SIVAN

(Siʹvan).

The postexilic name of the third Jewish lunar month of the sacred calendar, but the ninth of the secular calendar. (Esther 8:9; 1 Chron. 27:5; 2 Chron. 31:7) It corresponds to part of May and part of June. The meaning of the name is uncertain.

Sivan comes at the end of the spring when the intense heat of summer is approaching; this is mentioned by Josephus in describing a slaughter of Samaritans by the Roman army in that month. (Wars of the Jews, Book III, chap. VII, par. 32) This was the time of the wheat harvest and also the early part of the dry season, which would continue until October or the lunar month of Bul. (Ex. 34:22; Prov. 26:1) This was doubtless the month when the prophet Samuel prayed to Jehovah and an unseasonal rainstorm occurred, causing great fear among the people. (1 Sam. 12:16-19) By now the “early figs” that came on the trees toward the close of the winter months were fully ripe. (Isa. 28:4; Jer. 24:2) In the coastal area of the Mediterranean apples were also in season.—Song of Sol. 2:3; compare Joel 1:10-12.

The Festival of Weeks or Pentecost was celebrated on the sixth day of Sivan, accompanied by the offering of the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, just fifty days after the offering of the firstfruits of the barley harvest. (Ex. 34:22; Lev. 23:15-21) It was on this sixth day of Sivan, in the year 33 C.E., that the holy spirit was poured out on the group of about 120 disciples assembled in the upper room at Jerusalem. From the crowds gathered at the city for the feast came the three thousand persons who were baptized on that day.—Acts 1:15; 2:1-42.

It was in the month of Sivan that King Asa celebrated a grand feast following his reform activity in eradicating false religion from Judah and Jerusalem and other areas. (2 Chron. 15:8-10) The swift couriers sent by King Ahasuerus to deliver the message granting the Jews the right to defend themselves on the thirteenth day of Adar were dispatched almost nine months earlier, on the twenty-third day of Sivan, to the 127 jurisdictional districts of the Persian Empire extending from India to Ethiopia.—Esther 8:9-14.