Sermon Tone Analysis

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.