Commentaria in Exodum
Allegorically, at the evening of the world drawing to its close, in the consummation of the ages, Christ was offered, says Hesychius on Leviticus chap. 22, and that at the full moon, when the moon, having received the fulness of her light, rises in the east while the sun is setting, because, the Sun of justice dying, the Church, who is understood by the moon, dispelling the darkness of sin, rises with a new light and rises again to life. So Rupert and Radulphus on Leviticus 10. Thirdly, as the Hebrews ate the lamb by night, so Christ too on the same night gave the Sacrament of His body to us to be eaten. Fourthly, as on the following light, that is, on the first solemn day of unleavened bread, holocausts were immolated, so Christ also on the cross offered Himself as a living victim to God the Father: on one day, then, namely the first of the Pasch, He offered both sacrifices, the bloody, namely, and the unbloody. Hence the Fathers teach that the immolation of the lamb exhibited a type of the Eucharistic sacrifice, which is made in the Mass, no less than of the sacrifice of the cross. So St. Leo, sermon 77 On the Passion; Cyprian, sermon On the Supper; Gregory, homily 92 on the Gospels; Nazianzen, oration 2 On the Pasch; Chrysostom, homily On the Betrayal of Judas; Rupert; and anagogically St. Jerome on Mark chap. 14: “The evening of the day,” he says, “indicates the end of the world: for about the eleventh hour the last shall come, who, being first, shall receive the denarius of eternal life.”
7. AND THEY SHALL TAKE OF THE BLOOD THEREOF, AND PUT IT UPON BOTH THE SIDE POSTS, AND ON THE UPPER DOOR POSTS OF THE HOUSES, WHEREIN THEY SHALL EAT IT,—that, this blood of the lamb being seen, the striking angel might pass over those houses and not strike their firstborn, as is plain from verse 23. St. Jerome on Isaias 66, treating of the sign of the cross: “By this also the door-posts of the houses in Egypt were signed, when, Egypt perishing, Israel alone remained unharmed”: as if the blood of the lamb had been smeared on the posts in the form of a cross.
Note: “of the houses wherein they shall eat it.” From this it appears that those who had joined themselves to another house, because they were fewer in number, and had eaten the lamb in it, also spent the night in the same house: for if they had returned to their own house, which was not smeared with the blood of the lamb, they would have been struck in it by the angel. Such were for the most part those Hebrews who dwelt in the houses of the Egyptians: for these all went to the houses of the Hebrews; but if any Egyptian firstborn were then in the houses of the Hebrews, these before night were sent out of doors: for otherwise either not all the firstborn of the Egyptians would have been struck, or some would have been struck in the houses of the Hebrews smeared with the blood of the lamb: each of which was contrary to the decree and command of God.
Epiphanius, heresy 18, relates that the Egyptians, mindful of that day on which the Israelites, who had smeared the posts of their houses with the blood of the lamb, were delivered from the slaughter of the angel, were wont, at the coming of the vernal equinox, to take red ochre and smear it on all trees and houses, crying out: “Because at this time fire laid waste all things”; against which plague they think the fire-coloured, blood-like ochre a remedy.
8. AND THEY SHALL EAT THE FLESH THAT NIGHT ROASTED AT THE FIRE, AND UNLEAVENED BREAD WITH WILD LETTUCE.—Note: The lamb here represented a twofold benefit of deliverance: first, from the striking angel; secondly, out of Egypt, from which the Egyptians, fearing greater plagues, hastily forced the Hebrews to go. Again, in the eating of the lamb two things were represented to the Jews. First, the hard servitude with which they served in Egypt; the symbols of this were the unleavened loaves, and therefore insipid, the roasting of the lamb, and the wild lettuce. Secondly, the haste with which they went out: the symbols of this were, first, the unleavened bread, because they had not time to leaven it; secondly, the roasting of the lamb; thirdly, that they could not break its bones (for being in haste they had no leisure to do so) to suck out the marrow; fourthly, that they ate the lamb girded, holding staves in their hands; fifthly, that they could not keep what was left over, but burned it with fire.
Note here first, that the lamb had to be eaten by night: now this night was that of the 15th day. Secondly, by flesh understand also the sinews, the inward parts, and whatever in the lamb was edible.
ROASTED AT THE FIRE.—Note: this was the rite of immolating the lamb: first, the lamb was slain; secondly, with its blood the posts and lintel were sprinkled; thirdly, the skin being drawn off, the entrails were taken out of the lamb and presently put back, as Abulensis holds, or left in the lamb itself, as Cajetan holds, and were washed, that they might be roasted with the lamb and in the lamb. For all things were to be eaten roasted except the gall and the bowels containing the filth, which were cast away. Fourthly, the whole lamb, not cut up (lest any bone be injured), was roasted with its head and feet. To which add that the lamb could not be eaten except by the circumcised, as is plain from verse 48, and only in a certain place where the tabernacle was, and afterwards the temple, namely at Jerusalem, Deuteronomy 16, 6. Finally, with the rite that follows.
WITH WILD LETTUCE.—In Hebrew merorim, that is, with bitter things, namely any bitter herbs. So the Chaldee, Lyranus, Pagninus. But the Septuagint render a definite species, namely pikris: which Theodore Gaza renders now “bitter-wort,” now “wild lettuce” (so he himself in book 9 of Aristotle On the History of Animals, chap. 6), which, according to Dioscorides, is of a bitter taste: whence, although Ruellius, in his book On Herbs of Holy Scripture, thinks this lettuce to be endive, yet it seems more true that it was properly this wild lettuce of the garden lettuce, smaller however than that, and of a harsh and bitter taste; for this bitterness the Hebrew and Greek word signifies: for endive is not bitter, but rather of a sweet and pleasant taste. God commanded these bitter lettuces to be used with the lamb, that by them the Hebrews might remember, says Theodoret, the most bitter servitude in Egypt from which He was leading them out, and so be roused to the praise of God and to thanksgiving. Whence St. Ambrose reads, with bitterness, as though it had been a precept to the Hebrews to eat the lamb with a certain bitterness of soul, and so Oleaster explains this place. Tropologically, the Lord commanded the bitter words of Christ’s commandments to be devoured with the very Sacrament of the Lord’s passion (says St. Ambrose, sermon On the Grain of Mustard), and in particular that contrition and penance are to be placed before the Eucharist, especially in the very paschal Holy Week. Of which St. Epiphanius, heresy 70: “In the days of the Pasch,” he says, “when with us there are lyings on the ground, chastity, afflictions, eating of dry food, prayers, vigils, fasts, and all the salvations of souls through holy afflictions”; and St. Chrysostom, homily 30 on Genesis: “Now,” he says, “the faithful intensify fasting, and vigils, and sacred night watchings, and give alms, that they may do honour to this week”; and St. Bernard, sermon for the Wednesday of Holy Week: “All Christians,” he says, “in this week either beyond their wont, or apart from their wont, practise piety, display modesty, pursue humility, put on gravity, that they may seem in some way to suffer with the suffering Christ. For who is so irreligious as not to be pricked to the heart? who so insolent as not to be humbled? who so wrathful as not to forgive? who so given to delights as not to abstain? who so malicious as not to repent in these days?”
9. YOU SHALL NOT EAT THEREOF ANY THING RAW, NOR BOILED IN WATER, BUT ONLY ROASTED AT THE FIRE.—“Raw”: so the Septuagint render it, and everywhere the Hebrews and Latins: Oleaster therefore rashly renders the Hebrew na “broken” or “cut up.” God forbids the lamb to be eaten raw, both because this is inhuman: for man shrinks from eating raw flesh; and because raw flesh is unwholesome and can scarcely be digested by man; and lest afterwards, in eating raw flesh, loathing it, they should cast it away. For there is in some men and nations, though few, this fierce and barbarous appetite of eating raw flesh, which God here wishes to be checked and abolished: for to the Hebrews, rude as children, He prescribes each single thing, endive. The wild lettuce, says Abulensis, is like the garden lettuce; the common, customary and obvious things He prescribes minutely and exactly.
Tropologically, raw flesh, says St. Gregory, homily 99 on the Gospels, is an inconsiderate and irreverent consideration of the divine goodness and excellence, or rather forgetfulness of it: so they eat raw in the Eucharist who do not consider the excellence of so great a Sacrament, and the condescension and presence of God our Lord, who feeds us with His body and His divinity.
NOR BOILED IN WATER, BUT ONLY ROASTED AT THE FIRE.—Partly because flesh is roasted more quickly than it is boiled: the roasting was therefore a symbol of the haste of the Hebrews preparing themselves for departure; partly because roasting signified that the Hebrews in Egypt, in heat, brick and clay, had been as it were roasted and toasted, and were now through the eating of this lamb freed from the roasting; partly because roasted flesh is of more solid nourishment, and therefore strengthens more those who labour, such as the Hebrews were, about to make an immense journey: for boiled flesh is dissolved into juicy broth, and therefore sends out and loses into it much of its substance.