There’s one more thing to say about this Torah portion, and that is about the timing of a day and when a month begins. There are many different beliefs about how to calculate and keep the calendar as it is described in the Bible. You may know that today we keep the Gregorian calendar that was established in the 16th century. But that calendar won’t help us with understanding the timing of things in the Bible because it is a solar-based calendar. The calendar of the Bible is lunar-solar based, meaning it uses the moon and the sun to calculate the days and months of the year. I won’t go into all the variants and beliefs, but only share what I have discovered in reading through God’s Word and observing the moon cycles myself. So here goes.
Genesis 1:5 says, “And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.” It seems that a day consists of an evening and then morning, which accounts for the 24 hour day. Some suggest that it was after the day of creating that there was evening and morning. A day would begin with sunlight and end when the evening is over and the morning has come. There are a few problems with that understanding, though. First, the rising and the setting of the sun is what determines evening and morning. But the sun wasn’t created until day four. So on day one, there was no “day” portion because there was no sunlight for the day. So for the first three days, it was God saying there was a 24 hour period that He called a day without any way for us to measure it. The Hebrew words for evening and morning are ‘ereb and boqer, respectively. ‘Ereb means an evening, sunset, or night. Boqer means morning, break of day or sunrise, or daytime. Evening and morning are not measurements of time. They are transitions between two periods of time, which are night and day. So when it says there was evening and morning, and that was a day, those are just two events in the day. A better way to put it is that a night and a day make 24 hours and include morning and evening. ‘Ereb and boqer could have been translated as there being night and daytime, and that makes a day. Maybe that is too much to try and wrap our heads around, so let’s look at God’s instruction for the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 23.
The Day of Atonement is to be on the 10th day of the 7th month every year. In giving instructions on how and when to keep it, God said in verse 32, “It shall be to you a Sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict yourselves. On the ninth day of the month beginning at evening, from evening to evening shall you keep your Sabbath.” On the ninth day of the month, as the sun is going down, the Sabbath of the Day of Atonement is supposed to begin and last until the evening transition on the 10th of the month. The 24 hour period for the Day of Atonement is from evening to evening. So the 24 hour day starts with the night, and then the day, and then ends when the sun goes down again, and that night begins a new day. So, if the day starts in the morning, and the Day of Atonement is supposed to be a 24-hour sabbath on the 10th of the month, then why does God say to keep the 24-hour sabbath from the evening of the 9th until the evening of the 10th? Wouldn’t that mean that the Day of Atonement would be kept on the last half of the 9th and the first half of the 10th? I think God has clearly stated that the 10th of the month is from evening to evening, as would be every other day.
Now for the beginning of the month. The month begins with the new moon. The disagreement is with when the new moon happens. The two views are the conjunction method and the visible sighting of the new moon in the evening sky as the sun goes down (known as the sliver method). Some reject the conjunction method outright because there seems to be no way to verify that conjunction has happened since you cannot see the moon. But there are a few problems with the sliver method that make it untenable. The two biggest ones are the timing issues it creates.
In Exodus and Leviticus, we will learn about the Feast Days. We’ll see that the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Tabernacles begin on the 15th day of the month when the moon is full. The sliver method waits until the moon is sighted in the evening sky to start a new month. The sliver of the moon is typically visible one or two days after conjunction. The full moon happens approximately 15 days after the conjunction, so if the visible sliver is days behind, then those two feasts would never start on the full moon, but after. The timing would be off.
Another problem with the sliver method is how they would announce the new month to the nation. The beginning of a new month was important information that had to get out because the Feast Days were dependent on the days of the month. If the sighting of the sliver determined the beginning of the month, then the day the sliver was sighted would be the first of the month. But it wouldn’t be visible until the sun was going down, which would mean that a new day was about to begin, which would then be the second day of the month. A New Moon celebration started on the 1st and usually went on into the 2nd or even the 3rd of the month. The sliver method would miss the New Moon celebration. And the new month still had to be announced to the rest of the nation. By the time they heard the news, the first two days of the new month would already be over. That’s not a feasible system.
From this week’s haftarah portion, a verse in 1 Samuel suggests that David didn’t determine the new moon by the sliver method. King Saul is seeking to kill David, but Saul’s son Jonathan doesn’t believe it. Jonathan wants David to come back to the King’s house, but David wants to do a test of Saul’s intentions. Verse 5 says, “David said to Jonathan, “Behold, tomorrow is the new moon, and I should not fail to sit at the table with the king. But let me go, that I may hide myself in the field till the third day at evening.””
The king’s table would be celebrating the new moon the next day. How did David know they would see the new sliver tomorrow? And why would they be celebrating the New Moon that night if they wouldn’t see the sliver until the sun went down later? By using conjunction, it would be possible to know if the new moon was the next day or not, even though the conjunction cannot be seen.
The moon cycle is 29.5 days, which means a month is either 29 days or 30 days long, no more and no less. The waning crescent can be seen in the eastern sky before the sun rises. The days of the month would be coming to an end. If you go out on the 27th and 28th day of the moon cycle, you can locate the moon toward the horizon before the sun comes up. Looking toward that same spot on the 29th day, you try to verify that you can still see the crescent as the sun comes up. If it’s a clear sky and the sun comes up without seeing the crescent, then the new moon can be declared as happening the next day. The new month begins that evening. The 29th would be the last day of this month, and the next day would be the first of the new month. Since the sun is just coming up, there would be roughly 12 hours or less of daylight to get the information around the nation to declare that the new month begins at sundown. Nobody would miss the 1st of the new month.
If the crescent is still visible on the 29th, then conjunction will not happen that night. The next day would be the 30th day of the month, and the new month would begin the day after that. What if the weather is cloudy or otherwise prevents any visual verification of the crescent moon? In that case, you automatically add the 30th day, and the new month would begin the day after that. There would never be more than 30 days in a month because the moon cycle is less than 30 days. This method gives plenty of time to alert the whole nation to the beginning of the new month. The Feast days will indeed begin on the full moon 15 days after the conjunction. And all of the people will be able to celebrate the new moon celebration on the same day.
I hope that none of that was too confusing or controversial. We can agree to disagree if you like. I just thought I would share what I’ve discovered after studying the different calendars and going out to watch the moon cycles. When we get to the Flood narrative next week, there’s an intriguing thing concerning the calendar that Noah followed. The numbers don’t seem to add up, or do they?