The Passover

For today’s first reading we have the passage of the institution of the Passover. We have skipped several chapters of Exodus to come to today’s reading.

The sufferings of the Hebrews became intolerable and eventually God sent what we call the Ten Plagues on Egypt in order to persuade the Pharaoh to let the Hebrews leave. After each one, his heart hardened and he refused to the let God’s people go.

With these plagues we are coming to the great finale and the high point of the Exodus story. Nine plagues inflicted on Egypt have not softened Pharaoh’s heart and “he would not let the Israelites leave his land”.

The Hebrews are now told to prepare for the final catastrophe with which God will strike the Egyptians. The passage consists of formal instructions to a later generation on how to celebrate the great event that is about to take place. The instructions are presented as coming from God to Moses and Aaron.

First, the month in which it is taking place is from now on to be regarded as the first month of the year.  On the 10th day of that month each family is to procure for itself a lamb. If a family is too small to finish one lamb, then it can join with another family and they can share the lamb between them, including perhaps the cost of purchasing it. The lamb must be male, one-year old and free from any blemish. It may be a sheep or a goat.

The animal is to be kept until the 14th day of the month, then it is to be slaughtered in the presence of all the assembled Hebrews. In every house where the lamb is to be eaten, its blood is to be applied on the doorposts and lintel of the house. This, in a way, was the most important requirement.

On the night of the 14th day of the month, the same evening on which it had been slaughtered, the roasted flesh of the lamb will be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The animal is to be roasted, not to be eaten raw or boiled, and the whole animal, including head, limbs and internal organs is to be roasted as one.

Nothing must be kept over till the following morning. Anything that is uneaten is to be burnt. It is to be eaten standing, with loins girt (that is, with clothes belted), wearing sandals and with a walking staff in one hand. In other words, the meal is to be taken like people preparing to make a hasty departure.

And it is to be called the Passover of the Lord. On this very night, the Lord would go through Egypt and strike down every first-born in the land, humans and animals alike, and thus pass judgement on all the gods of Egypt. But, because the blood of the lambs has been smeared on all the houses of the Hebrews, when the Lord sees the blood, he will pass over, or skip over, those houses and no harm will come to them. Hence the name of the feast.

Then comes the final instruction to Hebrews of every future generation: “This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your generations shall celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a perpetual institution.” An instruction which Jews continue to observe to this day.

For us Christians all this has great meaning because we see in it a foreshadowing of another Passover which Jesus celebrated with his disciples. It took place at the same time as the celebration of the traditional Jewish Passover but, because of what immediately followed, it was seen as the sacramental anticipation of the new Passover in which Jesus is the Sacrificial Lamb whose blood poured out becomes the instrument of our salvation and liberation.

It is significant that, in the descriptions of the Last Supper, no gospel mentions the lamb as the main dish. There is now a New Passover Lamb – Jesus himself. And in the eating of the Bread and the drinking of the Wine, those present had ‘eaten’ and ‘drunk’ of the Lamb.