The spring grain harvest, which runs from the Feast of Firstfruits (the wavesheaf) through Pentecost, parallels God's early harvest of firstfruits, those called into the church who become the Bride of Christ. Jesus Christ fulfilled the wavesheaf as the first of the firstfruits. The manner of ancient barley reaping suggests how the harvest unfolds. Grain was cut while still white, mature enough to ripen but not so ripe that it would shatter from the husk, as Christ indicates in John 4:35 when He says the fields are already white for harvest. The cut stalks were bound into sheaves and stood together as shocks to dry and mature off the ground, then carried to the threshing floor, threshed, and winnowed. The sheaves may correspond to small Sabbath-keeping groups, and the shocks to scattered church groups that shelter believers while they mature. The threshing floor may correspond to the Place of Safety, where trials shake loose self-centered shells and merge individuals into unity. Winnowing corresponds to the resurrection, when the firstfruits are lifted and purified. Revelation 14:14-16 shows Christ reaping this harvest with a sharp sickle, distinct from the later grape harvest of wrath. Tares are removed in stages, and grain left in the field's corners, like gleanings for the poor, may represent believers who remain in the world to serve others during the Great Tribulation. This reading is speculative, but it suggests the harvest may already have begun with the church's fracturing.

The spring harvest begins with the waving of the sheaf and ends at Pentecost, so the same qualification governs both: the offering must be firstfruits of what Israel itself had sown by its own labors (Exodus 23:16). Israel's harvest in Canaan upon entering the land therefore could not supply a wavesheaf. They had labored to reap it but had not sown it, so it was an incomplete production, and it came from Gentile hands, whose idolatry made it unclean (Leviticus 22:25). It also would break the principle that God's people are "laborers together with God" (I Corinthians 3:9). Because no wavesheaf was required of them, the Israelites could eat the land's produce, including unleavened bread and parched grain, on the day after the Passover (Joshua 5:11), without waiting for the ceremony. Had they been bound to wait, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, grinding, and baking on a holy day would have strained Sabbath liberty. For this reason, no Jewish group has ever waved the sheaf on a Sabbath. It was always a common workday, since harvest labor began immediately after the sheaf was waved. The sheaf also typifies Christ, the First of the Firstfruits, a pure Israelite, which Gentile grain could not represent. Moreover, Deuteronomy 12 forbade any altar service, including waving the sheaf, until the land had rest and the Tabernacle was set up at Shiloh, seven years after the crossing.