פרשת אמור תשכ"ח - עומר התנופה

"When ye are come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring the sheaf of the first-fruits of your harvest unto the priest."

"And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord..."

As there is nothing that profanes and makes a man's heart haughty like great bounty; as it is stated (Deuteronomy 32:15), "So Jeshurun grew fat and kicked." And behold that all of this happens [because] he does not look to God who gave it to him, but they rather they Him and say that it is 'their strength and their might that produced all of this glory for them.' As ingratitude removes them from the good path and from walking after God, to the point that they are soon lost. Hence our Father in Heaven, who wishes [our good] like a father for a child, loves us and teaches us proper ethics: From the time when the scythe begins [to cut] the crop of barley - which is the first of the land's produce - before our hearts become haughty when we see the abundance of produce in the house and in the field, when the threshing floors are filled with grain and the barns with plenty; God comes to open blinded eyes to teach them knowledge. As 'the Lord's is the earth and all of its fullness' - the fruit and the fruit of fruits - since man has no power; hence 'all is vanity.' And so they shall do this in order that their heart not become haughty; such that before any enjoyment from the bounty of the field comes to their mouth, and before they taste the smallest bit of bread or parched grain, all of the Jewish people bring the first of their harvest to the priest while saying to Him, may He be blessed, "Behold we recognize that all of the land and everything in it is Yours; and what is Yours from the beginning of it all has been given to You before we eat from anything, to show that everything is from You and that we are not brazen-faced ingrates." And this is [the meaning] of its statement, "When you come to the land," which you did not need to take with the might of your hands but rather as one who comes to an inheritance": It should not enter your heart to say, "The land was given to us an inheritance from our forefathers and it is ours and our children's forever; and that which we eat its goodness and its produce, it is the effort of our hands that we eat, as we work the land by plowing and reaping and [doing] all the work in the field until the produce arrives. As none of us stops from work - whether by sowing, planting trees, planting shoots, winnowing or separating - so we eat the bread of the land by the sweat of our brow..." Hence God, may He be blessed, preceded [us by] saying, "Observe and see that after your coming to the land is not an inheritance that has no break, nor a present given to a heir that had it as an inheritance with no break, but rather 'which I give' - in the present tense - and the giving is never completely final. For whenever you turn away from Me, I shall transfer it to others besides you. And you should not let it enter your minds that it is your harvest that you are harvesting, but rather, 'you shall harvest the harvest' of the land, for it is blessed, and you shall be blessed from its blessing."... "Then you shall bring the omer of the first-fruits of your harvest unto the priest," so that you not be ingrates. And perhaps you will say, "What is this that I should give to the priest, since he is a servant of my Master just like me, such that my Father in Heaven will not take the smallest thing from me and not require it from me, God forbid. So how will it be examined and revealed and seen that I am showing appreciation to God?" Hence, it stated, "And he shall wave the omer before the Lord," such that the priest will wave it up and down and to the directions of the world - to indicate that all of the world and up and down are His, may He be blessed, and that this omer is going to Him and not to the priest.

"And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you; on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it."

ממחרת השבת ON THE MORROW AFTER THE DAY OF REST [THE PRIEST SHALL WAVE IT] — This must mean on the morrow of the first day of the Passover festival (on the 16th of Nisan); for if you say that it means on the morrow of the weekly Sabbath¹ (i. e. on a Sunday) you do not know which particular Sabbath Scripture is referring to (Menachot 66a).

the day after the day of rest [literally: the day after the Sabbath] Our Sages, of blessed memory, have said [Menaḥot 65b] that this denotes the second day of the festival; the deniers maintain that the verse should be taken literally. The faithful bring examples from the Sabbatical Year [25:2], the Jubilee, Yom Kippur [:32], and the New Year [:24], all of which are called “sabbath”. The first and the eighth days of Sukkot are called “sabbath” [:39], too [see also comment on Exodus 31:13]. Moreover, a “sabbath” also means a “week”, as in “seven sabbaths” [:15] as well as “those who came in on the Sabbath, along with those who had finished for the week” [II Kings 11:9]. Here one verse uses two different meanings of the same word, and see (Judges 10:4), "Thirty burros (ayarim)... thirty boroughs (ayarim)."

And the meaning of "the one one who burns (maviir)" is not like (Exodus 22:4), "If a man has graze (yaver)," even though they are from the same [root] - since the word, "fire" indicates this. And this is the poetic nature of the holy tongue - to say the same word that has two meanings, such as [in] (Judges 15:16), "With the jaw of an ass (chamor), mass (chamor) upon mass"; and (Judges 10:4), " who rode on thirty burros (ayarim) and owned thirty boroughs (ayarim)" - in [which] the second is cities. And the proof is the [rest of the verse], "these are called Havvoth-jair to this day."

S. v. And the children: Yefet [ben Ali] said that the instructor (hamoreh) is the prophet that instructs them about the righteous path. And that is why good is coming to them. And it mentioned early rain (moreh) and late rain, as [in] (Judges 15:16), "With the jaw of an ass (chamor), mass (chamor) upon mass"...

"on the morrow after the sabbath"

"Encamped at Gilgal, in the steppes of Jericho, the Israelites offered the Passover sacrifice on the fourteenth day of the month, toward evening. On the day after the Passover offering, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the country, unleavened bread and parched grain."

S.v. They ate of the produce (meavor) of the country: They ate matza and parched grain from the old grain, since the new grain was forbidden to them until after the bringing of the omer on the sixteenth of Nissan. And even for matza, matza is forbidden from the new grain... And from where did they have old grain? From that which the merchants of the [other] nations sold to them. And the word meavor proves that it was from the old grain. For I say that the grain that is from the year that passed (avrah) is called avor, and [grain from] the next (bah) year is called produce (tevuah).

S.v. From the morrow of Passover: That is the night of the fifteenth of Nissan and its day. For the Passover sacrifice is offered on the fourteenth, and its morrow is the fifteenth. And likewise, "on the fifteenth day of the first month - on the morrow of Passover - the Children of Israel went out of Egypt" (Numbers 33:3).