1. And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying, 2. This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.
3. Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house:
4. And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.
5. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:
6. And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
7. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.
8. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread;
and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
9. Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof.
10. And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire. (Exodus 12:1-10)
This passage gives the rules for the preparation of the passover. God first gives the rules, and then, in the following verses, the reason for the passover. God requires obedience because He is the Lord; the understanding follows obedience.
The passover is the establishment of God’s covenant with the slaves in Egypt prior to their release. We are told in v. 1 that this was done “in the land of Egypt” before the departure and the giving of the law at Sinai. The passover marked Israel’s covenant deliverance from Egypt into the life of freedom under God and His law.
Israel’s calendar was to be remade by the passover (v. 2). Dating henceforth was to begin with the time of redemption. The first month was called ʾâbîyb, newly ripened ‘corn’ or barley (Ex.
13:4); later, it was also called Nisan (Neh. 2:1). On our calendar, it is roughly March to mid-April.
With the covenant, time has a new beginning, and time is reckoned in terms of salvation and is to culminate in God’s triumphant kingdom. With Christ’s renewal of the covenant as Himself the Lamb of God, time’s great renewal began, and the years are now reckoned Anno Domini, from the year of our Lord.
In v. 3, we are told that “all the congregation of Israel” shall observe the passover. The term translated as congregation is ʿêdâh, meaning also assembly but better understood as community.
The covenant establishes a community with God by His grace; it requires a community among the covenant people. In Deuteronomy and elsewhere, qâhâl is used; these two words are rendered in the New Testament as ekklēsia, church, or, the community and kingdom of God.
The sacrificial animal was a lamb, but might also be a kid, or young goat (v. 5), a year old, unblemished, and male. This sacrificial lamb set forth God’s atonement by means of an unblemished substitute. The death penalty on man was assumed by the Lamb of God, and the passover enacted what in time would be Christ’s atoning sacrifice.
The lamb was to be consumed in its entirety at the passover meal. Hence, if a family had too few members it was to unite with neighbors to observe the meal. The sacrificial animal had to be roasted, not boiled or prepared in any other way; after being skinned and cleaned, it was to be roasted whole.
The blood of the lamb was to be kept and then sprinkled on the lintel and the doorposts (v. 7).
Blood in Scripture represents life. Those whose doors are marked with the blood of the lamb are spared the tenth judgment. The premise is that a life has been laid down, so that the dwellers’
lives are spared.
The passover sacrifice was to be eaten with unleavened bread, and with “bitter herbs.” What these were originally, we are not told. In modern observances, it is often horseradish. Because of the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, Judaism now uses only a shankbone for the passover meal.124
Four days before the passover, the lamb was to be set aside (v. 3). Every member of the family was now to regard the lamb as holy. At first, all ate generously of the lamb; ten to twenty persons were reckoned to one lamb, according to Josephus. Later, the passover became more a symbol than a meal, and each person received a portion the size of an olive.125 Anything remaining from the lamb was to be burned.
The passover could not be a solitary feast. It had to be a community observance centered in the family. Life in community is not easy, but it is a religious necessity. Life in isolation can be autobiography, but it cannot be history. As Chadwick observed, “History is the sieve of God.”126 The problems and tensions of community life are the testing ground for men. As a slave people, Israel had suffered more than it had been tested. Soon, with freedom, the testing would begin. It is a myth that men love freedom; fallen man seeks security, not freedom, because his goal is irresponsible power, not maturity in liberty.
Since passover was a family observance, it imposed a religious duty on every family man. The faith of the family was primarily his responsibility.
It is a curious fact that the religious New Year for Israel, in spite of the passover, is at the beginning of the seventh month, Rosh Hashanah, in September. Rosh Hashanah is a harvest festival, whereas Passover is in the spring; it precedes the harvest.
By ordering the passover, God claimed Israel as His property. He had judged Egypt and was now about to deliver Israel. By establishing His covenant with Israel, He now required Israel to keep His law. The response to redemption must be obedience to God’s law.
The passover narrative, like most of the Bible, has been the target of skepticism by modernist scholars. Thus, Roy L. Honeycutt, Jr., was troubled by the fact that God killed children, i.e., the firstborn. He held that, either God’s character has “changed” or improved since then, or man now better understands the meaning of this and other events. He held that God used some “fatal epidemic,” and hence the deaths.127
Such interpretations change nothing. They reveal the sentimentality of modern man, his inability to understand God, God’s law, or God’s judgments, and they are influential in furthering moral corruption.
We now have a generation which cannot execute hardened, habitual criminals, nor murderers, nor anyone else deserving death. Yet it favors abortion and the death of millions thereby; every year it legalizes sodomy; it is permitting euthanasia; and, as it steadily increases the murderous scope of its evil, it rejects God’s righteous judgments as cruel. Such men are tender-hearted towards evil and merciless towards God, His people, and His laws. They are the modern Egyptians.