Background
In the Lord's Prayer, there is a verse that says God's “will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” (Matthew 6:10). If you take it out of context, you could expand that verse into a reference to a certain amount of parallelism between what happens in Heaven and what happens on earth. This out-of-context interpretation does have some accuracy.
When you look at Hebrews 8:1-5, it explains how Jesus is a high priest similar to mortal high priests and how the Tabernacle which God had instructed Moses to build (in excruciating detail through eight chapters starting with Exodus 24) was a “copy and shadow” of the true Tabernacle in Heaven.
The first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah, a.k.a. the Pentateuch and the Law, were also supposed to be a shadow of the good things yet to come (Hebrews 10:1). Somewhat paradoxically, Colossians 2:16-17 claims that the reality behind the Law's shadow already exists in Jesus.James 1:17 tells us that God does not change “like shifting shadows”. Excuse the pun, but this puts shadows in a bad light. ;-)
In this study, we'll take a close look at one of these shadows of prophesy in the Law, the Passover, to determine the form they take. Are they accurate in excruciating detail like the Tabernacle, or will we find them shifty and unreliable?
Passover Jesus
Many Christian theologians believe the story of Passover to be a veiled prophesy, a shadow, of what was to come through Jesus. This is not a new idea. The New Testament authors themselves recorded this shadowing in several references. So what did this shadow reveal? How does the Passover's shadow stack up against the reported reality of Jesus? Let's take a look at the facts.
| Old Testament | New Testament | ||
| What is sacrificed? | male lamb or kid (young goat) (Exodus 12:3) | Jesus, the “Lamb of God” (1 Corinthians 5:7, 1 Peter 1:19, John 1:29, John 1:36, Revelation 5:6, Revelation 7:10, Revelation 7:15) | |
| How many? | only as many as were needed (Exodus 12:4) | only Jesus | |
| How old is the sacrifice? | 1 year old (roughly the human equivalent of a pre-teen or teenager, sexually mature) (Exodus 12:5) | 31 or 33 years old (close to the end of the average lifespan at that time) (Luke 3:23 + Matthew, Mark, and Luke suggest one year while John's Gospel suggests three years by reference to three different Passovers.) | |
| Qualifications? | without physical defects (Exodus 12:5) | without sin (Hebrews 4:15) | |
| What day is it selected? | the 10th day of the first month (Exodus 12:2) | Before human time/the 12th day/the 14th day/the 13th day (John 1:1 + 1:14/Matthew 26:2, Mark 14:1/Matthew 26:17-19, Mark 14:12-14, Luke 22:7-8/John 18:28) | |
| What to do until the sacrifice? | take care of it (Exodus 12:6) | Put on trial, mocked, and beaten (Matthew 26+27, Mark 14+15, Luke 22+23, John 18+19) | |
| What day is it sacrificed? | the 14th day of the first month (Exodus 12:6) | It's hard to tell for sure given all of the things that happen after Jesus is taken into custody and the fact that it happens one day earlier in John's Gospel, so I guess sometime from the 13th day to the 15th day. | |
| What time? | twilight, nightfall, the official Jewish beginning of a new day, ~6 P.M. (Exodus 12:6) | from crucifixion to death, ~9 A.M. to ~3 P.M. (Mark 15:25 + 15:34) | |
| Where should it be slaughtered? | in your home, forbidden to go outside (Exodus 12:46) | on a crucifix on a hill outside (Matthew 27:32-33, Mark 15:21-22, Luke 23:26, John 19:17) | |
| Preparation for eating the flesh? | roasted whole over the fire (Exodus 12:8) | none | |
| How do you eat the flesh? | quickly, dressed like you are ready to go somewhere (Exodus 12:11) | You don't eat Jesus, but symbolically you eat his flesh in the form of unleavened bread. (Matthew 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19, John 6:51-53, 1 Corinthians 11:24) | |
| And the bones? | not one broken (Exodus 12:46) | not one broken (John 19:36) | |
| What to do with the blood? | put it on the door frames of your house (Exodus 12:7) | Nothing. However, symbolically you drink it in the form of wine as part of the New Covenant. (Matthew 26:27-29, Mark 14:23-25, Luke 22:17-18, John 6:53, 1 Corinthians 11:25) | |
| What do you do with leftovers? | burn them by morning (Exodus 12:10) | lay them wrapped up in a tomb with spices and perfume (Matthew 27:57-61, Mark 15:42-47, Luke 23:50-55, John 19:38-42) | |
| Purpose of the blood? | to serve as a visual indicator so that God would not kill the Israelites' firstborn sons. (Exodus 12:13) | to redeem, purify, and purge all sin guilt from believers (1 Peter 1:18-19, Hebrews 10:18-21, Hebrews 13:12, 1 John 1:7) | |
So of the fifteen specific characteristics given by God with regard to the sacrifice of the Passover lamb, two match Jesus' Passion, another four are possible matches mostly through symbolism, while nine others are in direct conflict with Jesus' story. The Passover, as far as being a shadow of things to come (Hebrews 10:1), with its many contrasts to Jesus' Passion stands in stark contrast to the exacting shadow which God provided through the implementation of the Tabernacle (Hebrews 8:5).
For insight, let's turn to God's Word. When you read Exodus 12, you find that the lamb's blood was important, but not quite as important as yeast, or rather avoiding yeast. What is to be celebrated for generations to come is not the Feast of the Blood of Salvation, but rather the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12:14-20). The lamb is eaten the first night, and that's it. Unleavened bread must be eaten for seven days during this feast. Anyone who ate yeast during this feast had to be cut off from Israel, but there is no punishment for those people which do not sacrifice a lamb. This was to commemorate the fact that the Israelites were brought so quickly out of Egypt that they didn't have time to add yeast to their bread (Exodus 12:39). It is clear where God's main focus is with regard to the memory of this event, and the lamb's blood – the pinnacle of Christian theology – plays only a minor role.
(As someone who has made wine, I find it very ironic that wine was used by Jesus during His passover dinner. You see, wine is made with yeast, and given the filtration systems which existed back in those days, it was pretty much guaranteed to have traces of yeast in it at the time of consumption. Doh!)
So what does this mean? Only God knows for sure. ;-) As I continue my studies, I continue to find that the prophesies which are associated with Jesus only partially apply, typically best fit when taken out of their original context, and often require interpretation through a symbolic meaning. This is good example of all three concepts.
This may be evidence of enhancement of a still-somewhat-fluent story of Jesus which existed in the very early years of the church. The early evangelists may have inserted anecdotal details into Jesus' story with ties to particular snippets in the Tanakh to better solidify scriptural support of Jesus. They could tell part of Jesus' story, turn to a book in their traveling Tanakh and read off one sentence, and thereby reveal the connection. They could keep on going, repeating the cycle, until their prospects were converted.
If so, their target audience would have been those which did not have their own Tanakhs to perform contextual fact checking, because such a check would have revealed the many non-congruent details. Perhaps this is why the pharisees are condemned so much in Jesus' story, because they would have known the truth of God's word.
On the other hand, maybe God did just this kind of stuff on purpose to confuse the wise...(1 Corinthians 1:19)
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