3 “Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. 4 And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. 7 And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. 8 Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire—its head with its legs and its entrails. 10 You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. 11 And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
12 ‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. 13 Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 ‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.'”
21 Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Pick out and take lambs for yourselves according to your families, and kill the Passover lamb.22 And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. 23 For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you.24 And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever. 25 It will come to pass when you come to the land which the Lord will give you, just as He promised, that you shall keep this service.
“In one house it shall be eaten; you shall not carry any of the flesh outside the house, nor shall you break one of its bones.”
Exodus 12:3-14, 21-25, 46 NKJV
Comment:
The facts that a) this is a permanent regulation (v14) and b) it is possible in practice for us to make a feast of roast lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (eg mint) on the 14th day of the first month of the Hebrew calendar mean that we have given this commandment a green status. But there are additional aspects that lead us to combine that with amber status:
– In the related verses we read that only circumcised males may partake of the Passover memorial feast (and we are still partly amber on the earlier commandment to be circumcised).
– In both Exodus 12 and Deuteronomy 16, it is clear that the Passover is to be celebrated in “the land which the Lord will give you” and at “the place where the Lord chooses to put His name”. This brings into question what we can/should be doing for Passover while we are outside the land and without a temple or tabernacle.
– Some of the instructions given for both the original Passover and for later memorial Passover celebrations involve things that are quite difficult for us in our modern setting, eg slaughtering the lamb ourselves, roasting it whole, not breaking any of the bones and making sure that none is left till morning.
– The fact that Yeshua is our Passover lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7) raises the question of whether we should view Passover differently post-Yeshua compared with pre-Yeshua. This is still under discussion, however the instruction to keep the Passover as a memorial (permanent regulation) can be applied equally in either case – as a memorial to the Exodus or as a memorial of Yeshua’s sacrifice. Or both.
The discussion is ongoing (and also pops up on an annual basis, every Passover).