You shall keep the feast of harvest is simply “and the feast of harvest,” drawing on the verb You shall keep at the beginning of verse 15. The word for harvest refers to the grain harvest, in this case the harvest of the wheat, which ripened several weeks later than the barley. This is called the “feast of weeks” in 34.22. The “Harvest Festival” may be expressed as “The Festival for Harvesting [or, Reaping] Grain.”

Of the first fruits of your labor is difficult to relate to the feast of harvest, since the first of is not in the text and can only be assumed. (In 34.22 the word order is different and the of is not needed.) Is this simply another way of referring to feast of harvest, as in King James Version and American Standard Version, “the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy labors”? Or is it identifying what the people were to offer at the feast of harvest? New American Bible, New International Version, and Revised English Bible supply the word “with”: “You shall also keep the feast of the grain harvest with the first of the crop” (New American Bible). Revised Standard Version, New Revised Standard Version, and others add the word of without clarifying which meaning is intended.

Good News Translation interprets first fruits differently: “when you begin to harvest your crops” (similarly Contemporary English Version). But this is not really what the text is saying. The word for first fruits refers to what is harvested, not to when the harvesting begins. This “Harvest Festival” (Good News Translation) was associated with the wheat harvest (34.22), and later with Pentecost, which came seven weeks after the feast of unleavened bread. It will be helpful for many translators to make it explicit that this festival occurs during the spring. Translator’s Old Testament may be the easiest to follow: “You shall celebrate the festival of Harvest by offering the firstfruits of the crop from the seed you sow in your fields.” One may alternatively translate “Celebrate the festival for reaping grain in the spring by offering the first-fruits of the crops [or, harvest] that comes from the seed you sow in your fields.”

You shall keep the feast of ingathering is simply “and the feast of ingathering,” with the verb You shall keep understood from verse 15. Ingathering refers to the final “gathering in” of all the crops, both grain and fruit. Good News Translation calls it “Festival of Shelters,” since “feast of booths” (Deut 16.13) became the more familiar name. The idea came from the practice of the farmers living in temporary booths, or huts, out in the vineyards and olive orchards to guard the fruit as it ripened. In many languages translators will need to translate “Festival of Shelters” with a sentence; for example, “Festival in which people lived [or, stayed] in shelters” or “Festival in which people built shelters for themselves.”

At the end of the year means at the end of the agricultural year, which came in September-October, or “in the autumn” (Good News Translation), just before the rainy season began. When you gather in from the field uses the verb from which the noun ingathering is derived. The fruit of your labor is literally “your doing,” but it refers to “the produce from the fields” (New American Bible). Good News Translation‘s “the fruit from your vineyards and orchards” may be too specific, for it does not allow for the final harvest of grain as well. If one needs to be that specific, then it is possible to say “… in the autumn when you harvest all your grain and pick the fruit in your vineyards and orchards.” (See the comment on “vineyards” at 22.5, and on “orchards” at 23.11.)

Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .