By Water & Blood

Panarion 51, Chapter 31: The second-first sabbath and Passover typology

But I will come again to the matter at hand. Luke again says, bearing witness to what I have said in many parts and many ways, that ‘it happened on a second-first sabbath,’ in order to show that a first sabbath is that defined and spoken by the Lord from the beginning in the creation of the world, revolving from then until now in a period of seven days; and a second sabbath is that defined from the law.

For it says, ‘You shall take for yourself a yearling male lamb without blemish’ (which was an antitype of the Savior) ‘from the tenth of the month, and it shall be kept until the fourteenth, and you shall sacrifice it in the evening on the fourteenth day; and it shall be for you a sabbath, a holy day, and you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, and on the seventh day you shall make a holy day.’

And you see that such a holy day of the lamb is called a second sabbath after the first sabbath, having been sanctified into a sabbath, whether it fall on a Sunday or on a second or on a third of the week.

And revolving again into seven days it is called second-first, in order to show from this that not only John indicated a period of time of two and three years of Passover feasts, but also Luke and the others.

For so the law says: ‘You shall count for yourself seven weeks from the beginning of the sheaf, from putting the sickle to the standing grain, and you shall make a seventh week a holy day of the Lord,’ signifying concerning Pentecost.

For after sacrificing the Passover within three days—that is, after three days of the lamb—it commanded the sheaf to be brought in, in order to signify the blessed sheaf being raised from the dead after the third day, the earth bringing it forth,

and he himself again receiving it from her in the resurrection from the tomb and remaining with the disciples the forty days and at the end of Pentecost bringing it into the heavenly places to the Father;

the firstborn of the firstborn, the holy firstfruits, the sheaf which he grasped from Mary, the arm that was embraced in God, the fruit of the womb, the firstfruits of the threshing-floor.

For no longer after Pentecost does the sickle offer firstfruits to God; ‘for the Lord no longer dies; death no longer has dominion over him,’ according to what is written.

And you see how many mysteries of God the law prefigured and the Gospel fulfilled. And from where do we not have means to show the clarity of these things? But lest we carry the account into breadth, we must turn again to the sequence.

And it appears from the ears of grain and from the harvest and from the disciples that after a temptation of forty days John and Luke and all narrate all these things.