Exodus 12:6

And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month,.... In their houses; this may denote the preservation of Christ in his infancy, and to the appointed time of his sufferings and

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. Ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month.

Ye shall keep it up; separate it from the rest of the flock, and keep it in a safe place; the reasons of which, . The whole assembly; or rather, every assembly, to wit, every such society as meet together for eating of the lamb. And the assembly is said to kill it, because one person did it in their name, and by their appointment; in which manner, and upon which reason, the whole congregation is said to stone a man, ,16 Numbers 15:35 . It is probable it was killed by the master of the family, who was a priest in his own family, &c. In the evening; Heb. between the evenings, or the two evenings, i.e. between the beginning and end of the evening. The evening is one third part of the day, and one of the appointed and usual times of devotion, as appears from ; and it begun at their ninth or our third hour, as may be gathered from ; for then the sun began more sensibly to decline, whence that time is fitly called by the Jews the first evening, and that was the time of the evening sacrifice; the second evening was when the sun was setting or set. Between these it was to be killed. This had a respect both to the time of the world’ s age when Christ came, which was its evening, or declining time, or end, 9:26 ; and the time of the day in which Christ our Passover was killed, ,33,34.

Exodus 12:6 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.Ver. 6. Until the fourteenth day.] In the evening.] Christ came in the evening of the world; in "the last hour" (εσχατηωρα, 1 John 2:11); when all lay buried in darkness; in the eventide of our sin and death.

(6) Ye shall keep it up.—Heb., ye shall have it in custody: separate it, i.e., from the flock, and keep it in or near your house for four days. During this time it could be carefully and thoroughly inspected. (Comp. Exodus 12:3.) The whole assembly of the congregation . . . shall kill it.—Every head of a family belonging to the “congregation” was to make the necessary arrangements, to have the victim ready, and to kill it on the fourteenth day, the day of the full moon, at a time described as that “between the two evenings.” There is some doubt as to the meaning of this phrase. According to Onkelos and Aben Ezra, the first evening was at sunset, the second about an hour later, when the twilight ended and the stars came out. With this view agrees the direction in Deuteronomy 16:6 :—“Thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun.” It is objected that, according to Josephus (Bell. Jud., vi. 9, § 3), the actual time of the sacrifice was “from the ninth to the eleventh hour”—i.e., from three o’clock to five—and that there would not have been time for the customary ceremonies during the short twilight of Palestine. The ceremonies consisted in the slaughter of the lambs at the tabernacle door, and the conveyance of the blood in basins to the altar, in order that it might be sprinkled upon it. For this operation a period of several hours’ duration would seem to have been necessary: hence the time came gradually to be extended; and when this had been done, a new interpretation of the phrase “between the evenings” grew up. The first evening was explained to begin with the decline of the sun from the zenith, and the second with the sunset; but this can scarcely have been the original idea.

Verse 6. Ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day] The lamb or kid was to be taken from the flock on the tenth day, and kept up and fed by itself till the fourteenth day, when it was to be sacrificed. This was never commanded nor practised afterwards. The rabbins mark four things that were required in the first passover that were never required afterwards: 1. The eating of the lamb in their houses dispersed through Goshen. 2. The taking the lamb on the tenth day. 3. The striking of its blood on the door posts and lintels of their houses. And, 4. Their eating it in haste. These things were not required of the succeeding generations. The whole assembly - shall kill it] Any person might kill it, the sacrificial act in this case not being confined to the priests. In the evening] בין הערבים beyn haarbayim, "between the two evenings." The Jews divided the day into morning and evening: till the sun passed the meridian all was morning or fore-noon; after that, all was afternoon or evening. Their first evening began just after twelve o'clock, and continued till sunset; their second evening began at sunset and continued till night, i.e., during the whole time of twilight; between twelve o'clock, therefore, and the termination of twilight, the passover was to be offered. "The day among the Jews had twelve hours, John 11:9. Their first hour was about six o'clock in the morning with us. Their sixth hour was our noon. Their ninth hour answered to our three o'clock in the afternoon. By this we may understand that the time in which Christ was crucified began at the third hour, that is, at nine o'clock in the morning, the ordinary time for the daily morning sacrifice, and ended at the ninth hour, that is, three o'clock in the afternoon, the time of the evening sacrifice, Mr 15:25; Mr 15:33; Mr 15:34-37. Wherefore their ninth hour was their hour of prayer, when they used to go into the temple at the daily evening sacrifice, Acts 3:1; and this was the ordinary time for the passover. It is worthy of remark that God sets no particular hour for the killing of the passover: any time between the two evenings, i.e., between twelve o'clock in the day and the termination of twilight, was lawful. The daily sacrifice (see Exodus 29:38-39) was killed at half past the eighth hour, that is, half an hour BEFORE three in the afternoon; and it was offered up at half past the ninth hour, that is, half an hour AFTER three. In the evening of the passover it was killed at half past the seventh hour, and offered at half past the eighth, that is, half an hour BEFORE three: and if the evening of the passover fell on the evening of the Sabbath, it was killed at half past the SIXTH hour, and offered at half past the SEVENTH, that is, half an hour BEFORE two in the afternoon.

6. ye shall keep it up] Heb. it shall be to you for a keeping: cf. Exodus 16:23; Exodus 16:32-34, Numbers 17:10 [Heb. 25], Exodus 19:9. the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel] Cf. for the pleonasm Numbers 14:5. between the two evenings] one of P’s technical expressions: of the Passover, as here, Leviticus 23:5, Numbers 9:3; Numbers 9:5; Numbers 9:11; of the time for offering the evening burnt-offering, Exodus 29:39; Exodus 29:41, Numbers 28:4; Numbers 28:8; of the time for lighting the lamps in the Tabernacle, Exodus 30:8; and Exodus 16:12†. The meaning is disputed. (1) Onkelos renders αιοωξωιΰ ‘between the two suns,’ which is explained in the Talm. to mean the time between sunset and the stars becoming visible; cf. Ibn Ezra (as cited by Kalisch), ‘We have two evenings; the first, sunset, the second, the ceasing of the light which is reflected in the clouds; and the interval between them is about an hour and 20 minutes’ (so Ges. Keil). The Italian astronomer, Schiaparelli (Astronomy in the O.T., 1905, p. 92 f.), arrives at nearly the same explanation. He supposes that the expression arose out of the custom of watching for the first appearance of the crescent moon to mark the beginning of the new month; and thinks that the ‘first’ evening would be the half-hour between sunset and the average time at which in the latitude of Palestine the crescent moon would appear, and that the ‘second’ evening would be the hour afterwards, from the appearance of the crescent to complete darkness: ‘between the two evenings’ would thus mark the time about half-an-hour after sunset. Cf. Deuteronomy 16:6, where the Passover is to be sacrificed ‘at the going down of the sun,’ i.e. at sunset. (2) Saadiah (d. a.d. 942), Rashi and Kimchi understand the ‘first’ evening to be the time when the sun first begins to decline to the west, and the shadows begin to lengthen, and the ‘second’ evening to be the beginning of night. But this interpretation gives a very forced sense to the ‘first’ evening. (3) The traditional explanation, adopted by the Pharisees and the Talmudists (Pesβḥ ?im 61a) was that the ‘first’ evening was when the heat of the sun begins to decrease, about 3 p.m., and that the ‘second’ evening began with sunset. So Josephus (BJ. vi. 9. 3) says that in his day the Passover was sacrificed ‘from the 9th to the 11th hour’ (i.e. from 3 to 5 p.m.). The Mishna (Pesβḥ ?im v. 1) seems to imply that the Passover was usually killed half-an-hour after the 8th hour, i.e. at 2.30 p.m.1[128]: the time however appears to have been variable; for ibid. § 3 it is merely said that if offered ‘before noon,’ it was not valid. (1) is the most natural explanation of the Heb. expression, and has also the support of Deu 16:6 : but (3) is certainly the sense that was traditionally attached to it.

Until the fourteenth day - It should be observed that the offering of our Lord on the self-same day is an important point in determining the typical character of the transaction.

6. Until the fourteenth day — For three days, which were, as we suppose, the days of darkness in the land of Egypt, the devoted lamb was kept for the sacrifice — in each family the centre of