“Jesus sent Peter and John saying “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it” (Lk. 22:8)

Once we have read about the significance of the sacrifice in blood for the atonement of sins, we are ready to look at the original Passover, of which all subsequent Passover celebrations are commemorations.

The First Passover

On the eve of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, the we are told of the “lamb without blemish” which is eaten, and the blood which is “seen” by God:

“Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household…The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them untilthe fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast…This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover. On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD–a lasting ordinance.” (Exodus: 12:3, 5-8, 11-13)

Jewish Pesach

Pesach follows Yom Kippur in the manner that the celebration of God’s redemption of God follows man’s repentance. The Passover is the central festival of the Jewish cycle, in which their “passing over” from slavery to the Egyptians into freedom is commemorated, while also awaiting their definitive redemption, for their kingdom is yet vulnerable and subjugated. It is also the central festival of Christianity and indeed of humanity, for “Passover” simply put, is to achieve that which is closest to every human heart- to pass from mortality to immortality. While again it is the sacrifice of blood that is the spiritual centre, the onus is now on the family “seder” meal. The lambs are slaughtered in the temple at evening sacrifice and the meat is brought home. Every family brings their own lamb to the Temple, and with somewhere in the region of 200,000 lambs being slaughtered, rivers of blood could be seen flowing in the street from it. The Passover meal was a time of remembrance (zakhor), when the “Haggada” is recited, the account of the events of the Exodus when Moses lead the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to freedom. The Feast of Unleavened Bread begins the day after Passover and lasts for seven days (Lev. 23:6-8, Lk.22:1). Throughout the week, Jewish Families remove all leaven from their homes and eat only unleavened bread, called Matzah as God had instructed them: “when you hear my voice, leave in haste and do not wait for the bread to rise” (Deut. 16:3).

Last Supper New Passover
At the Passover that Jesus “longed to eat” with His disciples on the night before which He is to be sacrificed. At the meal itself there is no mention of the lamb, only the bread “my Body”, and the wine “my Blood of the New Covenant” (Matt.16:28). Thus Jesus consciously changes the Passover meal- he himself is the Passover Lamb. This would certainly have not been lost on the apostles, all of whom had celebrated traditional Passovers with their families for all their living memory. Jesus now places himself as the new Passover sacrifice, the “Lamb of God” as identified by John. “Do this is remembrance of me”, Jesus says, changing the original zakhor, to the new remembrance of His own Sacrifice.  St. Paul calls the wine the “cup of blessing that we drink…” in a seeming allusion to the seder meal, for this is what the third cup in that meal is called. Following the meal, we are told that the apostles leave the upper room while singing Psalms. These “halel (praise) psalms” (113-118, 118 the “great halel” psalm) are traditionally sung at this juncture. Scott Hahn believes that the drinking of the fourth cup is intentionally delayed by Jesus until his Death when He says finally “I thirst”. He refuses drink offered prior to this, seemingly intending that the meal “is finished” only with his Death. As St. Paul exclaims: “For Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed, let us celebrate the festival” 1 Cor 5:7a. Thus the Last Supper meal has all the signs of indeed being a Passover meal, one that is fully consummated with Jesus’ Crucifixion and Death on the Cross. It is hard to tell which was the actual day of the Passover between the Synoptics which place it on the same day of the Last Supper and the Gospel of John which places it the day after, at the Crucifixion. This does not disturb the timeline of the Crucifixion, which occurred the day after the Last Supper. Rather it seems more likely that there are two days of Passover referred to here, where Passover is really the whole week of festival, and further it may have been celebrated on different days by different Jewish sects, like the Essenes, Pharisees and Saducees. But those that state that John intentionally moves the date to suit his “Lamb of God” narrative ignore seemingly the fact that Matthew has already done this when he quotes Jesus’ “covenant in my Blood” saying. So also Luke in narrating the event of the Transfiguration states: “They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure (n. ἔξοδος, ἡ- “exodus”), which he was about to accomplish (v. πληρόω- to accomplish) at Jerusalem.” (9:31).  

Abraham’s Sacrifice explained

It is here that the great riddle, and yet the central event of the Old Testament is explained, for at the very beginning of our story, an old man leads a much younger person up the same hill. The most reliable traditions makes Isaac out to be not a little boy but rather a young man, somewhere between 17 and 35 years old, and this makes sense for were he truly just a little boy as often depicted, he could not carry a load of wood up a mountain side. That young man, carries the very wood on which he is to be sacrificed up a hill and lays on it in obedience to the will of his father, and trusting in the Lord’s plan, yet he is not the definitive sacrifice rather the lamb that the “Lord will provide”: not the ram that is given to Abraham at the time, but rather Jesus himself who is to come.

Throughout the Biblical text God expresses his desire to dwell with his people, in prophecy and fulfilment. We examine this uniquely Christian theme in this article.

The New Pentecost

The Jewish festival of Pentecost, also called Shavuot/Weeks, or Receiving the New Law (Hag ha-Bikkurim (First Fruits), the Law at Sinai – Hag Matan Torateinu)  (Sivan6/7- June end/early May):

“You shall count for yourselves — from the day after the Shabbat, — seven Shabbats, they shall be complete. Until the day after the seventh sabbath you shall count, fifty days… You shall convoke on this very day — there shall be a holy convocation for yourselves — you shall do no laborious work; it is an eternal decree in your dwelling places for your generations.” Leviticus 21:15-16, 21

Like the other three major festivals enumerated here, Pentecost (Gk. Pentecostos = fifty) too has both historical and agricultural significance:

Agricultural context: “…Also called Hag HaKazir, the “Feast of the Harvest”, the festival marked the end of the barley and beginning of the wheat harvest in the land of Israel. In gratitude for their wheat crops, farmers would bring an offering of two loaves of bread to the Temple. Many would also bring thanksgiving offerings of the first fruits that had ripened on their trees. Giving the festival yet another name: Yom HaBikkurim, “Days of the First Fruits”” (pg 157 FKJD). (fn- Jesus is described as the “first fruits from the dead” (1Cor15:23).)

Historical Signification: Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, and is therefore also known as Hag Matan Torateinu. It is customary to stay up the entire first night of Shavu’ot and study the Torah, then pray as early as possible in the morning. (fn – the “Simchat Torah” the “Joy of Torah” is a separate festival of the completion of the annual reading cycle of the Torah, where joy is expressed by dancing etc. rather than the overnight reading.) It is possible to trace the time of the “Fifty days” that are appointed by the Lord in Leviticus 21 as the period from the original Passover event in Egypt to the Day of the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai, for the Israelites are thought to have left Egypt on the 15^th of the month of Nisan, which is the day appointed for the celebration of the Passover, and they reached Mt Sinai “in the third month”(Ex 19:1). The fifty day period would take us to the first week of that third month (Sivan) as time of the arrival at Sinai. Geographically too, this is the appropriate time period required for the journey. (fn- although some translations like the NRSV say “on the third moon”, rather than on the third month”)

New Testament fulfilment

“Now when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place” (Acts 2).

There are rich parallels between the Jewish and Christian Passover events.

It is on the fiftieth day following Jesus’ Passover which is the Crucifixion that the Holy Spirit comes upon the apostles.

Prior to the Law being given at Sinai, which event is the historical signification of Pentecost Jewish, God commands the Israelites to observe three days of preparations and purification. The appearance of the Lord upon the mountain “in the sight of all the people” is truly tremendous (Ex 19:16-24, 24:15-18).

Jesus rises from the dead on the third day, and on the Apostles’ Pentecost the Holy Spirit come as “the rush of a violent wind, descending upon the apostles as “tongues of fire” (Acts 2:2,3).

So if we take Jesus’ Death and Resurrection as the Christian Passover event and fulfilment (which it is), then 50 days later the Holy Spirit comes upon the apostles in a great Sign from Heaven, while in the case of the Israelites, on the 50th days the Law was given them, also with a great Theophany on the Mountain.

When Moses comes down from the mountain with the stone tablets to find that the Israelites have apostatized and are worshipping a Golden Calf. The Lord puts to death three thousand of their number that day. But when the Holy Spirit comes in the new Pentecost, on the very first day there are 3000 converts to Christianity.

Thus we see the complete fulfilment of the “new covenant” prophecy of Jeremiah (its the only place in the OT where the term “new covenant” is mentioned). Jesus has already fulfilled in at the Last Supper, in his words, the “my Blood of the New Covenant”, but at Pentecost the Grace is poured upon the faithful.

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)