Today in the Bible

Adar 29, 5785; from sunset March 28, 2025, to sunset April 8, 2025

(The twenty-ninth day of the twelfth month)

This is the name “Mosheh” (מֺשֶׁה – Moses) as seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, written over two thousand years ago.

According to tradition, shortly before sundown on the 29th of Adar, God commanded Moses regarding the “mitzvah” of sanctifying the crescent New Moon and establishing a lunar calendar.  A mitzvah is a commandment.  This is considered the first commandment that Israel was given as a nation.

The word “month” in these verses is the Hebrew word “chodesh.”  Chodesh (“khoe-desh”) is a word used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures for the word “Moon” or “month.”  It comes from a verb meaning “to renew or repair.”

This first mitzvah issued to Israel as a nation came at a point when they were still in bondage in Egypt; a couple of weeks before the night of the first Passover, the night when the blood was applied to the doorposts and the lintels.  It is said that after the sunset, God showed Moses the crescent New Moon of the new month of Nisan, showing him the precise dimensions of the moon at the moment the new month is to be consecrated.

For the generations that followed, each new month was ushered in when two witnesses testified before the Sanhedrin that they had seen the crescent New Moon.  In the 4th century CE, Hillel II foresaw that the Jews would no longer be able to follow a Sanhedrin-based calendar. So Hillel and his rabbinical court established the perpetual calendar which is followed today — until the Messiah will come and reestablish the Sanhedrin.

To read more about how the hours, days, weeks, months, and years are calculated on the biblical calendar, please refer to our Time in the Bible section of this blog.

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