Commentaria in Exodum
“In that age when the hair grows golden, the flesh shines like ivory, the face is rosy with the gems of the eyes, the health of the body supplies strength, and youthful age promises a longer space of life; when reason is vigorous, the bodily senses also are vigorous, the sight keener, the hearing readier, the gait straighter, the countenance more pleasing: those who in this age subdue themselves and unite themselves to God await the reward of John.” And again: “Such,” he says, “offer a living sacrifice, pleasing to God, immaculate, lacking neither ear, nor eye, nor foot, nor tail. Let this be heard by the late conversion of the old, whose ears are stopped by the defect of old age, whose eyes grow dim, and, to sum up briefly, who fail in themselves of themselves. These offer not an immaculate lamb, but, so to speak, a tended pig. For as the pig lies in filth, so the old man lies in vices; and as the pig is fed on husks, so the old man delights in tales and rumours.”
Note: the Jews at the Pasch to this day of ours eat unleavened bread, but do not immolate a lamb, because according to the law, Deuteronomy chap. 16, verse 2, the lamb must be immolated at Jerusalem, where the temple was; but now the Jews lack both temple and Jerusalem.
Where observe that the Jews do not keep those ceremonial rites which God commanded to be done in the temple, or which have reference to the temple: such are oblations, sacrifices, tithes, the year of jubilee, purifications and cleansings, the immolation of the firstborn and their redemption; for all these had to be done in the temple; since therefore the Jews are without a temple, they cannot now perform them. But the others, which were not commanded to be done in the temple, those the Jews keep even today: such are circumcision, the eating of unleavened bread, fasts, the rest of the Sabbath and of other feasts; for the Jews keep the feasts as to the rest, but not as to the sacrifices which by the law ought to be made on those feasts; for these cannot be made except in the temple. The judicial precepts the Jews would also observe, wherever they had in their own nation a tribunal and judges to judge and punish according to the law of Moses.
ACCORDING TO WHICH RITE YOU SHALL TAKE ALSO A KID.—If a lamb be lacking, then in place of the lamb you shall take a kid, like the lamb, immaculate, male, of one year; for God does not command that they take a lamb and a kid together (nor did the Hebrews ever do this), but either a lamb or a kid. This is plain from the Hebrew, which reads thus: “It shall be a male beast; from the lambs and (that is, or) from the goats you shall take it.” And from the Septuagint, which read thus: “The lamb shall be perfect, male, without blemish; from the lambs and (that is, or) from the kids you shall take it.” For they could not take one and the same animal at once from the kids and from the sheep. So Theodoret, Rupert, Hugh, Abulensis, Cajetan, Lipomanus. They err, therefore, first, some of the Hebrews who think that in large families a calf could be immolated in place of the lamb, and prove it from that passage of Deuteronomy 16: “Thou shalt sacrifice the phase to the Lord of sheep and of oxen”; but the sense of that place is another, as I shall say there.
Secondly, Burgensis errs, who denies that a kid could be immolated in place of a lamb. The Hebrew, he says, reads thus: “from the rams and the goats you shall take it,” as if to say: You shall take a lamb from the flock, in which, as is customary, rams and goats are associated. But our Interpreter plainly refutes this when he renders here, “according to which rite you shall take also a kid”; and all interpreters, both Latin and Hebrew, confute the same.
Thirdly, others err who thought that the lamb had to be immolated by single families on the fourteenth day, but the kid by the whole people on the fifteenth day; Abulensis and Lyranus refute them at greater length.
6. AND THE WHOLE MULTITUDE OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL SHALL SACRIFICE IT IN THE EVENING.—Therefore the lamb was a victim, and its immolation was a sacrifice, as is plain from chap. 12, verse 5, and Numbers chap. 9, verse 7.
Note first: “He shall immolate,” namely on the fourteenth day, as went before: the Jews therefore immolated their phase on the fourteenth moon itself, on whatever day it fell; but Christians since the Council of Nicæa celebrate their Pasch not on the fourteenth moon but on the Lord’s Day next following it, in honour of the resurrection of Christ. For our Pasch is not a passage from life to death, such as that of the old lamb was, but from death to life, which was the end of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. “For our Pasch is not of the passion but of joy and of the resurrection,” says St. Ambrose, epistle 83.
Note secondly: There was a tradition among the ancient Hebrews that the Messiah would bring full liberty to the Hebrews on the same day on which they themselves were freed from Egypt by the phase, as Andreas Masius reports on Josue chap. 5, verse 10. As on that day, then, there was a full moon, when the moon, opposite the sun, shone on the whole orb, so Christ, dying then, shone on the whole world; whence even now the Jews, as Eugubinus testifies, think that their Messiah will come on the same day, and will redeem Israel.
Allegorically, Rupert: The lamb is immolated at the full moon, that is, Christ came and was immolated in the fulness of time, Galatians chap. 4, verse 4. Secondly, the lamb was immolated after the vernal equinox, when light and day increase and overcome night and darkness, that is, from the immolation of Christ the light of justice began to overcome the darkness of sins. Thirdly, “the month Nisan itself, that is, the mild temperature of spring in April, when the earth blossoms again, and the whole world after winter, as after old age, grows young again, does it not teach the man of sense that, with the spirit of his mind renewed, green with faith, glad with hope, and flowering in charity, he should take part in the spiritual banquets of the paschal lamb?” says Rupert.
THE WHOLE MULTITUDE.—Hence it is plain that the priests did not immolate these paschal lambs in the temple, as Claudius Sainctes thought, Repetitio on the Eucharist, chap. 7; Abulensis on Exodus 16, and from him Serarius on Josue, chap. 5, Question 22; but that every father of a family immolated the lamb at his own house in the name of the whole family: for at this time the legal Aaronic priests and their sacrifices were not yet instituted. And this Philo expressly teaches, book 3, On the Life of Moses, and Josephus, whom Francis Suarez follows, Part 3, tom. 2, disp. 40, sect. 2; and although afterwards the Aaronic priests were instituted, yet the fathers of families remained in their ancient right and rite of immolating the phase, and in this respect retained the ancient right of the priesthood, which belonged to the firstborn or to the fathers of families. This is confirmed by the fact that there were more families, and consequently more paschal lambs, than Levites; for under Cestius, as I have already said, the paschal lambs were numbered at 256,500; but it is clear that the Levites were far fewer.
You will say: in 1 Esdras, chap. 6, verse 20, the priests and Levites are said to have been purified to immolate the pasch for all the children of the captivity.
I answer: “Pasch” there is taken for every paschal sacrifice, of the lamb as well as of other victims; for the other victims the priests alone immolated, even at the Pasch; but the lamb the father of the family immolated, unless he was polluted by legal uncleanness: then it appears that this business was given to the Levites by Esdras, as it was given to the same in 2 Paralipomenon chap. 30, verses 17 and 18.
as is said in Deuteronomy chap. 16, verse 6. The Hebrew is, between the two evenings; the Chaldee, between two suns. Note: Evening is properly the time of the day which is after the setting of the sun and before the beginning of night. Hence in Judges chap. 19 it is said: “Consider that the day is now declining toward evening.” Hence in Leviticus chap. 23, verse 32, it is commanded that they keep their feast days from evening to evening, that is, from the setting of the sun to the next setting of the sun. But in vulgar and common use evening signifies not only the time after sunset, but also the time before sunset, when the sun is already verging to it.
You will ask, therefore, what is the time “between the two evenings,” at which the lamb was to be immolated, as the Hebrew has it?
First, Lipomanus answers that the time between the two evenings is the night, which lies between the evening of the fourteenth day and the morning twilight (which can be called the evening) of the fifteenth day. But in that case the lamb would have been immolated not in the evening but in the night, belonging not to the fourteenth but to the fifteenth day, which is repugnant to Holy Scripture.
Secondly, the Hebrews, the Chaldee, Lyranus and Abulensis: The first evening, they say, is the declination of the sun from midday toward its setting; the second is the sunset itself: between these two the lamb was to be immolated. But it is unusual to call the whole afternoon evening.