Bible Commentaries
Exodus 12

Verses 1-22

VIII

THE INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER

Exodus 12-13

In considering the plagues we did not consider this Passover. We take up first, the word. In Hebrew this means "to step over," "to pass over"; hence, to spare, to have mercy on. Next, the nature of the Passover. It was essentially a sacrifice. It is called a sacrifice in our text and in the New Testament it says that Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. A very few Protestants have taken the position that the Passover was not a sacrifice, but their position is entirely untenable. It was in every sense of the word a sacrifice, and not merely a sacrifice, but a substitutionary sacrifice. The paschal lamb in each house was to die in the place of the first-born, just as Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. It is intensely substitutionary. And we now come to the institution of the ordinance. It was instituted in Egypt just before the last plague. As we go on in the Old Testament we will see some distinction between the Egyptian Passover and the later Passover of the Jews. Of course, there would be some distinction between a passover celebrated in a marching state and a passover when they were settled in the land. But after they were settled we find some additions to the Passover, even in the time of our Lord. It is not my purpose now to notice particularly these differences, but simply to affirm that there were distinctions between the originally established Passover and that of subsequent days.

The next thing is the distinction between the sacrifice of the Passover and the Feast of the Passover. We look first at the sacrifice. The first thing we want to determine is the time. In chapter 13 it says, "This day you go forth in the month of Abib " and in other passages it is called the month Nisan. The two names correspond. The time of the year was in the goring when the firstfruits of the harvest were gathered. This month now becomes an era. In Exodus 12:2, it is said, "This month shall be the beginning of months unto you; it shall be the first month of the year to you." That means the ecclesiastical year. They had a civil year, which commenced in the fall, but their ecclesiastical year commenced with that Passover. Still speaking about the time, on the tenth day of that month the Passover lamb was to be selected. On the fourteenth day of the same it was to be slain. More exactly, quite a number of passages say that it was slain in the evening. In Deuteronomy 16 it is said, "as the sun goes down." In the New Testament we find that custom had changed, according to the teaching of the rabbis, who held that it meant "at the turn of the day"; so the passover lamb was slain about the ninth hour, which would be at three o’clock in the afternoon. The time was then spring, Abib or Nisan, answering to our March or April, the lamb selected on the tenth day, to be slain on the fourteenth, at the going down of the sun.

We now look at the sacrifice itself. It had to be a lambkin or kid, generally a lamb; just a year old and without a blemish. Who does the selecting? In the Egyptian Passover this was done by the head of every family; the priesthood was not yet established. There is, as yet, no central place of worship. We learn another distinction: If a family was too small to eat a whole lamb, then two or more families were united until they had enough to eat a lamb. When the lamb was slain what was done with the blood, representing the life? It was caught in a basin and sprinkled with a bunch of hyssop on the two sides of the door and the lintel, the piece across the top of the door. It was not sprinkled at the bottom because the blood was sacred and not to be stepped on, and the sprinkling of the blood made the house sacred for everybody who was in it when the blood was put there, and all who stayed inside. If one went out, it lost the virtue as far as he was concerned. That is the sacred part of it. What did the sacrifice part mean? That there was no natural distinction between the first-born of Israel and the first-born of Egypt. But by a distinction of grace, that blood becomes a substitutionary atonement for those sheltered in that house. Thus "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." Who was to kill the lamb? The whole congregation of Israel participated in the killing. Later, we see a distinction based on the settlement and upon the establishment of the priesthood.

We now come to the feast. What was done with the body of the lamb? It was not boiled, not fried, but roasted. Then all that household assembled together. Here arises a question as to the restrictions on the persons who were to eat. It is expressly declared that a stranger who just happened to be staying there could not eat of it, but a slave that belonged to the family could partake of it. No foreigner could partake of it, nor could a hired servant; and an uncircumcised man was imperiously ordered not to partake of it, and a fearful penalty was attached to it. When that little family was gathered and this lamb was roasted, it was to be eaten by the whole family, but in eating it no bone was to be broken; and when they got through only the skeleton remained. They were to eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. So far as the Egyptian Passover is concerned, nothing is said of wine, but in Christ’s time we see wine used. That first Passover, though, was in great haste.

Notice how they were to eat, viz.: with sandals on their feet. The sandals were taken off while in the house, but here they were to have them on since they were ready for starting, with a long robe girt around them and staff in hand. They were to go right from the feast on the march and they were to eat in a hurry. The bitter herbs signified the affliction from which they were escaping. A kind of sauce was made from these herbs. In the New Testament when Christ was eating the Passover it says that he dipped his sop into the dish. That, is the sauce. The unleavened bread referred to purity, leaven means corruption. As Paul explains when he discusses the matter in I Corinthians, "the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Notice that a part of this institution referred to a later time as set forth in these two chapters, because this feast was to be both a memorial and a sign, and as a memorial it was to be perpetuated. They were to observe it throughout all generations. The feast as provided on this occasion was to last seven days, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first. The first day, or the fourteenth, was devoted to searching the house that there should be no leaven found in the house.

It was a curious sight to watch the Jews prepare that way for the feast. The furniture was moved out, a lamp was lighted, and they would go around, holding it up to shine into all the cracks of the house; they would look into all the vessels to see if just a speck of leaven, or yeast, of any kind was in the house. To this Paul referred when he said, "Purge out the old leaven, and let us eat the feast of unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." This was to be a memorial feast because this night they were to be delivered from Egypt; so they were sacred to God. It was a sign that as a nation they were being delivered from the power of Egypt forever. In connection with the Passover, therefore, is the sanctification of the first-born, the first-born male of man or animal was to be God’s. If it was an unclean animal, it was still to be God’s but it was to be redeemed with money and the money was to go into the treasury of God. The sanctification of the first-born must always be considered in connection with the Passover.

Another thing to be considered in connection with it was the agricultural feature. Not much reference is made to that here, but in the later books of the Pentateuch we come to it. It was a day in which certain offerings were to be made, particularly of the firstfruits. There was a special offering for each day of the seven days in which that feast was kept. So you must keep distinct in your mind the Passover as a sacrifice, the Passover as a feast, as a memorial, as a sign, the Passover in connection with the sanctification of the firstborn, and in relation to the agricultural features of it.

Another important thing: It was accompanied with instructions, Exodus 12:26: "And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of Jehovah’s passover, who passed over the house of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses." The second part of the instruction is in Exodus 13:14, where the first-born comes in: "When thy son asketh, What is this? Why do ye set yourselves apart the first-born on this occasion? your answer shall be: By the strength of his hand Jehovah brought us out of Egypt from the house of bondage, and it came to pass when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, Jehovah slew his first-born; therefore I sacrifice to Jehovah all that openeth the womb, being males; but all of the first-born of my sons I redeem." The first-born was to be priest of the family, but when the nation was organized at Sinai, they took one of the twelve tribes and consecrated the entire tribe to the priesthood. The first-born of each family was thus, as it were, redeemed. When you are asked why the tribe of Levi belonged to God, your answer will be, because it took the place of the first-born in each family. The tribe of Levi is not to own any land but to be sustained by the Lords house and the Lord’s people. Notice, next, that the Passover was to be kept by faith. In Hebrews 11 we have this language: "By faith Moses kept the passover, and the sprinkling of the blood, that the destroyer of the first-born should not touch them." When they slew that lamb and sprinkled his blood on the doorposts they were constantly to rely in their hearts on that blood to protect them. It was an act of faith in the blood.

The first time I ever witnessed the observance of the Lord’s supper I was a little boy, and I noticed that some of the bread was left over. A little Negro was with me, and he said "Let’s ask them for them scraps." I said, "Maybe they won’t let us have them." So when the deacons passed out (after the congregation was dismissed) with that plate of scraps the little Negro came up and said, "Massah, give ’umn to me," and the deacon said, "No, you can’t have them." "Well what are you going to do with them?" asked the Negro. "Going to burn them up," replied the deacon. It made a deep impression on my mind. That which was left over had to be destroyed, and they got that idea from the Passover. If they were unable to eat all of the lamb they must burn it that very night. It stood in a peculiar relation as no other food ever did, and was not to be used for secular purposes of any kind.

Another restriction was this: Suppose that there was a family gathered in a house that night. Maybe in the next house were some people who were not strictly entitled to come in and sit with that family. Now, could they take any of that lamb out of the house and give it to anybody out of the house? The law is very explicit. "You shall not take it out of the house."

When a Baptist preacher, pastor of the First Church at Houston, Texas, allowed himself to be over-persuaded through his sympathetic good nature to go and administer the Lord’s Supper to a dying person, I told him that he had committed a great sin. He asked, "Why?" I replied: "You have violated every law of God that touches the Lord’s Supper, as you look at the analogy of the Passover and also the teaching of the Lord’s Supper. You took the Lord’s bread out of the Lord’s house. You gave it to an individual who was not entitled to it. It was not eaten in a congregation and did not express the unity of a congregation. You gave it to an unbaptized man; you gave it superstitiously, and anything given thus is not given according to the law. Whenever you let people cause you to do this you rob God. If it was your own and you had complete control of it you could give it to them. But it was not yours. You had no more right to carry off that bread than you had to rob a bank."

You see the bearing of that question upon communion. There can be no such thing as the individual observance of the Lord’s Supper; the unity idea is expressed throughout. One Lord, not a broken bone, no severance of its parts, none of it to be sent out of the house. A joint feast for everybody in the crowd, and the crowd specified, a fence put up, no stranger, no foreigner, no uncircumcised man. So when you come to the Lord’s Supper no unbaptized man should be there. To me it is a sign of incredible weakness that a man, through a little sentimentality, should be ashamed to observe the Lord’s Supper in the way God demanded it to be observed, and to me it is a sign of great presumption that one should think that he has a right to specify who should come to God’s Table. We can be generous with anything that is ours, but when we come to God’s ordinance we are not authorized in varying a hair’s breadth.

When we come to study the history of the Passover, certain Passover observances loom up. First, this one; then the one described in Numbers where it was kept in the wilderness; one in the Holy Land at Gilgal; the one that Hezekiah observed; the one that Josiah observed; and then the last Passover of our Lord, when its great antitype came. Remember these historic Passovers.

I have one thought more. An ordinance shows forth something. When it is properly observed it is always a very striking thing, and intended to attract attention; to evoke questions, particularly upon the part of young people. Take a group of children of any tribe on earth, white, black, red, or brown, and let them see a Lord’s Supper or a baptism for the first time, and the question will pop out of their mouths, "Why? What do you mean?" A little fellow running around the lot, seeing the father looking over the sheep, would say, "Here, papa, take this one. Here’s a big one." "No not that, son, I want a lamb; not that one, either; I want a little lamb." The child gets a little one. "No not that one, but one without blemishes." The father gets up before day and kills the lamb at a certain time of the day, roasting it in a certain way, and burning what is left. All that is intended to fix upon their minds the fact that they were a redeemed people peculiar to God. What is peculiar cannot belong to another.

The reader should look out every passage in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy which touches the Passover. And I want to commend a book by Joseph Frey, a converted Jew who devoted his life to proving from the Old Testament that Jesus was the Christ. Read Frey on The Scripture Types, especially the chapter on the Passover.

QUESTIONS

1. Where do we find the original account of the institution of the Passover?

2. What great event its occasion?

3. What is the ground of the difference between the Egyptians and the Israelites?

4. What claim of Jehovah did this sparing, on the one hand, and slaying on the other, vindicate?

5. What is the central text?

6. What is the New Testament analogue?

7. What is the design?

8. What is the time?

9. How did this affect the Jewish calendar?

10. What applications of the word "Passover"?

11. What of the qualifications of the lamb?

12. What of the place?

13. Who slays the lamb?

14. How is the blood applied?

15. Unity of observing the feast?

16. How prepared?

17. How eaten?

18. Who eats it?

19. How often?

20. What special provision is given for those who cannot observe it at the proper time because away or ceremonially unclean?

21. What of the penalty for nonobservance?

22. A token of what was the sprinkled blood?

23. State a number of historical observances of the Passover.

24. What New Testament scriptures evidently bring out this analogy?

25. Give and illustrate the important lesson set forth in the chapter in commenting on Exodus 12:2.

26. We have seen circumcision made a prerequisite to participation in the Passover feast. Is there a similar relation between the analogous

New Testament ordinances – Baptism and the Lord’s Supper?

27. Circumcision foreshadows what?

28. The Passover Sacrifice, what?

29. The Passover feast, what?

30. The Feast of Unleavened Bread, what?

31. What is the signification of the burning up of the remains of the Passover feast?