Exodus 12:2

This month shall be unto you the beginning of months,.... Not only the first, as after expressed, but the chief and principal of them, now famous for their coming out of Egypt in it, and would be

This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.

This month was the first month after the vernal equinox, called Abib, 23:15 , and Nissan, ; containing part of our March, and part of April. The beginning; Heb. the head; which, I conceive, notes not so much the order, which is more plainly mentioned in the following words, as the eminency of it, that it shall be accounted the chief and principal of all months; as the sabbath hath been called by some the queen of days. And justly must they prefer this month before the rest, whether they looked back to their prodigious deliverance from Egypt therein, or forward to their spiritual redemption by Christ, and to the acceptable year of the Lord, ; for in this very month our Lord Jesus suffered, . It shall be the first month: heretofore your first month for all affairs hath been Tisri, which in part answers to our September, and is the first month after the autumnal equinox; and so it shall be to you still as to civil affairs, as it appears from 34:22 ; but as to sacred and ecclesiastical matters, this shall henceforth be your first month.

Exodus 12:2 This month [shall be] unto you the beginning of months: it [shall be] the first month of the year to you.Ver. 2. This month.] Called Abib in Exodus 13:4; with us called March or April; when the day lengthening, and the sun ascending, each thing begins to revive. To show, saith one, that by the true Passover, Christ Jesus, not only is our time and all other things sanctified, but also that we should in recent remembrance of that benefit of our redemption, all our days and years be thankful to our gracious Redeemer, and that by his death, true life and reviving came unto mankind. It shall be the first month,] viz., In respect of sacred, not civil affairs, as Junius here proveth out of Josephus. The jubilees began in September. The creation of the world began then, as some will have it: but Luther and others think it was in the spring rather. Antiq., lib. i. cap. 4.

(2) The beginning of months.—Hitherto the Hebrews had commenced the year with Tisri, at or near the autumnal equinox. (See Exodus 23:16.) In thus doing, they followed neither the Egyptian nor the Babylonian custom. The Egyptians began the year in June, with the first rise of the Nile; the Babylonians in Nisannu, at the vernal equinox. It was this month which was now made, by God’s command, the first month of the Hebrew year; but as yet it had not the name Nisan: it was called Abib (Exodus 13:4), the month of “greenness.” Henceforth the Hebrews had two years, a civil and a sacred one (Joseph., Ant. Jud., i. 3, § 3). The civil year began with Tisri, in the autumn, at the close of the harvest; the sacred year began with Abib (called afterwards Nisan), six months earlier. It followed that the first civil was the seventh sacred month, and vice versa.

Verse 2. This month shall be unto you the beginning of months] It is supposed that God now changed the commencement of the Jewish year. The month to which this verse refers, the month Abib, answers to a part of our March and April; whereas it is supposed that previously to this the year began with Tisri, which answers to a part of our September; for in this month the Jews suppose God created the world, when the earth appeared at once with all its fruits in perfection. From this circumstance the Jews have formed a twofold commencement of the year, which has given rise to a twofold denomination of the year itself, to which they afterwards attended in all their reckonings: that which began with Tisri or September was called their civil year; that which began with Abib or March was called the sacred or ecclesiastical year. As the exodus of the Israelites formed a particular era, which is referred to in Jewish reckonings down to the building of the temple, I have marked it as such in the chronology in the margin; and shall carry it down to the time in which it ceased to be acknowledged. Some very eminently learned men dispute this; and especially Houbigant, who contends with great plausibility of argument that no new commencement of the year is noted in this place; for that the year had always begun in this month, and that the words shall be, which are inserted by different versions, have nothing answering to them in the Hebrew, which he renders literally thus. Hic mensis vobis est caput mensium; hic vobis primus est anni mensis. "This month is to you the head or chief of the months; it is to you the first month of the year." And he observes farther that God only marks it thus, as is evident from the context, to show the people that this month, which was the beginning of their year, should be so designated as to point out to their posterity on what month and on what day of the month they were to celebrate the passover and the fast of unleavened bread. Hi words are these: "Ergo superest, et Hebr. ipso ex contextu efficitur, non hic novi ordinis annum constitui, sed eum anni mensem, qui esset primus, ideo commemorari, ut posteris constaret, quo mense, et quo die mensis paseha et azyma celebranda essent."

2. This month, &c.] The ‘month’ is the one corresponding to our Mar.–Apr., called in J and E (Exodus 13:4, Exodus 23:15, Exodus 34:18) and Deuteronomy 16:1) ‘Abib,’ and in the later post-exilic writings (Nehemiah 2:1, Esther 3:7) by its Bab. name, Nisan. P never, like the older pre-exilic writers, calls the months by their Canaanitish or Phoenician names, Abib (ll.cc.), Ziv (1 Kings 6:1; 1 Kings 6:37), Ethanim (ib. 1 Kings 8:2), Bul (ib. 1 Kings 6:38); but, as do the late parts of Kings (1 Kings 12:32-33 [compiler], 2 Kings 25:1; 2 Kings 25:3; 2 Kings 25:8; 2 Kings 25:25; 2 Kings 25:27), Jer. (Jeremiah 1:3, Jeremiah 28:1; Jeremiah 28:17, Jeremiah 36:22 al.), Ezek. (Ezekiel 1:1, Ezekiel 8:1 al.), Hag. (Haggai 1:1; Haggai 1:15, Haggai 2:1), Zech. (Zechariah 1:1; Zechariah 1:7, Zechariah 7:1; Zechariah 7:3), and Chron., denotes them by numbers (1 Chronicles 16:1; 1 Chronicles 19:1; Leviticus 16:29, &c.). The old Hebrew year began in autumn (Exodus 23:16; cf. Exodus 34:22, 1 Samuel 1:20); and P here refers the later custom of beginning it in spring (see Jeremiah 36:22) to the time of the institution of the Passover in Egypt. The Bab. year began in spring; but whether the Hebrew custom was due to Bab. influence is uncertain. The earliest clear cases of the Heb. year beginning in spring are in the dates quoted above from Kings and Jer.; but 2 Kings 19:29 (= Isaiah 37:30) perhaps pre-supposes it. As the passages from Kings and Jer. shew, the reckoning from spring was more than a merely ecclesiastical calendar, it was used also for dating civil events. See further Nowack, Arch. i. 217 ff. DB. iv. 764; EB. iv. 5365 f.; König, ZDMG. lvi. (1906), p. 624 ff. There is a survival in P of the old mode of reckoning in the first day of the seventh month being celebrated as New Year’s day (Leviticus 23:24).

This month - Abib Exodus 13:4. It was called “Nisan” by the later Hebrews, and nearly corresponds to our April.

2. This month (Abib or Nisan) shall be unto you the beginning (head) of months… first month of the year — Hitherto the year had commenced with the month Tisri, (or September,) but henceforth the year