God is in the process of drawing His people back to Him, and as He
does so, more and more people are becoming interested in their “Jewish”
roots. Naturally, they want to learn everything they can about the
people and the customs of the first century Jewish people, the ones who
wrote the scriptures and became the first believers in Yeshua the
Messiah.
As they begin to give up the religious customs they had been
participating in for years, there is a desire to replace the
non-biblical festivals with those God-ordained festivals like Passover,
Rosh Hashanna, and Sukkot. Every spring many “messianic” groups host
Passover “sedars” for those who are new. Some of these are described as
“teaching” sedars, while others are billed as “the Passover”. Quite
often these Passover services attract large crowds of people anxious to
observe this “Jewish” tradition.
As Passover becomes more and more prevalent within the Messianic
community, there are things to consider before a person hosts or attends
a Passover Sedar. Like Shavuot, Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot,
Passover is one of the many moedim (festivals or appointed times) YHVH
has given His people. These festivals were given to help the Israelites
remember important events in their history and to point them toward
future events that pertain to the salvation of His people and the coming
Messianic Kingdom. For the most part, people from all nations were
invited to observe the festivals. In fact, Zechariah says:
Zechariah 14:16 "And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of
all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to
year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of
Tabernacles."
The festivals are a way for all people to honor The King, but unlike
many of the other festivals, Passover has a special “covenantal” aspect
that the others do not. Whereas most of the festivals are open to “the
public”, it seems that YHVH reserves Passover for His covenant people –
those who have answered His call and become part of His bride, His
special called out ones. Instead of a banquet, it’s like a private meal
with your closest friends and family. And to keep it sort of private, YHVH puts
restrictions on who can attend, and even more importantly, who can eat
of the meal.
So let us take a look at what God has said about who may and how we
should keep Passover. We will discuss the various Passover requirements
listed in the Torah to see how they apply to us. In a later study, we
will focus in on a very unusual Passover that took place nearly 1000
years after that first Passover meal. Finally, we will notice a few
things the Apostle Shaul had to say about Passover observance.
The first Passover was in conjunction with the Exodus story, and the
Exodus took place because YHVH remembered that He was in covenant with
Abraham.
NKJ Exodus 2:23-25
Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died.
Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they
cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage.
24 So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His
covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 And God
looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them.
It’s important to realize that there has only been ONE Passover. What we
observe today is not really the Passover. Instead, we observe a
REMEMBRANCE of the Passover . . . the night that YHVH protected His
people from the destroyer. Notice the instruction given by Moses:
Exodus 12:25-27 And when you come to the land that the LORD will give
you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26 And when your
children say to you, 'What do you mean by this service?'
27 you shall
say, 'It is the sacrifice of the LORD's Passover, for he passed over the
houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians
but spared our houses.
The Passover that we observe today is a night to remember the events
that led to the freedom of the children of Israel from their Egyptian
captors. Over and over again throughout the Torah as well as the Tnakh,
God instructs His people to remember that fateful night. That night,
along with the subsequent forty year wilderness journey, was a pattern
that God gave us to understand how He will again save and gather His
people at the end of the age.1 Along with the Passover meal, a special
seven-day period of abstaining from eating bread with leavening is given
as another way to remember this event. Again Moses stated:
Exodus 13:3 . . . Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt,
out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the LORD brought
you out from this place: there shall no leavened bread be eaten.
It was this very first Passover that was to be memorialized by the
observance of all subsequent Passover festivals.
Exodus 12:14 And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall
keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep
it a feast by an ordinance for ever.
The Hebrew word for remember is zekar (
זָכַר- Strong’s 2142) which
means to call to mind. The word picture derived from the individual
Hebrew letters could indicate a person driving the thought into his
head. It’s something God wants ingrained in our mind – never to forget.
That very first Passover was unique – never to be duplicated. It had
very specific requirements that were never required after the first. For
instance in the first:
Thus, the zekar that we observe today is not the same as the first
Passover. Never-the-less, the subsequent Passovers have a lot of meaning
and should follow the first as close as practical. They still pertain to
a covenant people and thus it’s very important to YHVH that they be
observed.
Knowing that the Israelites would eventually enter the Promised Land,
and thus come in contact with other non-Israelite people, He established
some rules to ensure the “sanctity” of Passover, the first of which is
listed in Exodus 12:
Exodus 12:43-49 And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "This is the
statute of the Passover: no foreigner shall eat of it, 44 but every
slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised
him. 45 No foreigner or hired servant may eat of it. 46 It shall be
eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the flesh outside the
house, and you shall not break any of its bones. 47 All the congregation
of Israel shall keep it. 48 If a stranger shall sojourn with you and
would keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised.
Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land.
But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. 49 There shall be one law
for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you."
In this passage we find additional Passover regulations not found in
those pertaining to the first Passover. They are:
Though the text seems to be somewhat contradictory in regards to a foreigner and a stranger, it can be easily explained. In verse 43 where it says “no foreigner shall eat of it”, the Hebrew is ben-neker (Strong’s 5236) or literally “son of a stranger”. The stranger in this case implies a person who is hostile to Israel and Israel’s ways. It may also imply an idol worshipper.
In verse 45, the words are toshav and sakiyr (Strong’s 8453 and 7916 respectively). A toshav is an immigrant or a person just passing through, and a sakiyr is someone hired for a season or maybe even a mercenary. In this case, that person is not really interested in following the God of Israel, he's just a tourist.
On the other hand, the
stranger in verse 48 is a ger or guwr (Strong’s 1615 and 1481). The
ger
is a person from a foreign country who wants to dwell with you. The
implication is that the ger has assimilated into the culture of the host
country, thus in many respects he has become a Hebrew, a term that
implies that the person has changed his life and now walks in the ways
of the God of Israel. The term ger is oftentimes translated proselyte in
the Septuagint (LXX).
One example of a stranger who sojourns with Israel is that of Ruth, a
Moabites who loved her mother-in-law, Naomi, and wanted to live like
her. When Naomi announced that she was leaving Moab to return to Israel
after the death of her husband and her sons, one daughter-in-law decided
to stay in Moab and continue in the Moabite culture, which included idol
worship, but Ruth
exclaimed:
Ruth 1:16 "Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
For a stranger
(a ger) to want to sojourn with Israel and to keep the Hebrew Passover
was to imply that the person wanted to be a part of the covenant
relationship that the Israelites had with YHVH through the promises made
to Abraham. The sign of a person’s commitment to that covenant is circumcision. Thus, to keep Passover, the person had to be
circumcised. In this case, circumcision became a sign of the stranger’s
change of heart, for it is a person’s heart that YHVH wants, not a
physical act.
Once that person was circumcised, it says that he could “draw near”. The
Hebrew word karab -
קָרַב – translated
draw near in the text is the root
word from which we get korban, the term for the sacrificial offerings in
Leviticus. Thus, a person’s change of heart and the subsequent sign of
circumcision was what YHVH expected in order for a person to draw near
to Him, and once a person did so, he was considered to be as Hebrew as
one born in the land.
There again, getting into the Hebrew helps us understand this concept a
little better as well. The Hebrew for one born in the land is
ezrawck -
אֶזְרָח
- which literally means “a tree that has sprung up from the land (of
Israel)”. This is an interesting concept, especially as you consider
the times. Because the Israelites had been held captive in Egypt for
more than 200 years, there were no native born Israelites! They were all
born in Egypt – even Moses. What’s more, there would be no native born
Israelites for at least 40 more years. Thus, in the early years after
Israel took the land, a non-Israelite person (a ger) who turned to YHVH, the
God of Israel, could be considered more Hebrew than the Hebrews.
The next instructions pertaining to subsequent Passovers are found in
the Book of Numbers:
Numbers 9:2-3 "Let the children of Israel keep the Passover at its
appointed time. "On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you
shall keep it at its appointed time. According to all its rites and
ceremonies you shall keep it."
The rites for the subsequent Passovers were given in Exodus 12,
beginning in verse 43. The Hebrew word for rites is chukkah which means
ordinances. In addition to the ordinances, certain judgments (mishpata)
that may have been made along the way must also be taken into account.
For instance, in Leviticus 27 there is a judgement that instructs the Israelites to bring all their
offerings to the tabernacle.
Leviticus 17:3-4 If any one of the house of Israel kills an ox or a lamb
or a goat in the camp, or kills it outside the camp, 4 and does not
bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting to offer it as a gift to
the LORD in front of the tabernacle of the LORD, bloodguilt shall be
imputed to that man. He has shed blood, and that man shall be cut off
from among his people.
Thus, the Passover sacrifice was moved to the Tabernacle3. In addition,
the priests now played a role in the Passover sacrifice by sprinkling
the blood on the altar.4 With this move, other ordinances apply such as
those found in Leviticus 22 which prohibit a person from approaching the Holy
things while in a ritually unclean state including that which takes
place when a person comes in contact with a corpse.5
Since the Passover sacrifice was moved to the Tabernacle, this caused a
problem for those who were unclean. On the first anniversary of the
Passover in Egypt, there were men who had become unclean by coming in
contact with a corpse. Thus they were unable to keep the Passover.
Knowing the importance of Passover, they asked Moses what could be done.
Moses deferred to YHVH who said:
Numbers 9:10-11 "Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If any one of
you or of your descendants is unclean through touching a dead body, or
is on a long journey, he shall still keep the Passover to the LORD. 11
In the second month on the fourteenth day at twilight they shall keep it
. . .”
Thus YHVH provided a way for His people who are unable to observe the
Passover in the first month to do so in the second month. He extended
this grace to those who unintentionally became unclean as well as those
who were on a journey and could not make it back to the camp in time to
observe it at its proper time.
The final Passover instructions found in the Torah are in Deuteronomy
16.
Deuteronomy 16:5-7 You may not offer the Passover sacrifice within any
of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, 6 but at the place
that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there
you shall offer the Passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the
time you came out of Egypt. 7 And you shall cook it and eat it at the
place that the LORD your God will choose.
Once Israel came into the land the Tabernacle was placed in Shiloh.6 Later, the Ark of the Covenant was moved to the City of David and later,
placed in the Temple in Jerusalem. God placed His name originally in
Shilow7, but at the completion of the Temple, placed His name in
Jerusalem.8 God instructed Israel to kill, roast, and eat the Passover
lamb at these places. They could not kill the lamb at the tabernacle
then take the carcass outside the city to eat it.
To review, we find that:
There are three primary reasons we do not kill a Passover lamb today. They are:
Thus, we observe the Passover without the lamb. In Jewish circles, a shankbone is used to represent the lamb, while in Christian and Messianic circles, the symbolic bread and wine is used as a substitute.9
So, if you want to observe Passover, these are things to consider. We will discuss the matter of circumcision next time.
Shalom Alecheim!
1 Jeremiah 16:14-15 speaks of a greater Exodus that will pale in importance to the end-time Exodus
2 It’s assumed that some of the Egyptians did kill a lamb in order to save their own firstborn. These Egyptians were probably not circumcised.
3 Numbers 28-29 include the Passover with all the other offerings that are to be made to YHVH
4 Leviticus 17:5-6; 2 Chronicles 35:11
5 See Numbers 5:1-4
6 Joshua 18:1
7 Jeremiah 7:12
8 2 Chronicles 6; 1 Kings 8:16-25
9 Mark 14:22