Hindsight can be a beautiful thing but sometimes hindsight blinds us rather than illuminates us. As the people of Israel are ready to leave Egypt for good, they have little idea of the epic journey has in store for them. As we read the story of Yeshua’s life in the New Testament, we have the same benefit and “curse” of hindsight as we read about the last few weeks of his life. We tend to be a little judgmental towards His favorite disciples because of they lacked a true understanding of Yeshua’s mission until after His death and resurrection. Today, ignore hindsight and discover some truths in these stories that hindsight otherwise obscures.
Tag: Passover
The exile of the Israelites in the land of Egypt comes to a climatic end with the 10th plague — the death of the firstborn — and the first Passover, or Pesakh in Hebrew.
God commands His people to observe the seventh and last day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread with a “holy convocation.” The day has connections to Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea after the Exodus and baptism in the name of Messiah Yeshua.
The apostle Paul uses the object lesson of purging leaven out of the home for the Feast of Unleavened Bread in one of his most shocking statements on discipline for immorality in the congregation in Corinth — purge out “malice” and “wickedness.”
Why does God tell us to remove leaven — “yeast” in the NIV translation — from our mouths, homes and community during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the seven days right after Passover? Why does God tell us then to put leaven in our mouths at Shavu’ot (Pentecost) a short time later? What does this have to do with Messiah? The connection is startling.
Richard Agee explains that the Day of Blowing Trumpets, commonly known as Rosh Hashanah, is the start of the cycles of seven found throughout the Bible referring to “rest” (the Hebrew words for both “rest” and “seven” are similar): seventh day of the week is the day of rest, the Shabbat (Gen. 2:3; Ex. 20:8-10); every seventh year the land must rest (Ex. 23:11); seventh group of seven years, or the Jubilee (Lev. 25).
At the time of the Exodus, YHWH (God’s personal name in Hebrew, often translated as “the LORD”) told the people of Israel to have a “lamb for a household” (Exodus 12:3). Usually 10 people could manage to consume a whole lamb. Smaller groups joined together to form a chaverim, Hebrew for “a group of friends,” and that formed a mishpokhah, “a family group.” Paul talks about believers being the “household of God” (1st Timothy 3:15) because there is a “lamb for the household.”