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There are a lot of symbols in the Bible that God blended together for the redemption of the first-born of the womb, not only of human beings but also donkeys. They all point to the first and only born of Heaven: Yeshua the Mashiakh (Jesus the Christ).
The first part of this two-part Bible study on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread looks into two major lessons from four types leaven. This second part focuses on important lesson of redemption of the first-born.
The “strangest” order regarding the redemption of the first born is in regard to the redemption of donkeys.
Donkeys are the only unclean animal that require redemption. The Torah says that either a lamb or a goat is to be brought in place of the donkey or the donkey’s neck is to be broken.
There is no command in Torah to redeem the first born of camels, or any other kind of service animal with a blood offering. Donkeys are the exception.
“Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Sanctify to Me every firstborn, the first offspring of every womb among the sons of Israel, both of man and beast; it belongs to Me.”” (Exodus 13:1–2 NASB)
Why does this only apply to males and not females? Why bother to sanctify anyone?
Numbers 8:5-19 explains the significance of the first born of all the men of Israel and how He transferred some of their status to the tribe of Levi as a whole.
God had purchased the first born sons of Israel when He redeemed all the people of Israel from Egypt by killing Egypt’s first born sons. These first born sons of all the tribes were to be set aside to serve as priests to God.
But in Numbers 8, God says that He has chosen the tribe of Levi for that role, rather than the first born sons of all of Israel for that sacred duty.
God’s instruction in Exodus 13 to sanctify the first born of all the tribes of Israel is still in effect. Numbers 8 didn’t over rule that edict.
God bought the first born; He paid the price for them.
I can understand how God made a 1-to-1 swap between the first born of all of Israel and the Levites. It also makes sense that God would refuse to accept an offering of any unclean animal such as pigs, but this donkey instruction doesn’t make sense on the surface reading.
““Now when the LORD brings you to the land of the Canaanite, as He swore to you and to your fathers, and gives it to you, you shall devote to the LORD the first offspring of every womb, and the first offspring of every beast that you own; the males belong to the LORD. “But every first offspring of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck; and every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem. “And it shall be when your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What is this?’ then you shall say to him, ‘With a powerful hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. ‘It came about, when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting us go, that the LORD killed every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast. Therefore, I sacrifice to the LORD the males, the first offspring of every womb, but every firstborn of my sons I redeem.’ “So it shall serve as a sign on your hand and as phylacteries on your forehead, for with a powerful hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt.”” (Exodus 13:11–16 NASB)
God didn’t just kill the first born sons of the people of Egypt, He killed the first born of all their livestock as well. Hence, not only are first-born sons to be redeemed to God, but the first born of clean livestock are to be offered to God.
What does the donkey mean to God? The Bible tends to interpret itself pretty well. To understand God’s connection with donkeys, we can read other texts in the Tanak to glean a lot of understanding.
Donkeys in the TaNaK (Torah, Prophets and Writings) are usually associated with kings, princes or judges. In our parlance, a judge would be similar to a governor or a president.
The first donkey reference I want to look at is in Genesis 49 and Jacob’s prophesy to his son Judah.
“’Judah, your brothers shall praise you; Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father’s sons shall bow down to you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He couches, he lies down as a lion, And as a lion, who dares rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. He ties his foal to the vine, And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine; He washes his garments in wine, And his robes in the blood of grapes. His eyes are dull from wine, And his teeth white from milk.’” (Genesis 49:8–12 NASB)
Judah is being lifted up as someone important in this prophesy. He is being lifted up above most of his other brothers. His name will be associated with a long dynastic line, which we know to the the line of David. He is associated with luxury. Who else but a king could waste fine wine by using it to clean one’s clothes?
And here the donkey is part of this image of luxury, power and authority. The donkey is an example of having access to the best things money can buy.
There were also a couple of highly esteemed judges or governors whose status and authority were associated with the ownership of donkeys.
“After him [Abimelech], Jair the Gileadite arose and judged Israel twenty-two years. He had thirty sons who rode on thirty donkeys, and they had thirty cities in the land of Gilead that are called Havvoth-jair to this day. And Jair died and was buried in Kamon.” (Judges 10:3–5 NASB)
“Now Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite judged Israel after him. He had forty sons and thirty grandsons who rode on seventy donkeys; and he judged Israel eight years.” (Judges 12:13–14 NASB)
The next reference I want to look at closely is towards the end of David’s life. His son, Adonijah, is attempting to make himself king while David is still alive. At this time, it was pretty well known, at least in the royal court, that Solomon was supposed to be David’s heir.
Solomon and his mother are rightfully concerned that once Adonijah becomes king, he will execute them.
We see that one of the first things Adonijah did on the day of his attempted coup was to surround himself with many chariots and horses, which were also seen as symbols of kingship and military power.
In Deuteronomy 20:1 God told the Israelites not to be fooled by the chariots and horses of their enemies because He is more powerful than the chariots and skilled horsemen of the surrounding nations.
“Then King David said, “Call to me Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada.” And they came into the king’s presence. The king said to them, “Take with you the servants of your lord, and have my son Solomon ride on my own mule, and bring him down to Gihon.” (1 Kings 1:32–33 NASB)
Something similar happened in the story of Queen Esther. The King asks Haman what he should do to honor someone who has done something great for the King. Haman, in his arrogance, assumed that the only person that the King could possibly want to honor was himself, so he gives the King a long list of public honors the king could bestow on this honorable person, including the honor of being paraded through the entire town on a horse that everyone knows is the king’s personal steed.
We all remember what happens next. The king asks Haman to prepare and parade Morechai on his horse through the streets as he described.
“But Jonathan replied to Adonijah, ‘No! Our lord King David has made Solomon king. The king has also sent with him Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the Cherethites, and the Pelethites; and they have made him ride on the king’s mule. Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king in Gihon, and they have come up from there rejoicing, so that the city is in an uproar. This is the noise which you have heard. Besides, Solomon has even taken his seat on the throne of the kingdom. Moreover, the king’s servants came to bless our lord King David, saying, “May your God make the name of Solomon better than your name and his throne greater than your throne!”‘ And the king bowed himself on the bed. ‘The king has also said thus, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who has granted one to sit on my throne today while my own eyes see it.”‘” (1Kings 1:43–48 NASB)
The donkey is symbolic of kingship and authority. Traditionally, a king is succeeded by his oldest son, so the connection of the donkey with the first born of the king is very strong.
“But every first offspring of a [king] you shall redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck.”
Messiah is also associated with the donkey, which is not a coincidence. As we read in Zechariah 9:9 (and is repeated in John 12:12-15).
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9 NASB)
There are only three offices in the Torah for which one is anointed: Priest, Prophet and King. So we have this continued association between the donkey and the office of king together throughout the Torah and the TaNaK.
John 12:12-15 reiterates this:
“On the next day the large crowd who had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet Him, and began to shout, “Hosanna! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, even the King of Israel.” Jesus, finding a young donkey, sat on it; as it is written, “FEAR NOT, DAUGHTER OF ZION; BEHOLD, YOUR KING IS COMING, SEATED ON A DONKEY’S COLT.”” (John 12:12–15 NASB)
When you redeem a first born donkey, to spare his life, you ransom it with either a lamb or a kid, which are the same offering options one has for the Passover sacrifice. This is not a coincidence.
If you choose not not redeem the donkey, you must break the neck of the unredeemed donkey. Now symbolically speaking, because donkeys associated with kings or crown princes, if you break the neck of an unredeemed donkey, you symbolically breaking the neck of an unredeemed King, or the son of a king.
Now I use that term very, very purposefully because note what happened to Absalom? Absalom tried to be king and became king temporarily. But was he the right King? No, he was what you might call an unredeemed or improperly redeemed king. He was not supposed to have kingship. So what happened? He was killed. If you don’t redeem the king, you kill him.
So, if we associate the donkey with a king, which is pretty throughout the Tanakh, and the Messiah associate Himself with King and with the donkey. Messiah himself was to be unredeemed.
He is our redeemer, but He is supposed to be unredeemed Himself, which means that this strange instruction in Exodus 13 was a prophecy set up so that Messiah Himself would have his neck symbolically broken for us.
The Messiah had no sins for which He needed redemption. The Messiah’s death at Passover was no coincidence. As John the Baptist called Yeshua the “Lamb of God,” we see that not only is Yeshua represented by the unredeemed donkey but also by the lamb that is sacrificed for the redemption of the donkey.
There’s another redemption in the sense that the priests, who paid Judas the 30 pieces of silver for Yeshua, were in a sense, paying for the first born.
There are a lot of symbols God blended together for the redemption of the first-born of the womb, not only of human beings but also donkeys.
““Every first issue of the womb of all flesh, whether man or animal, which they offer to the LORD, shall be yours; nevertheless the firstborn of man you shall surely redeem, and the firstborn of unclean animals you shall redeem. “As to their redemption price, from a month old you shall redeem them, by your valuation, five shekels in silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, which is twenty gerahs. “But the firstborn of an ox or the firstborn of a sheep or the firstborn of a goat, you shall not redeem; they are holy. You shall sprinkle their blood on the altar and shall offer up their fat in smoke as an offering by fire, for a soothing aroma to the LORD. “Their meat shall be yours; it shall be yours like the breast of a wave offering and like the right thigh.” (Numbers 18:15–18 NASB)
The priest symbolically redeemed Him with money and consumed him by having Him killed on the cross so that the one man would die for the nation.
Our Messiah has been sacrificed for us, therefore we keep the Pesach to celebrate Him (1Cor. 5:7-8).
Summary: Tammy