1 And the I AM spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying,
2 ”This month shall be to you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you.
“Your history starts now. All your time will be counted from this moment. And this is New Year’s Day.”
3 “Speak ye to 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 is too little for the lamb, let him and his nearest neighbor share it according to the number of the souls. Divide the lamb according to how much everyone will eat.
There was to be no leftovers and no one left out. Later, Jewish authorities would decide that you needed between ten and twenty people for each lamb. I think every family would have to decide for themselves since some have bigger appetites than others.
For example, when my family first hit “ten” we had two adults, a teenage girl, a teenage boy, three school age children, two toddlers and a newborn. We probably couldn’t have eaten a whole lamb.
Now, though we only have eleven people, we have six adults, three teenagers, and two school age kids. One more person, yet we might could do two lambs now!
5 “ ‘Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male in his first year. Ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:
The sacrifice that covers us must be perfect. This lamb symbolized Christ. He was the only human to walk the earth without sinning.
Many cultures don’t really see a difference between sheep and goats; thus the statement that the lamb can be from either. And, really, there is very little difference;
- Sheep graze grass and goats eat brush.
- Sheep have fewer babies at once and will give their lives to protect them. Goats won’t, generally.
- Goats are harder on fences.
- Sheep horns curl while goat’s are pointed.
Yet there are so many similarities that it is often difficult to tell the difference. (See SheepAndGoats.breadoflifecf.com )
It is often that way with people. Sometimes someone looks like a “sheep,” when they are really a “goat,” and vise versa. You can tell the difference by looking at what they eat (the Word of God or Weeds?), how they care for others, and what kind of damage they can do (a goat’s horns can kill. Sheep usually can’t).
6 “ ‘And ye shall keep it pinned up until the fourteenth day of the same month. And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
Ancient societies (including Israel, as we will see later in the Bible) started their months at the new moon. By waiting until the fourteenth day for the Passover, God made sure they would be leaving during the full moon. This would give them plenty of light to see where they were going.
Penning the animal up for four days allowed all toxins he had eaten to be flushed out. It also gave the people time to grow attached. This would have brought the seriousness of sin into sharp focus.
Really, think about it. If God had required the “sacrifice” of, say, carrots, it would be no big deal. So you want to sin? Just be sure to torch some carrots afterward.
But the requirement of taking an innocent life (that of an adorable lamb) makes you want to avoid sin just so you don’t have to kill.
Of course, no one can keep from sinning by their own power. It takes God’s miraculous help.
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.
Their entrance into the house was covered in blood.
Our entrance into heaven is also covered in Blood- the Blood of Jesus.
8 “ ‘And they shall eat the meat in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread, and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
God was very specific about how the meat was to be cooked and seasoned as well as what was to be with it.
“Bitter herbs” are edible plants that stimulate the bitter tastebuds (as opposed to the salty, sweet or sour ones.) They would include lettuces, dandelion, and spinach, what we call “greens” (as well as garlic and onions and their relatives). They were to have a salad with it. These plants stimulate the internal organs into producing bile that cleanses the body and blood, and aid digestion.
Jesus went through the bitter trial of the Cross to offer us cleansing.
A roast lamb has touched the fire during cooking and has the peak of flavor. This method of cooking allows harmful fats to drip off (while keeping the good ones), and is cooked enough to kill all pathogens.
Jesus went through the “fire” of God’s wrath for us, brings us “Life and that more abundantly,” and removes the harmful from our lives.
Unleavened bread would be like our tortillas or pita breads. They have no yeast or baking powder to make them rise.
Jesus warned us to “beware the leaven of the Pharisees.” (Matthew 16:6) He was referring to their doctrines of hypocrisy. Our lives should be “unleavened,” without hypocrisy or false doctrine.
9 “ ‘Eat not of it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roast with fire, his head with his legs, and with the internal organs thereof.
Raw meat retains pathogens that can make us sick, and even kill us.
No part of our lives is to be untouched by God. We are to submit it all to Him.
10 “ ‘And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning. And that which remains of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire.
We must consume ALL of the doctrine of Christ, not just the parts sound good to us.
11 “ ‘And this is how ye will eat it; with your coat on, your shoes on your feet, and your waling stick in your hand. Ye shall eat it in a hurry. It is the I AM's Passover.
They were to eat it in faith that they were fixing to leave.
We should partake in Jesus ready to act for Him.
12 “ ‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will kill all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the LORD.
Osiris was worshiped as the giver of life in Egypt. The true God is the real controller of life and death.
Pharaoh was worshiped as a god himself, the highest god, since he was incarnate in the flesh, a counterfeit Christ. But this plague even hit his household.
13 “ ‘And the blood shall be to you for a sign on the houses where ye are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
Anyone who not only believed but acted on the Lord’s command was spared this last plague, even if they were Egyptian (and by now I bet there were quite a few Egyptian believers!)
Anyone who did not act on this command lost their first born, even if they were the purest descendant of Abraham.
God is not a respecter of persons. He makes of all men one blood (Acts 17:26). He doesn’t care the color of our skin, what continent our ancestors came from, or our genetic makeup. He cares- and always has cared- that we obey Him.
14 “ ‘And it shall be to you a memorial day, and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations. Ye shall keep it a feast by an law forever.
This great work of Redemption was only a shadow of what Jesus would do at Calvary. They were to remember their great salvation every year, forever.
15 “ ‘Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread. The first day of the Passover every year ye shall get rid of all the leaven in your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day of the feast, that soul shall be kicked out of Israel.
Modern Jews will spend a week scouring every corner of the house to make sure there is no leaven (yeast) anywhere. They miss the point.
God wanted Israel to keep pure doctrine; to not muddy their beliefs with pagan ideas and sin.
I also wonder if there is some kind of health benefit to abstaining from yeast (and baking powder?) for a week every year. I do know those with the system-wide yeast infection called Candida can’t eat yeast. Maybe abstaining for a week a year would prevent this disease?
16 “And in the first day of the feast, there shall be an holy meeting, and in the seventh day there shall be an holy meeting. No kind of work shall be done in them, except that which every man must eat, that only may be done by you.
Here God commands two days of vacation per year. Later He will add more, including every Saturday. Our bodies and minds need this.
Jesus is our rest. When we rest, we should think of Him and thank Him for the ability to rest from the turmoil of sin.
17 “And ye shall observe the feast of Unleavened Bread, because in this day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. This is why ye shall observe this day in the future by law forever.
18 “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening.
19 “Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses. For whoever eats that which is leavened, even that soul shall be kicked out of the congregation of Israel, whether he be an immigrant, or born in the land.
This was a serious enough violation of God’s command to be excommunicated and banished.
20 “Ye shall eat nothing leavened, in all your houses shall ye eat unleavened bread.’ “
21 Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them, “Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the Passover.
22 “And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning.
By telling them to strike the blood onto the door frame (instead of painting it), the dripping blood would form three Crosses.
23 “For the I AM will pass through to kill the Egyptians. When He sees the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the I AM will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to kill you.
When God sees the blood of Christ on your heart, He will pass over you when He punishes the world.
24 “And ye shall observe this Memorial Day by law to thee and to thy sons forever.
25 “And it shall happen, when you are come to the land which the I AM will give you, just as He has promised, that you shall keep this event.
We are to never forget Christ’s sacrifice or salvation of us. They didn’t either. They just “remembered” it 1500 years before it happened through the symbolism of the Passover feast.
26 “And it shall happen, when your children shall say unto you, ‘What do you mean by this event?’
27 “That you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the I AM's Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He killed the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.’ “And the people bowed the head and worshiped.
They understood the greatness of what God was about to do.
To this day, it is part of the traditional Passover celebration for the youngest child in the house to ask why this feast is kept.
It is the parent’s responsibility to teach their children the Word of God, not the pastor’s. It’s his job to teach the parents.
Not the school teachers.
Not the neighbors.
The Parents.
God put in place several holidays as teaching anchors. When these times would come every year it opened the doors for the important lessons of life.
We often use holidays the same way. Many families teach about “The Babe in the Manger” during the Christmas season, “The Cross and Empty Tomb” at Easter, the founding of this country at July 4th, and The Pilgrims at Thanksgiving. We could add many more lessons throughout the year (Columbus, The world wars at Memorial Day, St Valentines, St Patrick, Economics at Labor Day, Each child’s birth story at Labor Day or on their birthday) and these are vitally important.
Yet, I think it is even more important that a child’s day-to-day instruction be firmly based on God and His Word. Otherwise, the holiday stories become just something we do on the holidays instead of instruction on how to live every day.
28 And the children of Israel went away, and did as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they.
29 And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle.
All firstborn had a special place in the home. It was Egyptian tradition that the firstborn slept in a special bed on the ground floor of the house. All the other children slept on the floor or the roof, depending on the weather.
Many volcanoes put out a highly toxic gas that kills everything breathing from twelve inches to two feet off the ground. There have been entire villages wiped out by this gas.
Because of the Egyptian’s special treatment of the firstborn they would have been the only ones in range to be affected, if that is the mechanism God chose to use to accomplish this. The younger children would have been below it on the floor or above it on the roof.
All those who obeyed God, no matter their nationality, would have been standing up with all their children eating at this time and would also have avoided this invisible gas.
Or God may simply have stopped the breathing of the oldest in each house.
30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.
Some speculate there was also an earthquake which woke everyone up after the oldest was dead. This is entirely possible. Since the Mediterranean Sea is full of volcanic islands, both eruptions and earthquakes would be quite common. And certainly God could shake the ground a bit whenever He wanted to, whether there was a volcano near by or not.
Remember God told Moses the exact day this would happen. He was obviously controlling whatever mechanism He was using to accomplish His will.
There are a number of times in Egyptian history when the pharaoh’s son simple disappeared from the records with no explanation, so we can’t yet tell for sure which Pharaoh this was, though Neferhotep I’s son (of the 13th dynasty) is one of those who disappeared from the records and the other evidence (i.e. abandoned slave villages) leads me to believe he was the one.
31 And he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, “Get up and get out from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel! Go, serve the I AM, as you have said.
32 “Also take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and pray for me also.”
Now Pharaoh sounds scared.
With good reason.
Our God is Love, but He is also Justice. He is quite capable of wiping anyone or all of us out with the blink of an eye. It is only His mercy that allows any of us to live.
Pharaoh isn’t actual setting them free. He is commanding them to go worship.
33 And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in a hurry, for they said, “We will all die!”
The other Egyptians, however, appear eager to get rid of them for good. They are paying them to go.
34 And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.
If you mix equal parts water and flour, adding to it every day for 3-7 days, and let them sit on your counter, they will “capture” wild yeast, making what we call today a “sourdough starter.” Now, not all wild yeast tastes the same. Some don’t taste good at all, others are delicious. But in these days before mass manufacturing this would have been the only way to get any type on non-tortilla bread.
The Israelites didn’t hang around long enough for their bread to be inoculated by the wild yeast.
35 And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses, and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and clothes.
36 And the I AM gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them everything they asked. And they spoiled the Egyptians.
“Spoil” means “to ruin.”
37 And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about 600,000 on foot that were men, beside children.
600,000 men of military age, plus at least as many women, the aged and infirm, and an average of twelve children (The average before birth control was 7-8) each would add up to close to 3 million people.
Jacob had 12 sons. If each subsequent generation had an average of 12 children (“And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.” Chapter 1, verse 7, implying a much higher number of children than the norm on average) it would only take 6 generations to reach a population of 3,000,000. It has now been 200 years since Jacob’s family entered Egypt (and they were already 69 men strong when they got there) and we know Moses was the fourth generation to be born 80 years ago. An average of 30 years per generation is not unreasonable, especially when you consider the average lifespan being over 100.
38 And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.
This multitude included Egyptians (and possibly other foreigners) who now believed in the one, true God and wanted to worship Him too.
39 And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrown out of Egypt, and could not wait, neither had they prepared for themselves any food.
God had told them to not have leaven in their house. He is now forcing them to obey Him by forcing them to leave before the dough can collect wild yeast from the air.
40 Now the wanderings of the children of Israel, who lived in Egypt, were 430.
41 And it came to pass at the end of the 430 years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the I AM went out from the land of Egypt.
God had told Abraham that his descendants would be wanderers until 430 years after the time of their Covenant. God delivered to the day.
Galatians 3:16- says “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He said not, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many; but as of one, ‘And to thy seed,’ which is Christ.
17 And this I say, that the Covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the Law, which was 430 years after (God's promise to Abraham), cannot cancel it, that it should make the promise of none effect.
18 For if the inheritance be of the Law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.”
Obviously, Paul is counting the “Sojourn in Egypt” from the time the promise was given to Abraham, not the time Jacob entered Egypt.
The more ancient translations (i.e. the Septuagint) agree. They interpret this 430 as the time Abraham and his descendants were without a homeland by Divine design (the following extra 40 years being punishment, not part of the Covenant. Israel could have had their homeland at the end of 430 years if they had obeyed).
Counting the 430 years from Abraham instead of Joseph’s days gives us the right number of generations (4) from Levi to Moses, while counting it from Jacob’s son’s time would make the recorded genealogy way too short to account for the time.
So the most consistent way to interpret the Bible is to count the 430 years from Abraham and believe the genealogy recorded in Exodus is accurate.
42 It is a night to be much observed unto the I AM for bringing them out from the land of Egypt. This is that night of the I AM to be observed of all the children of Israel in their future.
43 And the I AM said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the law of the Passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof.
44 “But every man's servant that is bought for money, when thou have circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof.”
Circumcision was the symbol of membership in the nation Israel from the time of Abraham. It was replaced by baptism in the New Testament. There is no spiritual requirement to keep the ceremony of circumcision today.
However, I have always wondered why God chose circumcision in the first place. Doesn’t that seem like an odd thing to do? Why not start with baptism or require a certain tattoo, earring, or some other mark that could be done to both boys and girls and was more generally visible?
It turns out that men who are circumcised have a lower risk of penile cancer, no incidents of phimosis (too tight of foreskin which cause many health and hygiene problems), lower risk of inflammation and infection of the skin of the penis, reduced risk of urinary tract infections and consequent renal complications for both the man and his wife, a lower risk of prostate cancer, reduced risk of getting STDs for both the man and woman, (including cervical cancer which we know to be caused by a certain virus that is spread during sexual activity), and, according to some studies and accounts from men (and their partners) circumcised later in life, better sex. It seems God had a lot of very good reasons for requiring this procedure besides identification with the nation Israel.
45 “An immigrant and an hired servant shall not eat thereof.
All who wanted to eat of the Passover throughout history had to completely convert to Judaism. No 'visitors' or part timers here.
46 “In one house shall it be eaten. Thou shalt not carry the meat out of the house. Neither shall ye break a bone of it.”
This kept the sacrifice “perfect” and unblemished. Only the best is good enough for God.
This is looking forward to Christ. Not one of His bones were broken and he was completely sin-free. He was the ultimate, unblemished sacrifice.
47 All the congregation of Israel shall keep it.
Nobody is to be left out of worship. God does not have different rules for different people.
And note, that lamb is a red meat. Israelites were required to eat this red meat a minimum of once a year or they were kicked out of the country. There are nutrients that are difficult to get anywhere else but from red meat. God wants His people to be healthy.
48 And when a stranger shall live with thee, and will keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it. And he shall be as one that is born in the land. For no uncircumcised person shall eat of it.”
Again, it isn’t the bloodline that is important. It is obedience to God. Anyone willing to obey God becomes one of His chosen people.
49 “One law shall be to him that is native born, and unto the immigrant that lives among you.”
There is NO difference between genetic Jews and gentiles. Only a difference between those who obey God and those who don’t.
50 And this is what all the children of Israel did. Just as the I AM told Moses and Aaron, so did they.
51 And it happened the same day, that the I AM brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their armies.