We are now in December, which means even the most grinch-like among us permit Christmas music and decorations. Christmas and Easter are two of the most important “festivals” associated with Christianity (well, most of us anyway), representing the birth and then the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the Jews, their most important festival was the Passover, which commemorated God’s rescue of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt.
The returned exiles had finally restored and rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, and in March 516 BC celebrated its completion. In April, they celebrated the Passover for the first time in decades. Just as God had brought their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt, now God had brought them out in a new exodus from their exile. So they celebrated the Passover that looked back, and that looked forward to the New Exodus and the New Passover that was yet to come. The one we celebrate at Christmas and Easter each year.
The date was monumental. With the temple rebuilt, the Jews who had returned from exile could celebrate the Passover once again. For decades, the feast had remained unobserved, because it could only be observed in the place where God’s presence dwelt (Deut. 16:1-8). With no temple in Jerusalem, there was nowhere for the sacrifices to be offered. But now, “on the fourteenth day of the first month, the returned exiles kept the Passover” (v.14).
The Passover looked back to the day of God’s divine judgement on Egypt, as Pharaoh refused to let God’s People go. God swept through the land and took the firstborn son of every household in one night, the final terrible plague visited on Egypt. Only the blood of a lamb, sacrificed and painted on the door frames of Israelite houses, caused God to pass over their households and spare their sons from the terrible wrath of God. A lamb in place of a man. Sacrifice of a lamb to avert the wrath of God. Spared, God led them out of Egypt to the wilderness and onward to the Promised Land.
For the returned exiles, their return was a second type of exodus. They had departed from a type of slavery in a foreign land, released by God’s sovereign power through the decree of King Cyrus, to return to the land which God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Passover festival, not just because of its importance and the long gap between observances, held a special significance for them.
And so, the 1,000 or so Priests and Levites purified themselves and the Levites slaughtered the passover lambs for the tens of thousands of returned exiles, thousands of lambs for thousands of households, for the priests, and for themselves (v.20). Just as hundreds of years later, on the day and at the time of the passover, the priests and Levites would cause another lamb to be slain instead of man, so God might pass over.
Once the lambs were slain, and the choicest fatty portions offered to God, the lambs were taken home to households where Exodus 12 was read and a feast was held. And so it happened, that “it was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile” (v.21). But not just them, but also “every one who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the LORD, the God of Israel” (v.21). Even in those days, God’s Israel was more than just ethnic Jews but also those from the nations who turned away from their gods to worship the only true God.
Following this, “they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the LORD had made them joyful” (v.22). After all, why should they not rejoice? Even their ancient enemy, the Kingdom of Assyria, now absorbed into the Kingdom of Persia (he was also King of Assyria by conquest), had “aided them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel” (v.22).
A new passover for a new exodus. But still looking forward to the exodus and passover to come. For all the greatness of their return, there was another exodus to come. The prophets spoke of it in that way (cf. Isaiah 11:10-16), pointing forward to the greater exodus when God gathers his people to their final salvation in Christ. The decisive defeat of every “king of Assyria”, whatever the title. The gathering of God’s People from every nation to worship Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Because that passover celebrated in 516 BC looked forward to the Passover when Christ hung on a cross as the sacrifice for our sins. The lamb of God slain for men, to satisfy and turn away the wrath of God. To reconcile us to God. To bring us out of the slavery of our sin, in a land that is not our home, to dwell in God’s presence.
A new passover. A new exodus. A people made anew.