Exodus 12

Notes

Ver. 2. The month Abib, which nearly corresponds to our March, was the seventh of the common year among the Egyptians and others, all along, I suppose, from the creation; but was made the first of the Jewish sacred year now established by God, according to which the ceremonial festivals were to be regulated: but they continued to reckon by the ancient year in their civil matters; and even the years of jubilee and release began, in the ancient manner, about September, as then the crop was entirely off the ground.

Ver. 3. The taking of the lamb four days before the time prevented their neglect, and stirred them up to the consideration of, and faith in, their approaching deliverance.

Ver. 4. Every family of these, so joined together, paid their respective share of the lamb's price.

Ver. 6. The lamb was killed between three o'clock in the afternoon and sunset.

Ver. 8. The bitter herbs were endive, succory, wild lettuce, thyme, or the like.

Ver. 9. The word rendered raw signifies not thoroughly roasted. It was to be roasted all in one piece.

Ver. 10. They were to leave none of it, lest the Egyptians should abuse it, or themselves make a superstitious use of it.

Ver. 11. These circumstances imported their holding themselves in readiness to leave the country, and march off as the Lord's freemen; but these, as well as the taking of the lamb on the tenth day of the month, seem to have been required only with respect to the first celebration.

Ver. 14. This feast was to be a joyful commemoration of their deliverance, observed every year, and during the whole period of the ceremonial dispensation, until the death of Christ, thereby prefigured.

Ver. 15-21. The feast of unleavened bread immediately succeeded the passover. The holy convocation, on the fifteenth day of the month, commemorated their departure from Egypt; and that on the twenty-first commemorated their passage through the Red Sea, by which their wonderful deliverance was completed.—

[Ver. 15. Let it be recollected that the passover furnishes one of the most glorious titles of Christ, as it is written, 1 Co. 5.7, 'Christ our PASSOVER is sacrificed for us,' and then we will be prepared to see, in this history, an accurate type of many things concerning him. A few of the most remarkable we shall notice. (1) Egypt, ver. 1, the land of bondage, is the emblem of that slavery and oppression of sin in which Christ finds every man whom he delivers. (2) The new commencement of the sacred year sets forth (ver. 2) that 'newness of life' to which the believer is called, and in which he walks. (3) The Lamb without blemish (ver. 3, 5) furnishes another of Christ's titles, Jn. 1.29; 1 Pe. 1.10; Re. 5.6-8, 12, 13, &c. The Lamb, as the first sacrifice, Ge. 4.4, aptly sets forth him who, in the purpose of God, and in types and prophecies, is the 'Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,' Re. 13.8. (4) The blood (ver. 7, 23), sprinkled on the posts of the lintel, but not on the threshold of the door, portrays that blood which is not to be 'trodden under foot,' He. 10.29. (5) The unleavened bread, ver. 8 (bread uncombined with any yeast or barm), is the emblem of that 'sincerity and truth' with which Christ must be served, 1 Co. 5.8. (6) Bitter herbs, ver. 8 (as medicinal beyond what are sweet), set forth the renewing and healing power of Christ, while they remind us of that bitterness of repentant recollection with which the believer contemplates his past sin. Thus 'Peter went out and wept bitterly,' Mat. 26.75. (7) The loins girded, ver. 11, that is, the tucking up of every loose and flowing robe under the girdle, removing its obstruction to movement, sets forth the necessity of 'laying aside,' in the Christian life, the 'sin that doth most easily beset (or entangle) us,' He. 12.1. (8) The shoes on the feet, contrary to the custom in the East, where the feet at table were bare (see Lu. 7.38; Jn. 13.5), indicate the necessity of every spiritual defence against the asperities of the way in which the believer must walk. (9) The staff in the hand—a living hand grasping, and a living man borrowing, support from a dead material, aptly sets forth the aid which a living faith receives from lifeless ordinances; whilst the haste of eating forcibly reminds us, that in all concerns of the soul, we must 'haste and delay not to keep God's commandments,' Ps. 119.60. C.]

Ver. 27. As offered to God, and attended with the shedding and sprinkling of blood, the passover was a sacrifice; but as received and eaten by men, it was also a sacrament.—The Israelites bowed their heads in token of their thankful acknowledgment of God's favours, and cheerful submission to his laws and ordinances.

Ver. 38. [It is not said that the whole people were first assembled, with their children, flocks, herds, and goods, at Rameses; and that they set out from thence in a regular and dense column. The whole current of the narrative is opposed to any such theory. There was a large council or assembly of representative men with Moses at the capital; but the vast body of the people were in their houses throughout Goshen, or in their tents with their cattle on the adjoining desert; and there they ate the passover, and from thence they set out directly. P.]

Ver. 40. These four hundred and thirty years are to be reckoned from the call of Abraham to leave his native country, Ge. 11.31; 12.1-5; during the first half of which he and his promised seed sojourned in Canaan, and the other half they dwelt in the land of Egypt, Ge. 15.13; xlvi.—[I prefer to take the statement in its plain and literal sense, that the Israelites actually remained in Egypt 430 years. The difficulties that beset this view, especially in regard to the recorded genealogical table of the tribe of Levi, may be overcome by supposing that all the individuals are not mentioned, but only such as were men of note. Several may thus have been omitted between Kohath and Amram. P.]

Ver. 43, 45. No heathen or uncircumcised person was allowed to partake thereof.

Reflections.—Come near, my soul, and behold what the Lord hath wrought for Israel! He had multiplied them amidst cruel bondage and murder; he had protected them amidst ruinous plagues: and now, after a solemn feast, he brings them forth with wealth, with honour, in health, in peace, in order, and in due time! Behold what things he who sitteth on the throne makes new! A new year; new festivals; new liberties; a new nation to himself! Behold how their enemies push them into liberty; how they enrich them; and what a mixed multitude take part with them in their journey! Behold the care with which God distinguishes his people from the rest of the world! But chiefly behold God's great work of the redemption of mankind, through the blood of his Son! O the strong hand! the stretched-out arm! the grace! the mercy! the compassion! the wisdom! the justice! the exact fidelity to his promise, which appears in this! How are violated commandments, enraged devils, and mighty lusts made to let the ransomed of the Lord depart into liberty! With what spiritual wealth, what spoils of principalities and powers, nay, unsearchable riches, and righteousness, they come forth! In what high honour, spiritual soundness, peace, and order, they are brought from heathenism or Popery; nay, from their natural state of bondage and death in trespasses and sins; and all in the precise time of love, the day of espousals, the hour of grace, appointed of the Father! And how marvellously JEHOVAH here makes all things new. A new thing is created on the earth—a virgin brings forth a child whose name is IMMANUEL, God with us! A new testament is ratified in his blood! a new covenant is confirmed with many! a new gospel period, a year of God's redeemed, is introduced! new festivals on the flesh and blood of his Son! new liberties! freedom indeed, for those who are made heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ! a new church of Jews and Gentiles, purified by his oblation, a peculiar people to himself zealous of good works!—But what a mixed multitude of empty professors attend and plague the church in every reformation on earth! What a multitude of remaining lusts and infirmities attend the choicest saints till they get to the Canaan above! In this passover-feast, let me behold how Jesus, the all-excellent, the mighty, the unblemished Son of God, who was set up from everlasting, and promised and typified four thousand years, in the fulness of time assumes our nature, partakes of flesh and blood, obeys the law, and suffers the most exact and tremendous justice of God, without being crushed, broken, or ruined;—and all this that he might be our all-sufficient and everlasting covert from the wrath of God;—might be the means of destruction to sin, Satan, and death, for us;—and might, with unfeigned faith, sincere love, and bitter grief for sin, be fed upon by us, in holy fellowship, as the sweet, the heart-cheering, supporting, and strengthening food of our soul, by which we are enabled to go up from this evil world towards our everlasting inheritance in the Canaan above! And, blessed be the Lord, we, strangers and foreigners, sinners of the Gentiles, are admitted to feast on him, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God, while the Jewish children of the kingdom reject him! In their feast of unleavened bread may I not discern Jesus' state of debasement on earth? his week fulfilled in holiness, in sorrows, and in sufferings; on the first day of which he assumed his holy manhood, was gathered with sinners, but without sin; and on the last of which he made his life a ransom for all? May I not discern the pure but afflicted state of the gospel-church in her apostolical and millennial periods, noted for holy vocations of men to the Lord? May I not discern the festival-week of the Christian life, spent in purity and pressures, and noted for its first day of conversion to Christ, and its last of departure, to be with him for evermore? Let me in it feed upon him as the incorrupted nourishment of my soul, carefully avoiding and detesting the leaven of malice, hypocrisy, error, or corrupt practices! Let me in it improve Jesus, as the blessed first-fruit unto God which sanctifieth all my enjoyments, the cause and token of my deliverance into the glorious liberty of the gospel!