformation. The Apostles themselves were transformed into new men. By the baptism of fire they were made courageous and brave; their eyes were opened to see the spirituality of Christ’s Kingdom; and they were filled with a great enthusiasm for the salvation of men through the preaching of the crucified Christ. And such was the power of the Spirit accompanying St. Peter’s words, that the multitude who had assembled to see and to hear were pricked to the heart, and cried, ‘Men and brethren, what shall we do?’ And with three thousand souls added to the little band of Apostles and believers, a Church was born in a day. ‘With great power gave the apostles witness,’ and that power was the gift of the Holy Ghost. Under the working of the Pentecostal gift a new spirit of love takes possession of them that believe, a new fellowship is established, a new service and varied ministry instituted. Throughout the course of the Church’s history it has been the mission of the Comforter to convince the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; to glorify Christ to His believing people; to lead the Church into all truth, and to show her things to come; to sanctify them that believe; and to bestow grace upon all who serve in any ministry according to the requirement of the office which they fill. It is His mission still; and the great hope of the Church and of the world lies in the renewal of Pentecost, with its breath of refreshing and its tongue of fire, in each successive age.

Literature,—Besides the works mentioned above, see the Comm. on Acts 2, the articles ‘Pentecost.’ ‘Feasts,’ ‘Pfingstfest,’ ‘Wochenfest’ in the Encyclopaedias and Bible Dictionaries; Benzinger’s Heb. Arch.; Mackie’s Bible Manners and Customs; Farrar, St. Paul, i. 83–104; Expositor, i. i. [1875], 393–408; William Arthur, The Tongue of Fire.

T. Nicol.