Commentaria in Exodum
ON THE TENTH DAY OF THIS MONTH LET EVERY MAN TAKE A LAMB—that is, four days before the immolation of the lamb, which was to be done on the 14th day. God commanded this, first, that in these four days a defect, if there were any in the lamb, might betray itself: for it had to be of one year, entire, free from every blemish; secondly, because on the fourteenth day itself the Hebrews, all preparing for their departure, would have had no leisure to seek out a lamb; thirdly, that by the sight and voice of the lamb they might be warned to prepare themselves for its sacrifice and banquet, and at the same time for the going out from Egypt. “For as often as the lamb sent forth its bleating, so often, like the sound of a trumpet, it roused the ranks of the camp about to depart,” says Rupert. Fourthly, that from the frequent sight of the lamb they might have occasion of discoursing among themselves of their redemption from Egypt, and might give God thanks for it, and with all their hope fixed on Him might not fear the Egyptians. St. Epiphanius adds, heresy 50, that the Jews were wont to fast five days from this tenth day to the fourteenth.
Moreover, that this lamb was provided by the Jews on this tenth day not only in this first year of their going out, as Pererius holds, but afterwards every year, is shown by Epiphanius, already cited, by St. Chrysostom on chaps. 10 and 11 of John, Anselm on chap. 21 of Matthew, and Bede, homily on Palm Sunday. Hence also on this tenth day, namely Palm Sunday, Christ, prefigured by this lamb, entered Jerusalem with palm branches, to be immolated after four days, namely on Friday, as Toletus on chap. 12 of John, and others, have observed.
LET EVERY MAN TAKE—the father of the family, unless the family be so small that it must be joined to another, because it does not suffice to eat the whole lamb; for nothing of the lamb could be left over. The Rabbis hand down, and Josephus, book 7 of the Jewish War, chap. 17, that no fewer than ten were wont to be admitted to the eating of one lamb. Hence from the 256,500 lambs immolated at the Pasch in the time of Cestius the governor, under whom the Jews began to rebel against the Romans, Josephus gathers that there were then at Jerusalem 2,700,000 Jews, besides the unclean; for these were barred from eating the lamb.
LAMB.—The Hebrew seh signifies a beast of the flock, whether sheep or goat, that is, kid as well as lamb; therefore both a kid and a lamb could be immolated and be the Phase, as I shall say on verses 5 and 21, and that to signify Christ. Christ is in Himself a lamb, but to us He is a kid, because He took upon Himself to expiate our sins. So Rupert.
You will ask, why did God choose a lamb or a kid for the Phase, rather than a calf or a sow?
Lyranus answers: that He might destroy the idolatry of the Egyptians, and call the Hebrews away from it; for the Egyptians worshipped Jupiter in the figure of a ram; God therefore commanded a lamb, or little ram, to be slain and immolated. But in that case He would rather have chosen a calf; for the Egyptians worshipped chiefly Apis in the form of an ox or calf.
I say, therefore, that God chose a lamb, first, because it was of small price and could be bought by any family, even a poor one. Secondly, because the lamb is a clean and simple animal; hence Festus Pompeius: “The lamb,” he says, “is named from the Greek hagnos, which signifies chaste; because the lamb is a pure victim and fit for immolation.” Hence also St. Cyprian, tract On Jealousy: “Christ,” he says, “calls His people lambs, that the simplicity of the mind may imitate the simple nature of lambs.” Thirdly, because the lamb was an express type of Christ, who at the Pasch was immolated for us like a meek, innocent and most pure lamb, Isaias 53, 7, and Jeremias 11, 19; whence also John the Baptist, John chap. 1: “Behold,” he says, “the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world.” Finally, they fittingly immolated the lamb in Nisan, when the sun is in Aries: for the animal ram corresponds to the constellation Aries in heaven; and the ram is the parent of the lamb. So Burgensis.
BY THEIR FAMILIES AND HOUSES.—For in the same house there could be several families, of which each, if it was large, had and ate its own lamb.
5. AND IT SHALL BE A LAMB WITHOUT BLEMISH, A MALE, OF ONE YEAR.—“Without blemish,” not of colour, but of deformity, lameness, scab, or any other defect or disease; for it must be tamim, that is, entire, as the Hebrew has it; for this is what is said of any victim in Leviticus 22: “There shall be no blemish in it: if it be blind, if broken, if it have a scar, if blisters, or scab, or scurf, you shall not offer them to the Lord.”
Tropologically, God’s victim ought to be pure and innocent. “That holy and singular Majesty,” says Lactantius, book 6 of the Divine Institutes, “desires nothing else from man than innocence alone; and if anyone has offered this, he has sacrificed to God with sufficient piety and devotion.” Piously St. Gregory, book 2 of the Morals: “I have so lived,” he says, “that I did not fear an accuser without: would that I had so lived that within myself I might have no accuser, but an innocent conscience!” Socrates, condemned to death, to Apollodorus weeping, said:
“Wilt thou die innocent?” “What,” said he, “and wouldst thou rather have me die guilty?” That death, therefore, is gladly to be undergone in which a man is acquitted by his innocence of any crime, as Xenophon testifies in his Apology for Socrates. Thus do innocent lambs die. “Christ,” says St. Cyprian above, “names His own sheep, that Christian innocence may be likened to sheep”; and St. Laurence Justinian, On Monastic Discipline, chap. 7: “The Lord Jesus,” he says, “delights in gravity of life, in purity of hearts, and in the perfection of His servants”; and St. Chrysostom, homily 6 on Matthew: “As in the sight of men a beautiful face is pleasing, so in the eyes of God a clean conscience is beautiful.” Xystus the Pythagorean also says: “A holy temple to God is the mind of the pious man, and the best altar to Him is a heart clean and without sin.” And the Emperor Titus: “No one,” he says, “can do me injury or insult, because I do nothing that can hurt others.” King Agis, condemned to death, said to the lictor weeping: “Let these tears for me alone; for dying unjustly I am better than those who have condemned me to death.” And Phocion to a companion weeping: “Is it not enough for thee, Euippus, to die with Phocion?” namely an innocent man.
Secondly, it must be a male, because the male is more excellent than the female; and the more excellent things are to be immolated to God. Again, because it is a type of Christ the Lord, who is that male child hated by the dragon, Apocalypse 12; for He has nothing of the feminine, that is, soft, flowing, and unstable. Hence He is said to be about to rule the nations with a rod of iron, says Rupert.
Tropologically, God wishes manly souls and manly works to be offered to Him; such victims He demands for Himself, He wishes for men, not women. “A man (vir),” says Cassiodorus on Psalm 1, “is so called from strength (vires), who knows not how to fail in bearing adversity, or to vaunt himself in prosperity with any elation, but, fixed with a steady mind and strengthened by the contemplation of heavenly things, remains always undismayed.” And St. Gregory, book 5 of the Morals: “Fortitude,” he says, “is shown only in adversity; for each man shows that he has advanced in fortitude in proportion as he bears the evils of others more stoutly. For he has grown less strong in himself whom another’s iniquity lays low, who, in what he cannot bear, lies pierced through by the sword of his own faint-heartedness.” The same again: “The Saints,” he says, “have been made strong; they tame the flesh, they shine with virtues, they strengthen the spirit, they despise earthly things, they seek heavenly; they can be slain, but cannot be bent; they fear not through weakness to endure false things, nor, when hurt, do they ever fall silent before the truth.”
Moses adds “male” to “lamb”; for although among grammarians agnus is distinguished from agna by gender, yet among rhetoricians agnus often marks not the sex but the species of the animal, as when we say: It is a lamb, not a calf, that is, it is of the lamb kind, whether it be a male or a female lamb: chiefly because the Hebrew seh signifies both sexes, both the ewe-lamb and the lamb.
Thirdly, this lamb must be of one year; Hebrew, “son of a year,” that is, having or passing a year, namely such as does not exceed a year in age, even if it has not completed the year; for it could be immolated after the eighth day from its birth, as is plain from Leviticus 22:27. God requires a lamb of one year because, as Nicetas says on the ninth oration of Nazianzen On the Pasch, lambs in the space of one year grow to perfect age, so that they can generate, says Hesychius on Leviticus, chap. 14.
Symbolically, as the sun completes its course in the year, brings forth all things, and returns to its beginning, so Christ, who is the sun of justice, ever like Himself, returning into Himself, brings forth the orb of virtues. So Nazianzen, ibid. Tropologically, God wishes us to serve Him from tender years, and to dedicate to Him our first age, as did Christ, the Blessed Virgin, St. John the Baptist, St. Nicholas, St. Agnes, and other illustrious Saints. Hear Hugh of St. Victor, book 3, On the Cloister of the Soul, chap. 10: