Bible Studies

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Pesach
Part 2 of the Eight Feasts of YHWH
“And you shall eat it this way: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Passover to Jehovah.” Sh’mot (Exodus) 12:11 (LITV)
The first feast of every year is Passover, Pesach in Hebrew. In Exodus 12:18 YHWH says, “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at evening you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening.” (LITV)
There is a common teaching that when Y’shua ate a last meal with His disciples, this was the first “last supper,” no irony intended, and that when Y’shua was sacrificed and rose again, this was the first “Easter.” The “Last supper” was a Passover meal, not the Passover, but a Passover, and the first Passover is revealed in Exodus 12:27, “Then you shall say, ‘A sacrifice of a Passover of Jehovah, who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He struck Egypt. And he delivered our houses.’ And the people bowed down and worshipped.” This was two or three thousand years before Messiah.
When Y’shua was sacrificed and rose again was not the first Easter. Easter comes from the word Ishtar, which is another name for the pagan fertility goddess Isis. The festival of Isis has been celebrated since the Tower of Babel. Neither Easter, nor Ishtar, nor Isis is ever used in Scripture in connection with the death and resurrection of Messiah. The word Easter appears once in the King James Version, in Acts 12:4. “And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.”
In the Greek, though, the word is Pascha, which comes from the Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover. It does not mean Easter.
The first Pesach was when the children of Israel were about to be brought out of Egypt. Exodus 12:5-7 says, “A flock animal, a perfect one, a male, a yearling, shall be to you. You shall take from the sheep or from the goats. And it shall be for you to keep until the fourteenth day of this month. And all the assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it between the evenings. And they shall take from the blood and put it on the two side doorposts and on the upper doorpost, on the houses in which they eat it.” In verse 13 YHWH explains this ritual, “And the blood shall be a sign to you, on the houses where you are. And I will see the blood, and I will pass over you. And the plague shall not be on you to destroy, when I smite in the land of Egypt.”
The word “sign” in Hebrew is the word ’ot, spelled aleph-vav-tav. ’Ot is the root-word of the word et, spelled aleph-tav. In the Peshitto Aramaic text of the book of Revelation chapter 1 verse 8 it says, “I am the Aleph and the Tau, the beginning and the ending says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Lamsa) So we see the Y’shua the Messiah as the blood over the door. He is the sign of our covenant with YHWH, our protection, and our redemption. This is the most important thing about Pesach.
The most difficult thing about Pesach is when exactly to celebrate it. Is it on the fourteenth or the fifteenth day of the month? Genesis 1:5 states, “And God called the light day. And He called the darkness, Night. And there was evening, and there was morning the first day.” (LITV)
Because of this the Hebrew day begins in the evening, rather than at midnight, or dawn. Exodus 12:6 makes an unusual statement when it says, “And all the assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it between the evenings.” (LITV) or, in the King James, “in the evening.” But the Hebrew says beyin ha’arebayim, which means between the evenings. This phrase is only used one other place in Scripture. In Exodus 16:12, “I have heard the murmurings of the sons of Israel. Speak to them, saying, Between the evenings you shall eat flesh; and in the morning you shall be satisfied with bread; and you shall know that I am Jehovah your God.” (LITV)
Tradition has it that “between the evenings” means “in the afternoon.” All things considered, that is the best interpretation.
The Passover, then, is slaughtered in the afternoon of the fourteenth, and the meal is eaten that evening, the beginning of the fifteenth. The day that is a memorial, though, is the fourteenth, the day of the sacrifice. The day of the sacrifice of Messiah, not His resurrection, is the memorial, according to Exodus 12:14.
The blood is put on the door as a mark of righteousness. In Ezekiel 9:4 it talks about marks being put on the foreheads of the righteous ones of Israel. In Hebrew it literally says to put a letter tav on their heads. Because of this, it is a tradition, but certainly not a command, to mark the doorposts with a tav.
Exodus 12:8-11 tells a lot about how to eat the Pesach. “They shall eat the flesh…roasted with fire…with unleavened bread and bitter herbs…its head with its legs and with its inward parts. And you shall not leave any of it until morning. And you shall burn with fire that left from it until morning. And you shall eat it this way: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Passover to Jehovah.”
Tradition has done many things to this feast of YHWH. Traditionally there is a boiled egg eaten at a certain point in the meal. This was an addition made to the Pesach meal made during the time of the captivity in Babylon. In Babylonian mythology the fertility goddess Ishtar came down out of the sky in a giant egg. She landed in the Euphrates riverbed. The egg burst open, and she turned a nearby chicken into an egg-laying rabbit.
Traditionally, since the Exodus is over, we now recline at Pesach. But Exodus 12:14 is adamant in saying, “And the day shall be a memorial for you. And you shall celebrate it as a feast to Jehovah, for your generations. You shall celebrate it as a law forever.” (LITV) This is not a tradition that changes, it is a command of YHWH that lasts forever.
Being in the middle of another exile, ready to go home, it is again time to stand with loins gird, sandals on, staff in hand, eating in haste, ready to return again when Deuteronomy 30:3-4 is fulfilled, “Then Jehovah your God will turn your captivity, and He will have pity on you, and will return and gather you from all the nations where Jehovah has scattered you. If you are cast out to the end of the heavens, Jehovah your God shall gather you from there, and He shall take you from there.” (LITV)
Exodus 34:25, “You shall not slaughter the blood of My sacrifice on leavened bread, nor shall the sacrifice of the feast of Passover pass the night until morning.” (LITV) It is important to remember that Pesach is a day of Unleavened Bread, and no leavened bread is supposed to be eaten on Pesach. Why? It is often and truly taught that leaven is a symbol of sin, as it says in I Corinthians 5:6, “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven will leaven the whole lump?” (Lamsa)
There is an element of timing very important in Exodus 12 that is completely missed in tradition. Exodus 12:15, “You shall eat unleavened bread seven days. Indeed, on the first day you shall cause leaven to cease from your houses. For anyone eating anything leavened that soul shall be cut off from Israel, from the first day until the seventh day.” (LITV)
Traditionally, the leavening has to be out of the house before Passover. But here it says that the leaven is supposed to leave the house on the day of Pesach. Of course it is. The leaven cannot leave until the sacrifice has been made. First is sanctification by the blood, and then the leaven, or sin, is gotten rid of.
As it says in Leviticus 23:7, this is a Sabbath, “On the first day you shall have a holy gathering; you shall do no work of service.” All of the teachings on the regular Sabbath also apply to the Pesach.
Exodus 12:43, “And Jehovah said to Moses and Aaron ‘This is the ordinance of the Passover. No alien may eat of it.’” No one who is not a Believer is allowed to eat the Pesach. It would be defiling the holy sacrifice of Y’shua to allow an unbeliever to eat it. The Pesach sacrifice is so sacred because it is the very representation of Messiah.
Naturally, the laws of the sacrifice cannot be kept until Messiah comes back and the Temple is rebuilt, but it is still important to understand the symbolism of the sacrifice. Until the Temple is rebuilt everything is done that can be done.
Some argue that it is obvious that, since YHWH allowed the Temple to be destroyed, He is finished with the sacrifices. The Temple was destroyed once before, centuries before Messiah came. Does that mean that YHWH was through with the sacrifices then? No one says that the sacrifices were finished then.
Exodus 12:46, “It shall be eaten in one house. You shall not carry any of the flesh outside from the house. And you shall not break a bone in it.” It is not to be eaten outside of one house where it was cooked, and where the door was marked. Pesach is atonement for individuals, and individual families, so it is not to leave the house. This goes hand-in-hand with Exodus 12:22, “And take a bunch of hyssop and dip in the basin. And apply some of the blood in the basin to the upper doorpost and to the two side doorposts. And you shall not go out, anyone from the door of his house until morning.”
Do not leave the door where the blood has atoned! Do not go out from under the blood. Once under the blood, never leave again. How great a teaching.
Numbers 9:6 teaches about cleanness, “And there were men who had been defiled by the body of a man, and they had not been able to prepare the Passover on that day. And they came near before Moses, and before Aaron on that day.” (LITV) The unclean may not eat, or even prepare, Pesach. Only those cleansed by the washing of the Word, or the Torah, are able to eat Pesach. Not that a person can possibly be completely free from the stains of sin, but it is a command to be as clean as possible. That is not to say that only those who do not sin can have salvation, but rather that those who have salvation are commanded not to sin.
There is a provision for the unclean in Numbers 9:11, “In the second month, on the fourteenth day at dusk, they shall keep it, they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.” (LITV) It comes later for the unclean, but it comes. In Romans 2:10 Paul talks about this, “But glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Arameans.” (Lamsa)
What about the Messiah’s Passover? It is a common myth that the last supper that Y’shua ate with His disciples was the Passover. There are several reasons for this. Matthew 26:17, “On the first day of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came up to Jesus and said to Him, ‘Where do You wish that we may prepare the Passover for You to eat?’” (Lamsa)
This entire verse makes no sense. Whether in Greek or Aramaic it makes no sense. It could not have been the first day of Unleavened Bread, because the Feast of Unleavened Bread doesn’t begin until the day after Pesach. It appears that the texts are wrong.
Verse 18 says, “And He said to them, ‘Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, “Our master says, ‘My time has come, I will observe the Passover with my disciples at your house.’”’” (Lamsa) And Luke 22:15 says, “And He said to them, ‘I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.’” (Lamsa)
It also says, in John 13:29, “For some of them thought, because the purse was with Judah, that he ordered him to buy what was needed for the feast or to give something to the poor.” (Lamsa)
If what they were eating was Pesach, it would have been a high Sabbath, and there would be no buying. Not only that, but there would have been no need for them to buy anything “for the feast” because they would have been eating it.
John 18:28 also says, “Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium; and it was morning; and they did not enter into the Praetorium, so that they might not be defiled before they ate the Passover.” (Lamsa)
This is the morning after Y’shua and the disciples ate what is called the Passover in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
If Y’shua was the perfect Pesach sacrifice, as it says in I Corinthians 5:7, then He would have been killed on Pesach, lining up perfectly with the Pesach commands.
To further complicate the matter, matza, unleavened bread, was eaten at the supper Y’shua had with His disciples. What does it mean? Y’shua was having a teaching Pesach. It was a pre-Pesach Pesach to teach the disciples the significance of the Pesach. Then Y’shua was rushed quickly through a trial on Pesach, was killed at the same time as the Pesach sacrifice, and was gotten down off the tree and put in a tomb just before the sun set, beginning the fifteenth of the month, the high Sabbath on the first day of unleavened bread.
Several traditions surround the modern celebration of Easter that are either simply wrong, or simply revolting. The date of Easter is set by the Gregorian calendar, which was developed in the fifteen hundreds as a revision of the Julian calendar, which was developed in the year 45 B.C.E. Some Churches still set Easter based on the Julian calendar. But this is not as it should be. The date of Pesach should be set by the Hebrew calendar, which was developed and used by YHWH Himself throughout the pre-Messiah books.
The tradition of the Easter Bunny is based on Babylonian mythology. The story goes that the goddess Ishtar dropped from the clear sky in a gigantic egg, and landed ceremoniously in the Euphrates Valley. When the goddess hatched, she turned the first thing she saw, a hen that had never done Ishtar any harm, into an egg-laying rabbit. The Easter eggs were a memorial to this event. Every year, the Babylonians would honor Ishtar by sacrificing their children and dying boiled eggs in their children’s blood.
Deuteronomy 16:5-6 says, “You may not sacrifice the Passover offering inside any of your gates, which Jehovah your God gives you. But at the place which He shall choose to cause His name to dwell there, you shall sacrifice the Passover at evening, at the going of the sun at the time when you came out of Egypt.”
So the sacrifice cannot be made while there is no Temple. But, that does not mean that lamb should not be eaten. Is it not best to do as much as possible?
The most important thing of all about Pesach is I Corinthians 5:7, “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” (KJV)
Messiah is our Pesach, and we do this in remembrance of Him.
Amein!

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