The Biblical Background to the kneeling prayer which is prayed today on the Feast of Pentecost
Every year on the Feast of Pentecost, the Coptic Orthodox Church practices “Salaat el Sagda,” or the “Kneeling Prayer,” in the evening. This important prayer has a deep meaning, as it explains the significant role of the descent of the Holy Spirit in our salvation and life as a church.
“In the Old Testament, Pentecost was the feast which occurred fifty days after Passover. As the Passover feast celebrated the exodus of the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt, Pentecost celebrated God’s gift of the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. In the new covenant of the Messiah, the Passover event takes on its new meaning as the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection, the “exodus” of men from this sinful world to the Kingdom of God. And in the New Testament as well, the Pentecostal feast is fulfilled and made new by the coming of the “new law,” the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ.”
The readings for the first kneeling prayer are from: Deut 5:23-33, 6:1-3; 1 Cor. 12:28-31, 13:1-12; Ps. 69:7,8,1; and John 17:1-26. In the second kneeling prayer, we read from Deut. 6:17-25; 1 Cor. 11:13-34, 14:1-17; Ps. 115:12,13; and Luke 24:36-53. During the third kneeling prayer, we read from Deut. 16:1-18; 1 Cor.14:18-40; and John 4:1-24. We notice that the church presents the shadow in the reading of the Old Testament, followed by the reality in the Pauline reading from 1 Corinthians, between the law of Moses and the role of the Holy Spirit’s gifts in the Church.
In order to understand the significance of this prayer, let us study part of the history of the people of God, especially during the period of Passover, which is truly said by the blessed St. Paul, “For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed.” The day of Pentecost is the feast of harvest, “Shavuot,” which marks “the conclusion of Passover.” “Since the great exodus from Egypt was intended to lead to the revelation at Sinai.” Similarly, Christ, our Passover, led us to His Holy Spirit who descended to dwell in us, rather than to give us His commandments written on two tablets. So, if the “goal of Passover is the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people,” we find the goal of resurrection is the renewal of man’s soul, body, and spirit. “For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:13-14). This purification is given not only to the Jews but to those “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). God who took Israel out of Egypt to make His own clean also led the Gentiles. Now, we “put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:22-24).
- The firstborn of Israelites were passed over by the angel when the angel saw the blood on the top, right, and left, so also with Christ, “He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent” (Col. 1:18). Thus, death passed over us, as by His death He abolished death.
During the weeks of Pentecost, we read the Sunday Gospels from St. John. On the second Sunday (Jn 6:35-45), we see Christ as the Bread of Life which came down from heaven, solving for us the problem that the Israelites encountered after their exodus when Moses, the blessed, asked God who sent them the Manna from Heaven (Ex. 16). The third Sunday (Jn. 4:1-42) brings us Christ as the Living Water, solving for us the issue of the lack of water when the Israelites settled at Rephidim, where Moses hit the rock and it brought forth water as we read in Ex. 17:1-7. The fourth Sunday (Jn. 12:35-50) presents Christ as the Light of the world, instead of being only the pillar of fire to lead the Jews as we read in Ex. 13:21-22.
Moses was raised to the mountain to receive the Law written on stones; our Lord rose from the dead to send us the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. In Ex. 19:10-11, God commanded Moses: “And the LORD said to Moses, 'Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments, and be ready by the third day; for on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.'” The three days are reflected in the Resurrection of our Lord, when He raised our nature to be a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 3:3; Hebrews 8:10), reminding us that the tomb where death should exist by its stench became a place of the new heavenly nature given to the believers.
When the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, as we read in Ex. 19:16, “On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled,” we find the same incidents in the Upper Room, where “suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:2-4). Also in the kneeling prayer, we use incense a lot to visualize this scene.
- The same God who delivered the Israelites from the land of slavery is the same God who delivered us by His resurrection from the slavery of the enmity of death. The words of our Lord to Moses started by saying, “And God spoke all these words, saying, 'I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage'” (Ex. 20:1). Similarly, by the resurrection of Christ, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21-22). The physical slavery and the spiritual death are linked together by Egypt and the Resurrection.
When Moses heard the words of the Lord, he built an altar: “And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD. And he rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel” (Ex. 24:4). Here on Pentecost, God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within the people so they became a temple for the Holy Spirit. “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). The altar was built on twelve pillars, and among the 120 (Acts 1:15) who were gathered in the Upper Room were the 11 disciples completed later by Matthias (Acts 1:26).
Moses shed the blood of the sacrifice in order to make the covenant between God and the Israelites: “And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.’ And Moses took the blood and threw it upon the people, and said, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words’” (Ex. 24:6-8). The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ became our mediator to reconcile us with the Father: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:13-22).
The covenant rule was to shed half of the sacrifice and to separate the halves for the two people who want to make the covenant to pass between them (Gen. 15:9-18). The Holy Spirit put us in a covenant with God; this time, the Holy Spirit dwelt in us, and God Himself finds His place of rest in our hearts (Ps. 132:13-14). The sacrifice is His body and blood “given for our salvation, remission of sins, and eternal life to those who partake of it” (from the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great).
- The “Feast of Weeks” (Deut. 16:10) is celebrated after: “You shall count seven weeks; begin to count the seven weeks from the time you first put the sickle to the standing grain” (Deut. 16:9). The Hebrew word "sheva" means seven, "shavu’ah" means week, and "Shavuot" means weeks. Exactly seven weeks after the first harvest of barley is the celebration of Shavuot (“weeks”), one of the three pilgrimage holidays when Jews would come to the mishkan (and later the temple) to present the first fruits of their spring crops before the Lord. Since Shavuot occurs on the 50th day after Passover, the Greek translators of the Torah called this day “Pentecost.”
- Christ our Lord is the first fruit "bikkurim," as the blessed St. Paul mentioned: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). It is the first fruit in the new land (Lev. 23:9-14) “new nature” which the Israelites had landed in after the slavery (Deut. 26:1-3): “When you come into the land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, and have taken possession of it, and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the LORD your God gives you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place which the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell there. And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, 'I declare this day to the LORD your God that I have come into the land which the LORD swore to our fathers to give us.'"
The celebration of the Holy Fifty Days after the Resurrection also came as a shadow in the Old Testament. Between the offering of the first fruit and the harvest on the 50th day, a special blessing was recited every day (for 49 days), naming exactly how many days were left before the climactic 50th day – a jubilee of days! This same ritual takes place when we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, the first fruit of those who have fallen asleep, continued for 50 days. Pentecost, as the festival of the harvest, is described in Exodus 23:16: "And you shall count from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven full weeks shall they be, counting fifty days to the morrow after the seventh sabbath; then you shall present a cereal offering of new grain to the LORD. You shall bring from your dwellings two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two-tenths of an ephah; they shall be of fine flour, they shall be baked with leaven, as firstfruits to the LORD... And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field to its very border, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the LORD your God" (Lev. 23:15-22).
Just as a sample of the first crop of barley was waved before the altar during the festival of firstfruits, so on Shavuot a sample of the first crop of the wheat harvest was brought to the priests, baked into two loaves of leavened bread, and then waved before the altar as a concluding rite of the season. There is some uncertainty among Jewish sages regarding the meaning of the use of the otherwise forbidden leaven (Lev. 2:11), though prophetically it is a picture of the “one new man” (composed of both Jew and Gentile) before the altar of the Lord (Eph. 2:14).
On the day of Pentecost, as the harvest day, the resurrection of the first fruit brought many fruits not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles. God added a significant harvest, but this time from men rather than from seeds: “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).
In the Pentecost During Pentecost, God wedded His people (Rev. 21:2,9; Rev. 19:9) by sending the Holy Spirit into their hearts. This event is regarded as the day of the covenant (Acts 2:1-42). In the Talmud, Shavuot is referred to as the “marriage day” between God and the Jewish people, symbolizing the union between heaven and earth. Passover is considered the time of Israel's “betrothal.”
Remembering the dead in the prayer of kneeling reminds us that our God "is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him" (Luke 20:38). The Holy Spirit, who guided those who have fallen asleep, continues to work in us. Additionally, it is customary for Egyptians to remember their dead during feast days.
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