Chapter 12:1-9

Commentary‌

12:1- The fact that all this is done while still in Egypt is significant. Yahweh is declaring victory for His people before they’ve left the land. While still in bondage, He proclaims their freedom. To spiritualize this for a moment, we often wait to change until our circumstances change. We think we can’t do better until our environment is more conducive. But the reality is that we’re the ones who have to take the first step before our surroundings can change. Growth happens while you’re still in the middle of where you don’t want to be.‌

I’ve heard some claim that sheep were considered sacred animals and that sacrificing them within Egypt would have been sacrilegious, but I can’t find any source that agrees with that. I think the affront was more in the fact that they were sacrificing to a Jewish God on Egyptian soil.‌

12:2- With the emphasis on the month, it’s kind of strange that the text doesn't say which month this was. We don’t learn it’s the 15th of Nissan (March-April) until Leviticus 23:5-8.‌

There’s a heavy emphasis in this passage on the calendar. It’s likely the Jews were working on different calendars, possibly even Egyptian ones. This sets a new system of doing life. A new calendar changes everything. ‌

12:3- God stressed several times that Passover was to take place in the spring. The exodus was about rebirth. Even the picture of the Israelites walking through their bloody doorposts to leave Egypt forever almost evokes the imagery of a child being born from a mother’s womb into the world.‌

“Though the Hebrew [word] can refer to both lamb and mature sheep, the indication that the animal should be in its first year. . . makes ‘lamb’ the appropriate translation. It is a slightly peculiar lamb, however, because in verse 5 we learn that it also includes ‘kid.’” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary‌

There’s a lot we need to cover on sacrifices and lambs and blood and why any of that had to happen in the first place, so we’re going to put that discussion on hold today and spend most of next week talking through all that. ‌

12:5- “Without blemish” meant that you couldn’t pick your worst-looking sheep and sacrifice it. It had to meet certain criteria in order for the ritual to work. These terms are new to us in the story. They assume you’re familiar with the Levitical texts to come.‌

12:6- Imagine the sounds and smells and mess of this mass slaughter.‌

12:7- This continues a theme of a sacrifice at the door from Cain and Abel to Noah and eventually leading to the tabernacle and temple. It’s very reminiscent of the ark as well. There’s a lot of flood imagery here.‌

12:8- These are all new instructions that don’t mean much now, but they’re foreshadowing all of the Levitical codes we’ll read in the next couple books.‌

“The etymology of the Hebrew matsot remains uncertain. The conventional translation of ‘unleavened bread' is less than felicitous not only because of its excess of syllables but because it explicitly defines the bread by negation, the lack of leavening, whereas the Hebrew is a positive term. [kind of like the difference between saying unmarried v. single] In Genesis 19 Lot serves matsot to the two anonymous guests who were to his house at nightfall, and the implication is that this is a kind of bread that can be baked hastily, with no need to wait for the dough to rise before putting it in the oven.” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary‌

12:9- What’s the big deal with boiling it? “Eating raw meat, still suffused with blood, would in any case have been prohibited, but elsewhere there is no restriction on boiled meat (here that would be lamb stew), whether for sacrificial or profane purposes. William H. C. Propp offers what may be the best explanation for this insistence on fire-roasting by observing that it is a more archaic method of cooking meat, without the use of a pot, cooking utensils being the instruments of a more complex culinary technology. In this fashion, he goes on to suggest, fire-roasting would be associated with a kind of purity in the preparation of the meal, just as flatbread (probably baked over an open fire, nomad-style) without any admixture of leaven, might be associated with purity. One could add that these archaically prepared foods enhance the sense of ritual reenactment of what amounts to an archaic moment of national history, when the nation itself was awaiting its foundational liberation as a destroying angel stalked through the Egyptian night and passed over the houses of the Israelites.” -Robert Alter, Translation and Commentary‌

Purtenance is a lovely KJ era word that means innards or entrails. They were supposed to eat the liver and heart and gizzard and everything.

Time for some fun. This passage is very clear that you’re supposed to roast, not boil, the meat, right? To צְלִי־אֵ֣שׁ (tsaliy-esh) is to roast. To בָשֵׁ֥ל (basel) is to boil. You have to tsaliy-esh the meat. Don’t ever basel it. So far so good.

Ok, turn to Deuteronomy 16:7. Moses is summarizing the Torah for a new generation of Israelites. These are the children of the Exodus, the ones who survived the 40 years in the wilderness. This is the generation that’s going to go into the promised land. Moses is making sure they keep the Passover correctly, and here he commands them to cook the lamb. Most of our English translations say "roast" or "cook," leading you to believe the instructions are the same as the Exodus 12 passage. tsaliy-esh, don't basel. Only problem is that's not the case. Moses' command in Deuteronomy is to basel, to boil the Passover, the very thing they weren't supposed to do in Exodus 12. The English translators, concerned about maintaining continuity between the passages, assumed Moses must have meant the same method of cooking. But in so doing, they changed the meaning of the Hebrew word basel and missed the point of the passage. Confused yet? You’re not alone. The authors seemed totally ok with the law being one thing for one generation and another for the next, even when on the surface those laws seemed to contradict. ‌

Now, let’s add in one more passage that I think helps to give us a framework for handling this sort of dissonance. In 2 Chron 34, the scroll of the Torah was found and immediately taken to King Josiah of Judah. He instituted a nation wide reform and authorized the first Passover celebration in a while. Now mind you, Josiah was the kind of guy who was really good at following orders and he wanted to follow his orders to a T. So he’s rereading the Torah and he comes across the Passover passages (I’m fleshing out a little bit here that is implied in the passage but not specifically said.) He sees in Exodus that the Jews were to roast not boil, tsaliy-esh, not basel. Then he gets to Deuteronomy 16:7 and sees that they are to basel. So what does he do?

"And they roasted the passover with fire according to the ordinance: but the other holy offerings sod they in pots, and in caldrons, and in pans, and divided them speedily among all the people." 2 Chronicles 35:13.

The KJ and nearly every other version I could find said they roasted with fire. But again, that’s not what the text says. The translators were doing their best to make texts reconcile with each other, but in so doing, they completely changed the meaning of the passage. He didn’t roast it with fire. He basel b'esh-ed it. He boiled it with fire. Now, if you've ever cooked much, you know you don’t boil in fire. You boil in liquid. You roast with fire. But Josiah combined them. He boiled in fire. It’s like he’s the ultimate Torah-observant Jew. When presented with two passages that seem to contradict, he combines them and obeys them both at the same time. ‌

How exactly he did that, we don’t know. Maybe he pan seared it and then boiled it the rest of the way. Maybe he broiled. Maybe created some new cooking method. We don’t know, and that’s not the point. The point is how he handled the text. It’s like the scene in Cobra Kai (and similar scenes from other movies/tv shows) where there’s a potted plant on top of a pole and the sensei says to kick the plant off the pole. Everyone tries to jump high enough to, but no one can reach it. Then one kid comes along and just kicks the whole pole over, knocking over the plant in the process. That’s what Josiah’s doing. He’s creating a “D, all of the above” option, coloring outside the lines in order to make the picture all it could be.‌

In this class, I talk a lot about interpretation rather than application. Where most teachers would tell you this means our music needs to be x or you should or shouldn’t do y, I prefer to spend time teaching you the background to the text you don’t already know. And for good reason. The Holy Spirit is better at application than I’ll ever be. If I tell you, this text means you need to do x, you’ll think about that application. But my application is only as good as what I can come up with in my own mind based on what I know. I don’t know everything in your life, so the best application may actually be a different one than I thought. I don’t know that, but someone else does. The Holy Spirit knows you better than I do, better even than you do. So He does a better job of providing application than I can. What I can do is teach. I spend several hours a week neck-deep in nerdy Bible stuff that no one cares about so you don’t have to be. ‌Not everyone needs to be a Bible nerd, but we do need a few to do that research so they can present it to the average Christian in an easier to understand format.

With the remaining time, I want to combine the two and teach you a little bit about how to apply the Bible to your life. We tend to view the Bible like Poor Richard’s Almanac. I open up to a page, find some direction for life, and then take that for the day. But most of the Bible isn’t like that. It’s not a book of pithy life sayings. I hate to say this, but it’s not Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. It’s not basic. It is instruction, but not in the way most people think. And it’s not about leaving earth (but that’s another conversation for another class, hopefully soon). The Bible is a story, a narrative of redemption. If you open up to a random page in a novel and try to take life advice from what the characters on the page are doing, you’re probably going to take stuff out of context. ‌

I emphasized this passage today because the Bible is not a book of static commands that you can pick and choose from and assume you’re pleasing God because you’re doing exactly what one verse or one passage says.

You might follow a verse to a T and still not be pleasing God in your time and place. Think with me about the contrast between Exodus 12 and Deuteronomy 16. If an Israelite from the Exodus 12 generation boiled the lamb, they would have been disobeying God. If an Israelite from the Deuteronomy 16 generation boiled the lamb, they’d be obeying God. God doesn’t change. His heart doesn’t change. The motive behind a law or instruction doesn’t change. But sometimes the law itself has to change in order to preserve the heart behind it. ‌

In the first Passover, the Jews didn’t have time to boil, to set up a nice cooking prep area. They just needed to throw it over a fire and go quickly. The second generation that was going into the promised land wasn’t under such time constraints. They could cook it how they liked. They had more room to work with. The problem, the “sin” if you will, was never about boiling itself. There’s nothing morally wrong with boiling. Sin, at it’s simplest definition, is just what’s not good for you. It would not have been good for the Israelites to spend extra time in Egypt. They needed to be ready to go quickly, so roasting was best. God’s instructions are not arbitrary. God’s not up in heaven going, “Man, I really hated that one time someone stole something from me, so I declare stealing to be a sin.” No, being God, He knows the damage theft can cause, so He warns against it. The key to understanding the laws and instructions in the Bible is to understand the heart behind them. Sometimes following the heart of a law means changing the letter the law.‌

Consider an example from daily life. Let’s say you have a 5 year old kid. You’re probably going to tell them, “Don’t ever cross the street without mommy or daddy,” right? Why? Is it because crossing the street is morally wrong? No, it’s because they could get seriously hurt if they’re not careful. Now, let’s say the kid is 15. Do you let them cross the street on their own? More than likely, your answer is "yes." How could you! Don’t you care about their safety anymore? The rule was don’t cross the street!

"Ah," you'd say, "but the heart behind the rule was the child’s well-being. If the child is to grow into a mature adult, they eventually need to learn to cross the street without mom and dad or they’ll never be able to function in society." You broke your law in order to keep your law. The way to follow the rules changed because the heart behind them never did. Following? ‌

The same goes with the Bible. The laws of the Bible are not God’s ideal for all humans in all time. They are examples, case studies in how to live in a way pleasing to Yahweh. The exact ways of following them best change over time as culture changes. I realize that probably makes some of you uncomfortable, so let’s look at another example.

"Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. 3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven." 1 Corinthians 11:2-5

Most of the Christian women in the world pray without their heads being covered. If you're a female reading this, chances are that you haven't worn a hat or head covering in church lately. Does that mean you are in direct violation of the Bible? This isn't just some Old Testament law we can chalk up to being about Israel. This is Paul. This is a letter to a church in the New Testament. Yet very few women in churches across the world see head coverings as a necessity. (In fairness, some certainly do. Different denominations and even different cultural backgrounds will affect this.) So are most of the Christian women you know all a bunch of a hippie heathen feminist sinners? I don’t think so, and it has to do with why a woman’s head was so important in Paul’s day.

In one line of Greco-Roman thought, a woman’s hair was believed to be sexual. Some of the ancients actually thought that a woman’s hair was connected in her head all the way down to her genitals. Since puberty usually includes hair growing where it didn’t before, they thought that hair must be related to sexual reproduction. Hippocrates, the very man after which the Hippocratic Oath is named, believed that women had long hair so that after intercourse, her hair could pull the semen up into her womb and make her pregnant. Funky stuff, right? And probably stuff you’ve never heard in church before or thought you would hear today. But it’s really important for how we understand this passage. Ancient Greek medical theories actually affect how we apply the Bible today.

Today we know that Hippocrates’ line of thinking was way off course. We know that there is nothing physically sexual about hair, male or female. When you walk into church and you see a woman with long hair walking around without a hat, you’re probably not thinking, “Doesn’t she know what message that’s sending? She looks like she’s desperate for a guy.” No, you don’t think anything about it. But in ancient Greece where hair would have been considered sexual, walking into a church with your hair uncovered as a woman would have been reminiscent of the temple prostitutes. It would have been the equivalent of walking into church wearing lingerie. Can you see a problem with that? Yeah, and that’s a really different meaning than how we normally read this passage.

Paul wasn’t saying, “Cover your hair because it’s morally bad.” He was saying, “Don’t make church weird.” In 2023, the average American woman doesn’t wear a hat out that much. So wearing one when you normally wouldn’t otherwise actually makes you stand out more. Paul’s point was to make you stand out less. Now, if you’re the type of lady who does like to wear hats for style, then nothing wrong with that, go right ahead if it’s part of your normal attire. But if you don’t normally wear head coverings, following Paul’s instruction would make you violate the heart behind Paul’s instruction. So in order to obey the Bible, we have to do the opposite of what that particular verse said. And that’s ok because Paul was talking to a specific people in a specific time and place. We are not those people, and we are not in that time or place. Following the text rigidly would disrespect the original intent. In order to follow the Bible, we have to apply in a new way that fits our culture.

In the spirit of Josiah, we can’t ever just take one verse and make it our determination for how best to please God. We need to consider the entirety of Scripture and what that particular verse might have meant in it’s context to those people. Sometimes the best way to preserve the spirit of the verse is to adapt our application of the verse.

[There’s another possible interpretation of 1 Cor 11 that says “uncovered” actually means “unveiled.” Married Roman women were allowed to walk around with a veiled (covered) face. This signified that they were someone else’s property (in an ancient Roman mindset) and couldn’t be raped. Men didn’t do that because it was a female thing, so of course it would seem shameful if a man did that. Paul seems to be giving power back to women saying that all of them, slave or free, married or unmarried, has the right to feel safe in the house of God. They could all wear veils, married or not, because they were all worthy of respect and protection in the Christian ethic. Either interpretation returns the passage to it’s Ancient Near Eastern context and means that Paul was empowering rather than restricting women. To restrict them by forcing them to wear a head covering today would be to go against the very reason for Paul’s instruction in the first place. The hat or veil wasn’t the issue. It was the modesty or freedom it symbolized.]