Passover

Exodus 12

1 And YHVH spoke 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, `On the tenth day of this month they shall take for themselves every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house.
4 And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor 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, roasted with fire; and with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
9 Eat not of it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted with fire -- his head with his legs and with the viscera 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.
11 And thus shall ye eat it: with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste; it is YHVH's Passover.
12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite 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 YHVH.
13 And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt.
14 "`And this day shall be unto you for a memorial, and ye shall keep it a feast to YHVH throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.
25 And it shall come to pass, when ye come to the land which YHVH will give you, according as He hath promised, that ye shall keep this service.
26 And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, `What mean ye by this service?'
27 that ye shall say, `It is the sacrifice of YHVH's Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses.'" And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.
43 And YHVH said unto Moses and Aaron, "This is the ordinance of the Passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof;
44 but every man's servant who is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof.
45 A foreigner and a hired servant shall not eat thereof.
46 In one house shall it be eaten; thou shalt not carry forth any of the flesh abroad out of the house, neither shall ye break a bone thereof.
47 All the congregation of Israel shall keep it.
48 And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee and will keep the Passover to YHVH, 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 thereof.

Leviticus 23

5 On the fourteenth day of the first month at evening is YHVH's Passover.

Notes

The Passover meal should be eaten at the beginning of the dark period on the 14th of Abib. This is equivalent to just after sunset on the Gregorian day of April 2nd.
The Passover is not a Sabbath. The Passover light period, when first celebrated by the children of Israel in Egypt, was used to plunder the Egyptians in the early morning and then immediately to pack up and get out of town - hardly a restful experience.
Yahshua, our Passover sacrificial lamb, was crucified on the Passover of YHVH's solar-based calendar. He celebrated the meal with His disciples the very evening prior, according to the law, as reported in the gospels. However, "Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day [of the Judeans' Passover], that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Judeans asked Pilate that their legs might be broken [to hasten death], and that they might be taken away." - John 19:31 NKJV. The Judeans, using their lunar influenced Babylonian calendar, believed the Passover began the following day, thus they did not want to leave the bodies on the cross for the time it typically took (about 3 days) for a crucfixion to accomplish its gruesome task. The bodies would have been on the cross for the Judeans Preparation day (that day), the Judeans Passover day, and the Judeans high Sabbath day of Unleavened Bread, and probably would have expired shortly thereabouts. The law of YHVH requires that a man hung shall be buried before sunset, and the Judeans did not want to risk any of them dying on that upcoming high Sabbath day.

Last Update: 2007.03.31 23:04 MDT

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