Jovial (2 Oct 2013)
"Why The New Year is not in the 1st month"

It seems some of you were surprised to find out that the Scriptures actually tell us to celebrate the New Year in the 7th month, not the first, as I explained at http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/sep2013/jovial926.htm .  You might also be surprised to find out we don't celebrate the New Year in the First month of the Roman calendar either.

  • OCTOBER comes from the Latin word for "8th"
  • NOVEMBER comes from the Latin word for "9th"
  • DECEMBER comes from the Latin word for "10th"
  • JANUARY is the 11th month of the Roman Year.

Originally, the New Year was celebrated in March, not January.  For whatever reason, it was lter moved to January after many centuries of celebrating the New Year on March 1st!!!   I guess it seemed so strange to be celebrating the New Year in the 11th month, that people began renumbering them, and write 1/1/2013 for New Year's Day, January 1st, 2013.  So we now number the 8th month as the 10th month, and the 9th month as the 11th month, etc.

And perhaps this shift to celebrating the New Year in the 11th month was something God was behind in order to not make His own calendar seem as odd to people.

Now why did God tell us to celebrate the New Year in the 7th month?  Maybe because the New Year symbolizes the return of the Messiah, which points towards potentially happening at the start of the 7th millenium of mankind?  But it is what Scripture tells us.

The Masoret text of Lev/Vay 25:9 says...  

וְהַעֲבַרְתָּ שׁוֹפַר תְּרוּעָה, בַּחֹדֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִעִי, בֶּעָשׂוֹר, לַחֹדֶשׁ; בְּיוֹם, הַכִּפֻּרִים, תַּעֲבִירוּ שׁוֹפָר, בְּכָל-אַרְצְכֶם.

Then shalt thou make proclamation with the blast of the horn on the tenth day of the seventh month; in the day of atonement shall ye make proclamation with the horn throughout all your land.

  Now that tells us clear as day that the Jubilee year is counted when?.....Tishri to Tishri.  Now read all of Vayikra 25, and you will see it clearly teaches us that ALL counting of Shmitta (7th year or Sabbatical year), harvest, etc., must be in line with Jubilee.  Note in verse 8, where it tells us that the counting of Shmitta years must align with Jubilee.  So obviously, the 7th month is the start of the year of Jubilee, Shmitta, harvest, buying property, etc.

Some people see this as being in conflict with Exodus/Shemot 12:2, but it is not. Nisan is the first month for the purpose of setting the calendar.  But no where does scripture call Nisan the "the head of the year".  What it says is (I'll simply translate the Masoret into English here)....  

"This month is to ye the head of months.  It is to ye the first of the months of the year." (Exodus/Shemot 12:2)

  It does not call Nisan the "Head of the year" but the "head of the months of the year".  So Nisan is counted as month 1, the next month is month 2, etc....but the Year of Jubilee, Year of Shmitta, Years of harvest, selling/buying property, are counted from the 7th month until the 7th month.  When we count years as 5760...5761...5762...5763...etc...we are COMMANDED in scripture to count them from the 7th month to the 7th month.  Note that Lev 25:8 says....

וְסָפַרְתָּ לְךָ, שֶׁבַע שַׁבְּתֹת שָׁנִים--שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים, שֶׁבַע פְּעָמִים; וְהָיוּ לְךָ, יְמֵי שֶׁבַע שַׁבְּתֹת הַשָּׁנִים, תֵּשַׁע וְאַרְבָּעִים, שָׁנָה.

8 And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and there shall be unto thee the days of seven sabbaths of years, even forty and nine years.

 So we're suppose to count the years, and we are suppose to mark that count from the 7th month, until the 7th month, as is clearly explained in the rest of Vayikra 25. (You'll have to read on to see where it says this starts in the 7th month, but I just quoted the most important verse from here earlier in this post.)  So Rabbinical Judaism is counting years just like Elohim told them to do it.   No where does it say to count year 1, year 2, year 3, .... year 576x... from Nisan to Nisan.  It says to count the MONTHS from Nisan to Nisan, but not the years.  I don't know of anywhere in scripture where it says it is proper to call a period from Nisan to Nisan by the term "year".  If you know of one, let us know.  Maybe it's OK, I just don't know of where in scripture is says a "year"/"Shanah" can start and end at a time other than the 7th month.  Can a "year" be a period of time from the 5th month to the 5th month?  Or should that period of time have another name?  Can a "year" be a period from Nisan to Nisan, or should that period have another name?  I don't know that scripture answers that question....it simply says count your months 1,2,3,4,....12, (sometimes 13) from Nisan to Nisan, and count your years 1,2,3,...5762, 5763, 5764....etc.... from Tishri/Ethanim to Tishri/Ethanim.  And that is exactly what Judaism is doing - counting their months and years exactly where Elohim said to start and stop. this is why the FALL is called the "turn of the year" in Exodus/Shemot 34:22, because its when the year "turns" or its count is incremented.   Note how it says this....

"Celebrate

  • the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest and
  • the Feast of Ingathering at the TURN OF THE YEAR" (Exod 34:22)

Is this confusing?  Maybe a bit so to newcomers of Torah since no other society counts their years from anything other than the 1st month.  But we can't let the traditions of men influence how we interpret scripture.  Just because human traditions call month 1 the month a year starts in does not mean Elohim will do the same.    But its important to understand the Jewish point of view before arguing its wrong.  Many people, both in the Church as well as in Messianic movements of some sort, can be eager to say that Judaism has messed everything up, but they are in fact, following these instructions exactly as they are laid out, even if it is not how men would have numbered things.

Jewish tradition teaches that there are 4 "heads" to 4 different types of years. In the Mishnah, Rosh HaShanah 1:1 says:

"There are four new years:

  • B. (1) The first day of Nisan is the new year for kings and festivals.
  • C. (2) The first day of Elul is the new year for tithing cattle.
  • D. ___R. Eleazar and R. Simeon say, "It is on the first day of Tishre".
  • E. (3) The first day of Tishri is the new year for the counting of years, for Sabbatical years, and for Jubiliees
  • F. ___for planting and vegitation
  • G. (4) the first day of Shebat is the new year for trees, in accord with the opinion of the House of Shammai.
  • H. ___the House of Hillel say, "On the 15th day of that month" "

And biblically one could say there used to be at least one more fifth "head of the year". The phrase, "Rosh HaShanah" or "Head of the Year" appears only once in Scripture, in Ezekiel 40:1 it says,

"In the five and twentieth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year [Rosh HaShanah], in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten, in the selfsame day...." (Ezek 40:1, KJV [with annotation])

When he uses the phrase "head of the year", this is referring to the head of the "years of exile", measured as how long since Israel was in exile, not the year as Israel came out of Egypt (which is measured from the 1st month), or Jubilee years (measured from the 7th month), or the year for tithing cattle (measured from the 6th month),  etc. This is not talking about the 7th month or the first , but the month of Av, for it says "in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten, in the selfsame day".  There is no history of any attack on Israel starting or ending on the 10th day of either Nisan/Nisan or Ethanim / Tishri.  But the temple was set afire on the 9th of Av and it took 2 days for it to burn, so the buring of the temple was completed on the 10th of Av.  Ezek 40:1 was the exact 25th anniversary of that destruction of the temple.  And when we read on in Ezekiel 40, what does G-d choose to reveal to Ezekiel on the 25th anniversary of the destruction of the temple?   .....  He reveals what the NEW TEMPLE will look like!!!!!  How poetic.  The date Ezekiel is giving here is the 10th of Av, on the 25th anniversary of Israel's exile, measured from the day the temple finished burning to the ground.  Now this "year" that Ezekiel is referring to, the years of exile, no longer existed when the Mishnah was written, so it was not worth mentioning at that point.  But it was mentioned by Ezekiel.

So while there is some minor disagreement in Jewish tradition on this topic, we still see in RH 1:1E that Jewish tradition correctly determnied that Tishri to Tishri is when years are COUNTED, just as Lev 25:9 describes. But it also recognizes another type of "year" that begins on the "Head of the months" of Nisan/Nisan for kings and for setting the calendar.

Now note that for the 2 "years" that are described in scripture, Jewish tradition contains no debate on. But for the other 2 "years", we see some disagreement on how to reckon those.

Now why does the Scirptures tell us to count the year from one seventh month to another? Keep in mind several things: A word for "year" really doesn't exist in Hebrew the same as in English - that is - a word used EXCLUSIVELY to refer to a measure of time. The Hebrew word for "year" (shanah) also can mean "change", "repeat", "study", and perhaps G-d wants us to see all these concepts in this time of year. And there are several instances in which the 7th measure of something creates or precedes a great change in Scripture.

  • It was on the 7th day that G-d "rested" from creation. The Sabbath rest means we change things every day EXCEPT the 7th day of the week. We work and create assets on every other day, but on the 7th day we rest and make no changes to our wealth.
  • In Lev 13 are regulations concerning a leprous man who is isolated, and on the 7th day is when the priest (kohen) investigates the man to determine is anything has changed about his status of leprousy.
  • The 7th year is the YEAR OF RELEASE, and it is in this year that several changes happen; debts are released, slaves are set free, etc.
  • In Egypt, there were 7 years of plenty followed by another change; 7 years of famine.
  • In Joshua 6, Israel marched around Jericho for 7 days before a great change happened; the walls fell down.

Also, we know that Rosh HaShanah (The "Head of the Year" or the "Head of the Change") symbolically represents the second coming of the Messiah, which is when the biggest change the world will ever see will happen. And setting this in the 7th month could be a hint as to how this event will happen in the 7th Millenium of mankind. The Scriptures tell us that a day is like a thousand years, and many people believe that our Savior will return after the world has had 6,000 years of existance to start the 7th Millenium of mankind on earth as its earthly ruler. Athttp://mywebpages.comcast.net/jovial/learn/mc/timeline.htm is an interesting discussion on why the year 2000 was probably somewhere between 5,954 to 6,034 years since creation, though no one can pin the time frame exactly. But perhaps He wants us to see His return to earth as something that happens in the 7th of a measure of something as a hint towards what time frame He will return to those of us who do believe?

Now in many ways, the number 7 is symbolically linked to rest. But we see a change connected in two ways; things in motion are set to rest and other things changing immediately after a measure of 7.

Whatever the case, we can say this with all safe conclusions:

  • G-d commanded us to number our months from Nisan to Nisan.
  • He commanded us to number our years (changes) and count them from Tishri (Ethanim) to Tishri (Ethanim). The "turn of the year" is Biblically at the Feast of Ingathering, and it is from one 7th month to another that the Scriptures count the Sabbatical year and the Jubilees.

So whatever God's reasons where for having us "see" a "year" or a "change" in the 7th measure of something, this is the association He made and there must have been something symbolically important in the 7th measure of something in which he wanted us to see a change.

 

 

Shalom,

Joe