The Passover Meal – Preparation

This is the first in a three-part series on the Passover meal, with special emphasis on the final Passover Jesus celebrated with his disciples.

The Date

The Passover was (and is) always celebrated in the month of Abib/Nisan, the first month of the Jewish religious year (what the season of Advent is for us). Nisan usually begins around the end of March. The Passover falls in the middle of Nisan, usually around the beginning of April (Monday, March 25, in 2013).

Scholars disagree, however, about the exact date on which the Passover was celebrated in Jesus’ day. Some say that the Passover lamb was slaughtered in the afternoon of 14 Nisan and eaten in the Passover meal that evening, on 15 Nisan. (Remember that the Jewish day began in the evening around 6 p.m., not at midnight.) This is the position, for example, of Ylvisaker in The Gospels (p. 636ff), the Concordia Self-Study Bible (notes on Mt 26:17 & Mk 14:1), and the Talmud.

Other scholars say that the Passover lamb was slaughtered in the afternoon of 13 Nisan and eaten in the Passover meal that evening, on 14 Nisan. This is the position, for example, in Steinmann’s From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology (p. 273, 278, 279, 288).

The Bible is clear that the Passover lamb was to be both slaughtered and eaten on 14 Abib/Nisan (Ex 12:6, 8, 18; Lev 23:5; Num 9:2,3; 28:16; Dt 16:1, 5-7; Jos 5:10).

Whether or not the Passover lamb was in fact slaughtered on the 13th, or eaten on the 15th, as well as the reasons for departing from divine law and whether those reasons were legitimate, if either departure was actually the case – all this is the subject for a book, not a blog post.

Selection 

In his instructions for the first Passover, God commanded the Israelite families to select a one-year-old male lamb or kid, without defect, on 10 Nisan (Ex 12:3). However, the instruction to select the lamb on 10 Nisan is not repeated in the Passover regulations in Leviticus through Deuteronomy. Joshua 5:10 says that the Israelites celebrated the Passover on the 14th after they crossed over into the Promised Land, but it does not mention any selection on the 10th (Jos 4:19-24). Thus, it does not appear that this regulation remained in force after the first Passover.

The disciples may very well have selected the Passover lamb for Jesus’ final Passover earlier that same day (cf. Matthew 26:17).

Location

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A typical dining room was 15 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 15 feet high, large enough to house a table or tables and dining cushions to accommodate 10-20 reclining people.

Slaughter

The lambs were usually carried to the temple on one’s shoulders. Due to the large number of lambs, the slaughtering was undertaken with three divisions of priests. The male owner of the lamb, or the adult male delegated by the head of a particular meal company, slaughtered the lamb himself. A priest was there to collect the blood in a gold or silver basin. The basin would then get passed from priest to priest back to the altar, until the priest closest to the altar emptied it against the base of the altar and handed the basin back again. As they worked, the priests would sing the Hallel (Ps 113:1-118:29). The sacrificers may have joined them in singing as they wished.

The sacrificer then hung his lamb up and skinned it. Then he cut it open and took out its emurim (the fat, the fat tail, the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver, and both kidneys with the fat on them), placed them in a tray, and handed them to a priest to be burned on the altar. The intestines were not burned. They were removed and rubbed off to remove the excrement, then replaced inside the lamb. The sacrificer then wrapped the lamb in its hide, slung it on his back, and carried it home or to the place where he would eat it.

Preparing the Lamb

Once evening (6 p.m.) arrived, someone was delegated to roast the lamb whole (Ex 12:9). After removing the lamb from its hide, the hair was burned off the head and legs. Then the cook took a wooden spit – probably made out of pomegranate wood – and inserted it through the lamb’s mouth all the way to the hindquarters. He folded its legs inside the abdominal cavity. The intestines he either kept inside the abdominal cavity with the legs folded over them, or he hung them on the spit next to the lamb. (These would be eaten too, as far as they were edible.) He rotated the lamb on the spit over a charcoal fire burning in the bottom of a large clay pot (called an oven), which was usually situated in the courtyard of the house. He might make incisions in the lamb, to speed up the roasting process, and/or brush it with wine and oil for taste. The roasting generally took about half an hour.

The lamb was now ready to be served at the Passover meal, which began after sunset (about 7:30 p.m.). The meal itself, and the new supper Jesus instituted during his final Passover meal, will be the topic of the next two posts, coming soon.

For further reading: Exodus 12:1-30; Deuteronomy 16:1-8; The Passover Meal

Be sure to check out The Passover Meal Part 2 and Part 3.