Speak unto all the assembly of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month let them take themselves each a lamb, for a father's house, a lamb for a house.
God speaks to the whole nation at once, yet He asks for something small: one lamb, on a fixed day, house by house. Why a date ten days early, why a lamb per household, and why does Scripture keep saying "the lamb" and not "lambs"?
One writer draws out three lessons from this way of counting.
Notice here three matters of spiritual importance. First, every individual needs the lamb. Second, every house needs the lamb. Third, the lamb is large enough for others to share. Israel would sacrifice many lambs that night. Yet Scripture does not use the plural, "lambs," but only the singular — "the lamb" or "your lamb" (vv. 4-5). For the lamb above all speaks of Christ.
Verse 4 allows for a household too small to finish the lamb. Scripture never mentions the opposite case, and one writer presses that silence.
If the household was too small for the lamb, then he and his nearest neighbour were to take it together. Please notice there was no question that the lamb might be too little for the house. The Lamb of God is enough for all — even for the worst sinner.
Because God counts the lamb "according to their fathers' houses," salvation that night came to each family through the act of one man.
Israel clearly kept the Passover family by family, on the principle of a lamb for each household. The blood sprinkled on their homes sheltered them, family by family. So the father's act — his obedience of faith — secured his household from the stroke of judgment that fell on the land of Egypt… The state of the household did not come into the question. The essential point was the sprinkling of the blood.
The two circles hold together, not against each other. God addresses the congregation as one body, and inside it each home stands apart:
Every household had its own lamb, for every family had to be specifically under its shelter. On the other hand, "the assembly of the congregation" is seen as one whole. These two unities were always preserved… the families apart, and the congregation as a whole.
A new calendar might have opened with the sacrifice itself. It did not.
It is remarkable that God did not appoint the lamb to be killed on the first day of that month. From now on, this month was to be the first in Israel's year. One might almost have supposed that the LORD would begin the new reckoning with the great fact of redemption… Ten days had to run their course before the victim was taken from the flock for death.
The same writer reads the number itself as carrying weight.
For our present purpose it is enough to say that "ten" represents the full measure of human responsibility. So we have ten commandments in Exodus 20, ten virgins in Matthew 25:1-13, and ten pounds in Luke 19:13. So the ten days of Exodus 12:3 speak to us of the ages of responsibility (or probation). They ran their course before God sent out His beloved Son to be the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
Commentators differ over what the gap between the tenth day and the fourteenth pictures. One reading takes it back into eternity.
Israel took the lamb on the tenth day and kept it until the fourteenth. This shows us Christ foreordained by God from eternity, but revealed for us in time. God's eternal purpose in Christ becomes the foundation of the believer's peace… This carries us back far beyond creation, beyond the bounds of time, beyond the entrance of sin, and beyond everything that could affect the groundwork of our peace.
Another reading places both days inside history. The tenth day then marks the start of Jesus' public ministry:
On this view, the tenth day corresponds to Christ entering His public ministry. John the Baptist then marked Him out in a most striking way: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). Ten is the number of responsibility Godward. So before our Lord was publicly owned as the Lamb of God, He had met every responsibility before God, and was proved without blemish — fit in Himself to be the sacrifice for sin.
The wording for the lamb changes across the opening verses.
The first few verses of Exodus 12 show a deepening and growing appreciation of the value of the "lamb" — "a lamb" (v. 3); "the lamb" (v. 4); "your lamb" (v. 5). As they kept the lamb in the intimacy of the home, their contemplation of it would grow during those four days from the tenth to the fourteenth.
- Appointed. Israel took the lamb four days before killing it. It pictures Christ, marked out by God — in eternity past, or at the start of His public ministry.
- Announced. The command goes to the whole congregation — one assembly, with every household inside it.
- Applied. Israel's unit of shelter was the household; the head of the house acted in faith, and his family was covered.
- Ample. A house could be too small for the lamb; the lamb was never too small for the house.
- Appreciated. "A lamb" becomes "the lamb" and then "your lamb" — the value of Christ grows on those who keep Him before their eyes.
And if the household be too small for a lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take [it] according to the number of the souls; each according to [the measure] of his eating shall ye count for the lamb.
The instruction covers an ordinary problem: a small family could not eat a whole lamb in one night. God's answer was not to shrink the sacrifice. He widened the circle around it instead.
Many lambs died that night, yet the wording stays singular. The rule also moves outward: the person, then the house, then the neighbour.
On the tenth day of the month every man was to take a lamb, at least a lamb for a house. Yet if the house was too small to use the meat of a lamb, then it might be shared with a neighbouring house (vv. 2-3). Notice three matters of spiritual importance here. First, every individual needs the lamb. Second, every house needs the lamb. Third, the lamb is large enough for others to share. Israel would sacrifice many lambs that night. Yet Scripture does not use the plural, "lambs," but only the singular, "the lamb" or "your lamb" (vv. 4-5). For the lamb speaks above all of Christ.
Notice which way the shortfall runs in this verse.
The lamb is to be eaten — all of it. If the household were too little for the lamb — we read nothing of the lamb being too little for the house — then, says the Lord, let him and his neighbour next to his house take it. This blessed One is all-sufficient either as Saviour or as the Sustainer of His people.
That same silence in the text has a direct message for anyone who fears he is beyond help.
Please notice there was no question that the lamb might be too little for the house. The Lamb of God is enough for all — even for the worst sinner.
God counted each household by how much its members could eat. That measures appetite, not safety.
The feast was of a family character. All shared in it according to their appetites. Throughout Scripture we often have eating presented as a symbol of communion... The Israelites shared, according to their eating, in the lamb, whose blood was their common salvation. But their security lay not in their feeding on the lamb, their communion concerning the sacrifice, but in the blood outside their doors. Communion with God about Christ follows our salvation by God's Christ; we are not saved by spiritual capacity. Our salvation lies in the value of the sacrificial blood on which God rests, just as His eye rested on the blood outside the houses of Israel. The order is first the shelter of the blood, then the joy of feasting on the Lamb whose blood has been shed for us.
God's aim goes beyond rescue. He wants them to take the lamb in, and what they take in becomes part of them.
The lamb is theirs to feed on, and God is bent on their enjoying this provision of His love. The lamb too must all of it be eaten. God would have Christ grasped by us. He would have our souls sustained, and He would have Christ honoured. We are to eat — to make our own what Christ is; and what we make our own becomes, in fact, part and parcel of ourselves. This laying hold of Christ by faith makes Christ real sustenance to us, and makes Himself to be reproduced in us.
The lamb outsized the small household, so someone else had to come in. No one ate alone.
The paschal feast was the first institution of divine fellowship in a corporate sense. The blood of atonement stood on that night between the Israelites and those who were outside their doors. Judgment was outside; but inside there was not peace only, but communion. No Israelite might eat the passover alone. Family association, founded on the divinely recognised unity of the house of Israel, was a marked feature of the ordinance.
The invitation starts at the nearest door and does not stop there.
Have we found the roast Lamb to be an inexhaustible feast, enough for me and my household, with unlimited supplies for my neighbour next to my house? Let us each share the roast Lamb with our neighbour in the house next to us. In time we may find, as our Lord pointed out to the lawyer, that "my neighbour" may be one of another nation. He may be one who for years has been despised and scorned and neglected.
- Enough — A house can be too small for the lamb. The lamb is never too small for the house. The shortfall is always on our side.
- Sheltered — The blood outside the door kept them safe. The feast inside was communion, not the ground of safety. Blood first, then the meal.
- Appetite — God counted each house by what its members could eat. Our hunger sets how much of Christ we take in.
- Absorbed — All of it was to be eaten. What we take in becomes part of us, and Christ is reproduced in the one who feeds on Him.
- Shared — The Lamb is bigger than any one household. Share Him — starting next door, and reaching even the despised outsider.
Your lamb shall be without blemish, a yearling male; ye shall take [it] from the sheep, or from the goats.
God's instructions for the Passover are exact: the animal, its age, its condition. Every detail matters, because everything rests on the character of the sacrifice God accepts.
The New Testament tells us what this animal stood for.
First, the lamb. As already pointed out, the whole value of this Passover lamb springs from its being a type of Christ. Paul says, "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7). So we have God's own authority for seeing the Lamb of God pictured in this type. That is why every detail of this chapter is so full of interest... He was God's Lamb, and it is a great comfort that God Himself supplied the lamb. Man could never have known what sacrifice would be acceptable. So in His mercy and grace God provided a lamb whose blood would be enough to take away the sin of the world. There can never be any other way of cleansing from sin, and no other shelter from the just judgment of God.
Jesus lived His public life in the open, where anyone could look for a flaw.
During His three and a half years of ministry the Saviour lived in the fierce glare of hostile criticism. He did not live cut off from people, as John the Baptist did; the desert was not His home; He moved freely in and out among the people. All the facts of His life were therefore fully known. If His foes could have discovered a single flaw in Him, how it would have delighted their evil hearts! But He was God's holy One. The Passover lamb was to be "without blemish." Only such a lamb could picture Him who was holy in nature and stainless in all His ways. At the end His judge had to say, "I find no guilt in him" (John 19:6).
Peter picks up this phrase and adds a second word to it, and the two describe different things.
Today God is calling men and women out from the world and bringing them to Himself. We must make sure we have a perfect Saviour, one who is inwardly without blemish — in whom was no sin! Peter adds another thing. He says that believers are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb. That Lamb is not only "without blemish" inwardly, but also "without spot" outwardly. Our Lord Jesus Christ lived and passed through this sin-defiled world, and yet He stayed unspotted.
The verse stacks three requirements in one line. Each answers to something the sacrifice had to be.
The lamb must be, first, "without blemish" — that is, the sacrifice must be pure enough to atone for sins... Secondly, it must be a male, the stronger of the sexes. The sacrifice must be strong enough. It is impossible that one mere creature, even if he had not sinned, could atone for the sins of countless numbers. But Christ is the eternal Son of God, in person infinite... Thirdly, the lamb must be "of the first year." This tells us of its tenderness.
Commentators read the age requirement differently. Where Grant hears tenderness, another writer hears full development:
Sentiment and imagination have combined to give us a completely wrong idea of this lamb. It was to be a mature animal. It was a type of that blessed One of whom we read, "Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age" (Luke 3:23).
God gave Israel a choice of animal, and the two carry different notes.
Exodus 12 records the first time God dealt with sin publicly. There the people of Israel could take either from the sheep or from the goats (v. 5). In the sheep we have the willingness of the Lord to die for sin, and in the goat we have the ability of the Lord to die for sin.
Notice who the verse says the lamb belongs to.
The lamb is not called God's Lamb there. It is spoken of as "your lamb." Our lamb — yet that lamb in type is the same Lamb, the same Person who is God's Lamb, and it has, we are told, to be "without blemish."
The four days between choosing and killing point to something far larger.
The precious blood of Christ has redeemed us out of our old manner of life. He is the One pictured as the unblemished and spotless lamb of Exodus 12:3-6. Only He was ordained not a mere four days before the sacrifice, but from before the foundation of the world. Our redemption, therefore, was according to the eternal counsels of God.
- Chosen — God provided this Lamb Himself, and marked Him out not four days ahead but before the world existed. Our redemption follows His eternal counsels.
- Spotless — "without blemish" is purity inside; "without spot" is an unstained walk. His judge could find no guilt in Him.
- Strong — the male animal points to a sacrifice of infinite value. It can cover the sins of countless people.
- Willing and able — the sheep speaks of His readiness to die, the goat of His power to do it.
- Yours — the verse says your lamb. The Lamb God provided is the same Lamb He gives you to take as your own.
And ye shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; and the whole congregation of the assembly of Israel shall kill it between the two evenings.
Israel chose the lamb on the tenth day, then waited until the fourteenth to kill it — and the whole nation killed it together. Commentators read both the four waiting days and that shared act as pointing forward to Christ.
The gap between choosing the lamb and killing it was not empty time. Commentators read those four days as a set time of testing.
Once the lamb is taken, sacrifice does not follow at once; it is kept for four days. Four speaks of testing. This comes straight after God announces His satisfaction and delight in Him. Until then He had lived under God's eye alone; now man and the devil are to test Him as they please... And this testing brought out only His perfection. The four Gospels show the result.
For those four days the lamb was not hidden away in a pen.
For four days it lived with them in the house its blood would shelter from the judgment. It was before their very eyes during that period. They might consider it and talk of it and say, "This is the lamb that is to suffer for us."... We behold Him as He walks, without spot or blemish. In this Gospel He could challenge His enemies: "Which one of you convicts me of sin?" Even the heartless pagan judge had to admit three times over that he could find no fault in Him.
The delay also says something about God. He fixed the day long before Israel kept it, and one writer traces that purpose back further still.
Here we have the redemption of the people founded on the blood of the lamb, in line with God's eternal purpose. This gives it all its divine stability. Redemption was no afterthought with God. This was settled before the world was, or Satan, or sin. Before the voice of God ever broke the silence of eternity and called worlds into existence, He had His deep counsels of love.
The dates in this verse are not decoration. One writer traces them onto the last week of Jesus' life and finds them matched.
"On the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb... and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month; and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening." How wonderfully the Lord fulfilled all this. On the tenth day of the first month we see Him coming to Jerusalem. He stayed there (though sleeping outside the city) until the fourteenth day, and on the evening of that day He died.
The Hebrew behind the timing reads literally "between the two evenings," and commentators differ on what window it marks. Some tie it down narrowly by comparing other commands that use the same words.
The passover was to be sacrificed in the evening, at the going down of the sun. The daily evening sacrifice was offered up "between the evenings." So this phrase cannot mean what some have said — the time between the evening of one day and the evening of the next... "Between the two evenings" was a certain time on the fourteenth day of Nisan.
Another writer asks what that narrow answer rests on, and suggests a wider span.
Learned men say between the two evenings means between three and six; but why? What is their authority? It is remarkable that the unleavened bread was to begin at evening... but the paschal lamb was to be slain between the two evenings. Might it not be between the beginning of Friday (our Thursday evening) and the beginning of Saturday (our Friday evening)? It was strictly fulfilled in our Lord.
Earlier verses give a lamb to each house; this verse hands the killing to the entire nation. Both stand together.
All must be identified with the slain lamb. It was to be killed for the whole assembly. Every household had its own lamb, because every family had to be under its shelter. On the other hand, "the assembly of the congregation" is viewed as a whole... The passover brings the two together — the families apart, and the congregation as a whole.
Another writer makes that shared act personal.
The whole assembly was to kill the lamb in the evening. This reminds us that all believers are responsible for the death of Christ. Our sins caused Him His suffering and death.
- Chosen — the lamb was set apart on the tenth day, in line with a purpose God held before the world existed.
- Tested — the four days of keeping it answer to the testing of Christ, which brought out only His perfection.
- Watched — the lamb lived in full view of the household it would die for, as Christ lived in full view of men.
- Timed — the tenth day and the fourteenth match the Lord's last week, though writers differ over the exact hour, "between the two evenings."
- Shared — one lamb per house, yet the whole assembly kills it: shelter is personal, and the guilt is everyone's.