Week 22 The Feast of Passover?

Week 22 The Feast of Cover Over

Exodus 12:12-27

-  The common view of the passover is that God sends the angel of death to Egypt and when when the angel sees blood on the doorposts he passes over that house but if he does not see blood on the doorposts he will kill the firstborn male of that house.  

-  This view is incorrect because of a bad translation.  We are going to examine this passage more throughly and play literary detective to try to develop a better view of the passover.  

Two Figures

-  The first step to figuring out what is going on is to read the text closely to see who is actually carrying out the passover.

-  In 12:12 we are told that YHWH is going to pass over the land of Egypt.  So God is ultimately the person who brings about this judgment.

-  However, we read in verse 12:23 that it is this person called the destroyer who actually enters the home and kills the first born.

-  The destroyer is an angelic agent of YHWH who carries out the execution sentence.  Since he is under the command of YHWH he is also identified with YHWH.  

-  It is very common for angels to be both distinguished from God and identified with God.  

Two Actions, Two Verbs

-  The Destroyer is the one who passes through or over the land of Egypt.

-  The word used to describe the action of the Destroyer is abar and pass over is a perfect acceptable translation.  Its used all throughout the Bible and this is exactly what it means.

-  However, in verse 23 there is another verb that is translated as passover called pasach.

-   This verb is rarely used in the Old Testament.  While it is typically translated pass over it is almost certainly incorrect.  

-  So far we have the following picture: YHWH sends the Destroyer to pass over the land of Egypt.  However, YHWH also pasach the doors of the houses with blood on them and does not allow the Destroyer to enter.  This action of pasach results in the sparing of the blood marked Israelite homes from the curse of the tenth plague.

-  So in order to figure out what YHWH is doing we need to determine the meaning of pasach.

Meaning of Pasach

-  How can we figure out the meaning of this word?  

Context

-  We cannot determine a whole lot from the context but is there anything we can tell?

-  Pasach is clearly the action of YHWH.  So we know its something YHWH does.  However, the pasach action is performed on the door.  

-  Pasach cannot then mean simply to skip the house or go around the house.  It seems to be a deterrent a shielding action.  

Q.  What else can we do to determine the meaning of pasach?

Other Verse that use Pasach

1.  I Kings 18:21

And Elijah came near all the people and said, “How long will you go pasaching between two different limbs?  If YHWH is God, follow him; but if Ba’al, then follow him.”

Q. What do you think pasach means in the context of this verse?

-  This verse is from the story where Elijah confronts the priests of Ba’al and sets up the two altars at Mt. Carmel in a contest to see which one would burn up the sacrifice.  

-  Elijah confronts the Israelites over their indecisiveness.  

- This verse uses pasach in the sense of a bird hovering and asks Israel whether they will serve Ba’al or YHWH and pictures them as like a bird hovering trying to decide what branch it will land on.  

-  So once again we have this bird imagery associated with pasach of hovering.  

1.  Isaiah 31:5  

Like birds hovering, so YHWH of hosts 

will protect Jerusalem;

He will protect and deliver it;

He will pasach and rescue it.”

Q.  What do you think pasach means in the context of this verse?

-  The verse talks about YHWH protecting and rescuing Jerusalem.  Pasach seems to have a sheltering action.  

-  In Hebrew poetry uses parallelism where the words of two or more lines of text are related. 

Psalms 24:1-2

The earth is YHWH’s and the fullness thereof

The world and those who dwell in

For he has founded it on the seas

and established it upon the rivers

Genesis 4:23

Adah and Zillah hear my voice

You wives of Lamech listen to what i say

Q.  So how can we use parallelism to help us translate a word?  

-  This verse happens to be poetry so we can use that technique here.

-  The parallel verb is ganan which is usually translated cover or shield.  

-  So our inference from the context agrees with the parallelism that pasach means shield or cover.

-  Cover is also set parallel to another verb above where it is parallel to sup which means to hover.  

-  The metaphor is of a mother bird fluttering or hovering and protecting her nest - so just like in the 1 Kings passage we have bird imagery.  

-  The picture here is that YHWH will protect Jerusalem by shielding and covering her the way a mother bird protects her nest.  

The True Story

-  Now that we understand the meaning of pasach we can understand the picture Exodus 12 is trying to paint.

-  The Destroyer does not simply skip over the houses with blood stained door.  The Destroyer comes through the land of Egypt and YHWH pasachs the blood stained doors which means He protects and shields the houses like a mother bird protects her nest.

Q.  What is YHWH protecting them from?

-  The Destroyer. The point is unless YHWH barred the door, the Destroyer would enter in the house and kill the first born children.  The blood is not what protects the house but YHWH Himself.  YHWH protects the people from YHWH’s judgment.  

Q.  Why does YHWH do this?

-  YHWH does this because they are His people.

Q.  Why are they His people?

-  Because YHWH made a covenant with Abraham that He would bless Him and that all the nations of the world would be blessed through Abraham.

The Lamb

-  The lamb is described as the pasach lamb in verse 21 and 27.  

-  The Hebrews were ordered to kill the lamb.  The verb for kill used here is sahat and is the same word used for the destroyer, he is the sahater.

Q.  What does the use of the word for both the action performed on the lamb as well as the destroyer who carries out the execution of the first born mean? 

-   In other words the Hebrew are to destroy the lamb just as the destroyer destroys the Hebrew first born.

-   The death of the lamb is equated with the death of the Egyptian first born.  

-   So the lamb represents the death-judgment inflicted by YHWH.

-  However, it is called the paschal lamb and as we have established paschal refers to the protective shielding of YHWH.  

-  So this lamb represents both God’s judgment as well as God’s protection. What does that sound like?   Is that not the gospel of justification by grace?

-  Once we realize the lamb points to Christ then we understand how the paschal lamb can represent both.  

-  Yet this is the nature of YHWH.  When Moses asks YHWH to show His glory and what Moses see is described in Exodus 34:6-7

YHWH passed before him and proclaimed, “YHWH, YHWH, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will be no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.” 

-  YHWH to is characterized by judgment as well as grace and forgiveness.