Building on the Foundation

  Recently, we published a blog post entitled “‘Historical Context’ and the Word of God,” showing that we don’t have to rely on history books or reconstructions of ancient history to understand the Word of God. The Word of God is sufficient to teach us what God requires. When it comes to Passover, the same holds true. We don’t need to rely on history books to know what day or what time of day God commanded for the Passover lambs to be killed; the Word of God is sufficient to teach us what God requires. God commanded the Israelites to kill the Passover lambs on the 14th day of the first month (Ex. 12:6; Lev. 23:5; etc.). This month was first called Abib (Ex. 13:4; 34:18; Deut. 16:1), and later came to be called Nisan (Est. 3:7), as it still is to this day. But what time of day on the 14th? God told the Israelites to kill the lambs “between the two evenings,” or bayn ha-arbayim in Hebrew. Simply by examining how God’s Word uses this phrase, we can see that it applies to the latter ...

  In Exodus 12:15, as it reads in most Bible versions, we find a puzzling statement. God commanded His people, “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel” (NKJV). “On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses.” This wording makes it sound as if we should deleaven our houses on the First Day of Unleavened Bread, a Holy Day! And yet, a few verses later, we discover, “For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land” (Ex. 12:19). If no leaven is to be found in our houses for seven days, then obviously it cannot be found in our houses on the First Day, either! It must already be gone by then. So what’s the meaning of v. 15? It becomes a little...