1 Take note of the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God: for in the month of Abib the Lord your God took you out of Egypt by night.
Let this month be to you the first of months, the first month of the year. Say to all the children of Israel when they are come together, In the tenth day of this month every man is to take a lamb, by the number of their fathers' families, a lamb for every family: And if the lamb is more than enough for the family, let that family and its nearest neighbour have a lamb between them, taking into account the number of persons and how much food is needed for every man. Let your lamb be without a mark, a male in its first year: you may take it from among the sheep or the goats: Keep it till the fourteenth day of the same month, when everyone who is of the children of Israel is to put it to death between sundown and dark. Then take some of the blood and put it on the two sides of the door and over the door of the house where the meal is to be taken. And let your food that night be the flesh of the lamb, cooked with fire in the oven, together with unleavened bread and bitter-tasting plants. Do not take it uncooked or cooked with boiling water, but let it be cooked in the oven; its head with its legs and its inside parts. Do not keep any of it till the morning; anything which is not used is to be burned with fire. And take your meal dressed as if for a journey, with your shoes on your feet and your sticks in your hands: take it quickly: it is the Lord's Passover. For on that night I will go through the land of Egypt, sending death on every first male child, of man and of beast, and judging all the gods of Egypt: I am the Lord. And the blood will be a sign on the houses where you are: when I see the blood I will go over you, and no evil will come on you for your destruction, when my hand is on the land of Egypt. And this day is to be kept in your memories: you are to keep it as a feast to the Lord through all your generations, as an order for ever. For seven days let your food be unleavened bread; from the first day no leaven is to be seen in your houses: whoever takes bread with leaven in it, from the first till the seventh day, will be cut off from Israel. And on the first day there is to be a holy meeting and on the seventh day a holy meeting; no sort of work may be done on those days but only to make ready what is necessary for everyone's food. So keep the feast of unleavened bread; for on this very day I have taken your armies out of the land of Egypt: this day, then, is to be kept through all your generations by an order for ever. In the first month, from the evening of the fourteenth day, let your food be unleavened bread till the evening of the twenty-first day of the month. For seven days no leaven is to be seen in your houses: for whoever takes bread which is leavened will be cut off from the people of Israel, if he is from another country or if he is an Israelite by birth. Take nothing which has leaven in it; wherever you are living let your food be unleavened cakes.
And in the middle of the night the Lord sent death on every first male child in the land of Egypt, from the child of Pharaoh on his seat of power to the child of the prisoner in the prison; and the first births of all the cattle. Then Pharaoh got up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians; and a great cry went up from Egypt; for there was not a house where someone was not dead. And he sent for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Get up and go out from among my people, you and the children of Israel; go and give worship to the Lord as you have said. And take your flocks and your herds as you have said, and be gone; and give me your blessing. And the Egyptians were forcing the people on, to get them out of the land quickly; for they said, We are all dead men. And the people took their bread-paste before it was leavened, putting their basins in their clothing on their backs. And the children of Israel had done as Moses had said; and they got from the Egyptians ornaments of silver and of gold, and clothing: And the Lord had given the people grace in the eyes of the Egyptians so that they gave them whatever was requested. So they took away all their goods from the Egyptians. And the children of Israel made the journey from Rameses to Succoth; there were about six hundred thousand men on foot, as well as children. And a mixed band of people went with them; and flocks and herds in great numbers. And they made unleavened cakes from the paste which they had taken out of Egypt; it was not leavened, for they had been sent out of Egypt so quickly, that they had no time to make any food ready. Now the children of Israel had been living in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years. And at the end of four hundred and thirty years, to the very day, all the armies of the Lord went out of the land of Egypt. It is a watch-night before the Lord who took them out of the land of Egypt: this same night is a watch-night to the Lord for all the children of Israel, through all their generations.
Let the children of Israel keep the Passover at its regular time. In the fourteenth day of this month, at evening, you are to keep it at the regular time, and in the way ordered in the law. And Moses gave orders to the children of Israel to keep the Passover. So they kept the Passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at evening, in the waste land of Sinai: as the Lord gave orders to Moses, so the children of Israel did.
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Commentary on Deuteronomy 16 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 16
De 16:1-22. The Feast of the Passover.
1. Observe the month of Abib—or first-fruits. It comprehended the latter part of our March and the beginning of April. Green ears of the barley, which were then full, were offered as first-fruits, on the second day of the passover.
for in the month of Abib the Lord thy God brought thee out of Egypt by night—This statement is apparently at variance with the prohibition (Ex 12:22) as well as with the recorded fact that their departure took place in the morning (Ex 13:3; Nu 33:3). But it is susceptible of easy reconciliation. Pharaoh's permission, the first step of emancipation, was extorted during the night, the preparations for departure commenced, the rendezvous at Rameses made, and the march entered on in the morning.
2. Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover—not the paschal lamb, which was strictly and properly the passover. The whole solemnity is here meant, as is evident from the mention of the additional victims that required to be offered on the subsequent days of the feast (Nu 28:18, 19; 2Ch 35:8, 9), and from the allusion to the continued use of unleavened bread for seven days, whereas the passover itself was to be eaten at once. The words before us are equivalent to "thou shalt observe the feast of the passover."
3. seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread—a sour, unpleasant, unwholesome kind of bread, designed to be a memorial of their Egyptian misery and of the haste with which they departed, not allowing time for their morning dough to ferment.
5, 6. Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates—The passover was to be observed nowhere but in the court of the tabernacle or temple, as it was not a religious feast or sacramental occasion merely, but an actual sacrifice (Ex 12:27; 23:18; 34:25). The blood had to be sprinkled on the altar and in the place where the true Passover was afterwards to be sacrificed for us "at even, at the going down of the sun"—literally, "between the evenings."
6. at the season—that is, the month and day, though not perhaps the precise hour. The immense number of victims that had to be immolated on the eve of the passover—that is, within a space of four hours—has appeared to some writers a great difficulty. But the large number of officiating priests, their dexterity and skill in the preparation of the sacrifices, the wide range of the court, the extraordinary dimensions of the altar of burnt offering and orderly method of conducting the solemn ceremonial, rendered it easy to do that in a few hours, which would otherwise have required as many days.
7. thou shalt roast and eat it—(See on Ex 12:8; compare 2Ch 35:13).
thou shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy tents—The sense of this passage, on the first glance of the words, seems to point to the morning after the first day—the passover eve. Perhaps, however, the divinely appointed duration of this feast, the solemn character and important object, the journey of the people from the distant parts of the land to be present, and the recorded examples of their continuing all the time (2Ch 30:21 35:17), (though these may be considered extraordinary, and therefore exceptional occasions), may warrant the conclusion that the leave given to the people to return home was to be on the morning after the completion of the seven days.
9-12. Seven weeks shalt thou number—The feast of weeks, or a WEEK OF WEEKS: the feast of pentecost (see on Le 23:10; also see Ex 34:22; Ac 2:1). As on the second day of the passover a sheaf of new barley, reaped on purpose, was offered, so on the second day of pentecost a sheaf of new wheat was presented as first-fruits (Ex 23:16; Nu 28:26), a freewill, spontaneous tribute of gratitude to God for His temporal bounties. This feast was instituted in memory of the giving of the law, that spiritual food by which man's soul is nourished (De 8:3).
13-17. Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days—(See on Ex 23:14; Le 23:34; Nu 29:12). Various conjectures have been formed to account for the appointment of this feast at the conclusion of the whole harvest. Some imagine that it was designed to remind the Israelites of the time when they had no cornfields to reap but were daily supplied with manna; others think that it suited the convenience of the people better than any other period of the year for dwelling in booths; others that it was the time of Moses' second descent from the mount; while a fourth class are of opinion that this feast was fixed to the time of the year when the Word was made flesh and dwelt—literally, "tabernacled"—among us (Joh 1:14), Christ being actually born at that season.
15. in all the works of thine hands … rejoice—that is, praising God with a warm and elevated heart. According to Jewish tradition, no marriages were allowed to be celebrated during these great festivals, that no personal or private rejoicings might be mingled with the demonstrations of public and national gladness.
16. Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God—No command was laid on women to undertake the journeys, partly from regard to the natural weakness of their sex, and partly to their domestic cares.
18-20. Judges and officers shalt thou make—These last meant heralds or bailiffs, employed in executing the sentence of their superiors.
in all thy gates—The gate was the place of public resort among the Israelites and other Eastern people, where business was transacted and causes decided. The Ottoman Porte derived its name from the administration of justice at its gates.
21. Thou shalt not plant thee a grove—A grove has in Scripture a variety of significations—a group of overshadowing trees, or a grove adorned with altars dedicated to a particular deity, or a wooden image in a grove (Jud 6:25; 2Ki 23:4-6). They might be placed near the earthen and temporary altars erected in the wilderness, but they could not exist either at the tabernacle or temples. They were places, which, with their usual accompaniments, presented strong allurements to idolatry; and therefore the Israelites were prohibited from planting them.
22. Neither shalt thou set thee up any image—erroneously rendered so for "pillar"; pillars of various kinds, and materials of wood or stone were erected in the neighborhood of altars. Sometimes they were conical or oblong, at other times they served as pedestals for the statues of idols. A superstitious reverence was attached to them, and hence they were forbidden.