The Easter point is here, as in Deuteronomy, fixed as being the beginning of harvest, but is still more definitely determined as the day after the first Sabbath falling within harvest time, and Pentecost follows the same reckoning. And the special Easter ritual consists in the offering of a barley sheaf; before this it is not lawful to taste of the new crop; and the corresponding Pentecostal rite is the offering of ordinary wheaten loaves. The corn harvest begins with barley and ends with wheat; at the beginning the first-fruits are presented in their crude state as a sheaf, just as men in like manner partake of the new growth in the form of parched ears (Leviticus xxiii. 14; Josh. v. 11); at the end they are prepared in the form of common bread. Thus the _maccoth_ now begin to be intelligible. As has been already said (see p. 69), they are not, strictly speaking, duly prepared loaves, but the bread that is hurriedly baked to meet a pressing emergency (1Sam. xxviii. 24); thus they are quite correctly associated with the haste of the exodus, and described as bread of affliction. At first people do not take time in a leisurely way to leaven, knead, and bake the year's new bread, but a hasty cake is prepared in the ashes; this is what is meant by maccoth. They are contrasted with the Pentecostal loaves precisely as are the sheaf and the parched ears, which last, according to Josh. v. 11, may be eaten in their stead, and without a doubt they were originally not the Easter food of men merely, but also of the Deity, so that the sheaf comes under the category of the later spiritual refinements of sacrificial material. Easter then is the opening, as Pentecost is the closing festivity, or (what means the same thing) `acereth, /1/ of the seven -- Footnote 1. Haneberg, Alterhuemer, 2d edit., p. 656. In Deuteronomy Pentecost as _`acereth_ lasts for only one day, while Easter and the feast of tabernacles each ]ast a week. -- Footnote