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Exodus 12
This was most eminently true of the grandest ordinance of the Mosaical dispensation, the feast of the Passover—all the types in which were accomplished—all the Gospel in which was preached to the world in that day when “Christ our passover was sacrificed for us.” Indeed, it was surely by no undesigned coincidence that the two events were made, even in time, to concur; and the Jews celebrated the passover, and consummated all its types, by bringing to his death, on the same day, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Note: The Jewish day extends from sunset to sunset, not, as with us, from midnight to midnight. The night in which the passover was eaten, and the day following, in which Jesus was crucified, formed, therefore, the same day.
The victim itself was to be a lamb, the most gentle and innocent of all God’s creatures; and therefore the most fitting emblem of “the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world.”
It was to be a lamb of the first year, without blemish. If it bore the mark of the slightest deformity, or even deficiency, it would have been a forbidden sacrifice, and a victim unfit to represent Him of whom it is said, “we are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
The lamb was to be set apart four days before it was slain, not only to mark the previous designation of Christ to be a sacrifice, but perhaps also, as some have suggested, to foreshow that he should, during the four last days of his life, be examined at different tribunals, to ascertain whether there was the smallest flaw in his character, that so his bitterest enemies might be constrained to confess his innocence, and thereby unwittingly to declare, that he was fit to be a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.
The lamb of the passover was to be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The herbs were no doubt primarily meant to awaken the remembrance of the bitter bondage to which the Israelites had been subject in Egypt; but besides this, they were apparently designed to show the necessity of penitence for sin, and to shadow forth the hardships and trials that await the Lord’s pilgrims in the journey to the Canaan of their rest. And it is doubtless as impossible spiritually to partake of Jesus Christ, as the paschal lamb of our salvation, without abiding godly sorrow for sin, and without a sacred resolve to take up the cross and bear it cheerfully in all the trials of life, as it is to bring light out of darkness. Equally impossible is it to partake savingly of the mercies of the Son of God, while the leaven of any iniquity is indulged and cherished within the heart.
That not a bone of the paschal lamb was to be broken, may seem in its first signification merely to be one among the many circumstances which designate the haste with which the Israelites partook of the feast at its first institution. But it seems also to signify, that what has once been offered to God ought not to be unnecessarily disfigured or mangled. The blood must be shed, for that was the seal of the covenant; the flesh might be eaten, for that was given for the sustentation of life; but the bones, forming no part either of food or sacrifice, were to be left in their original state until consumed in the morning by fire, with such of the flesh as might then remain. But without doubt there was an ulterior allusion in this commandment respecting the paschal lamb. We read of our Lord, in the account of his crucifixion, that “when the soldiers came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:” and that the evangelist regarded this as a fulfillment of this part of the passover institution, is clear; for he adds, “for these things were done that the Scriptures should be fulfilled, ‘a bone of him shall not be broken.’” It would thus appear, that a special providence watched over the crucifixion of our Saviour, to secure his sacred person from fracture, and thus to bring about the fulfillment of the typical prediction.
Under this view, the sprinkling of the blood of the slain lamb upon the door-posts, as a sign of safety to those within, is highly important and interesting. The Lord pledged himself, that when he saw the blood upon the lintel, the destroying plague should pass by, and not come near. So with us, the Israel of God is composed of creatures by nature fallen, and exposed to wrath even as others. In themselves they do not deserve, they have no claim to, exemption from the doom which hangs over a guilty world; and they are as much in the pathway of the Divine anger, as the dwellers in Goshen would have been, had they been unmarked for safety. But the oblation has been offered for them—the lamb is slain; and they are sprinkled with his blood, sealed by his Spirit, and may now claim the heritage of his covenant. It is very important to observe, that the blood of the paschal lamb did not save the Israelites by being shed, but by being sprinkled. In the same manner, it is not the blood of Christ as shed on Calvary, but as sprinkled on the soul, that saves us from the wrath to come.
We have indicated a few leading correspondences between the type and the antitype of the passover observances. Many more may be found in some commentaries—in others too many; for while the general purport of the ordinance, in its typical reference, is placed by the Scripture itself beyond all question, it must be admitted that the parallel has been pressed by many into more minute and fanciful analogies than the subject will bear, or than the Spirit of God appears to have intended. What place to give to the following we scarcely know, and we introduce it as a remarkable fact, without meaning to press upon the analogy as the writes does. That writer is the very learned Dr. Gill, whose Exposition presses more strongly than any our language possesses, upon the typical import of the Old Testament ordinances. The passage forms the substance of his note on the direction that the paschal lamb is not to be “sodden at all with water, but roasted with fire.” “The manner of roasting, according to the Jewish canons, was this—They bring a spit made of the wood of the pomegranate, and thrust it into its mouth quite through it; they do not roast the Passover lamb on an iron spit, or an iron grate. Maimonides is a little more particular and exact in his account. In answer to the question, How do they roast it? He replies: ‘They transfix it through the middle of the mouth to its extremities with a wooden spit; and they hang it in the midst of the furnace with the fire below.’ Thus, then, it was not turned upon a spit, according to our mode of roasting, but was suspended on a hook and roasted by the fire beneath; and so was the more exact figure of Christ suspended on the cross, and enduring the fire of divine wrath. And Justin Martyr is still more particular, who was by birth a Samaritan, Note: Justin was a native of Samaria, but was not of the Samaritan sect. and well versed in Jewish affairs. He, even in conversing with Trypho the Jew, who could have contradicted him had he said what was wrong, says, the lamb was roasted in the form of a cross. One spit, he says, went through the lower parts of the head, and again another across the shoulders, to which the hands (or rather fore-legs of the lamb were fastened or hanged, and so was a very lively emblem of Christ crucified.”
Whatever be thought of such details, the great truths shadowed forth by this remarkable ordinance must be allowed to form no unimportant part of that education and training, whereby the “law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.”