Commentaria in Exodum
The allegorical and chief reason was that the roasted lamb might signify Christ, out of love of us, roasted on the cross; for the lamb was roasted stretched in the form of a cross: one stake, set upright, was passed from the bottom to the head; another was stretched across the shoulders of the lamb to be roasted, says St. Justin against Trypho. For Christ on the cross had nothing watery, that is, no mitigation, no solace in His pains, but was roasted and toasted as much by sorrow as by love of us. Again, the Jews, denying the divinity of Christ, and taking crudely what Scripture hands down of the kingdom and glory of the Messiah, eat Christ raw. Heretics eat Christ boiled in water, because they wish to search into and comprehend all His mysteries by their own wit and human reason (for this is the water): and so by human wisdom they empty of force the sacraments of His humanity and divinity. But Catholics, soberly and piously meditating the mysteries of Christ, and by them kindling faith and charity, and fervently serving Christ, eat Christ roasted. So Pererius from St. Gregory.
THE HEAD WITH ITS FEET AND ENTRAILS YOU SHALL DEVOUR.—God expresses this; because we are not accustomed to roast the head, the entrails and the feet, as being bony and cartilaginous; but in the lamb God willed these to be roasted, both because the Hebrews, being in haste, had not time to boil them; partly because God willed the lamb to remain whole; partly because it signified Christ, in whom these things were chiefly roasted, namely the bowels with compassion and love of us, the feet with the nails, and the head with the crown of thorns.
10. NEITHER SHALL THERE REMAIN ANY THING OF IT UNTIL MORNING. IF THERE BE ANY THING LEFT YOU SHALL BURN IT WITH FIRE,—because you will depart in haste at the first light of morning. Hence, that you may not be occupied in eating the remains of the lamb or in packing them up, or that it may not happen that they are eaten profanely by the profane outside the time of the sacrifice, or devoured by dogs, or even rot, I will have them consumed by fire in God’s honour, as they were roasted for God by fire; and I will have this observed in the same manner in the following years, that you may keep a perpetual memory of this first going out and haste.
11. AND THUS YOU SHALL EAT IT: YOU SHALL GIRD YOUR REINS, AND YOU SHALL HAVE SHOES ON YOUR FEET, HOLDING STAVES IN YOUR HANDS, AND YOU SHALL EAT IN HASTE.—All these things indicate haste, and are the marks of travellers girded for a long and toilsome journey; hence they are commanded to put on shoes. Add: the shoe was a sign of liberty, as I said on Ephesians chap. 6, verse 15. For hitherto the Hebrews in Egypt, like slaves, had gone barefoot to the fields and to their hardest labours: now they are commanded to walk shod, like the free-born and the free. Note the Hebrew hypallage, “you shall have shoes on your feet,” that is, you shall have feet in shoes, or shod. So the Hebrews say: They sent the city into the fire, that is, they sent fire into the city, setting it on fire.
Some add that the ancients in old times did not sit at table but reclined, as is plain from Esther chap. 1, verse 6; Tobias chap. 3, verse 3; 1 Kings chap. 19, verse 92; and that, in order not to soil their couches, and to dine more comfortably, and that their feet might rest on their couches or dining-beds, they took off their shoes, and even washed their feet, as is plain from Judges chap. 19, verse 291. Hence also Magdalen washed the feet of Christ reclining. But the Hebrews here, because they are prepared not for rest but for departure, are therefore commanded to shoe themselves. But whether at this time the use of reclining at table was in vogue is uncertain; nay, Pererius contends that the use of sitting is more ancient than the use of reclining; for at Joseph’s table his brethren sat, they did not recline, Genesis 43, 33.
Note: From the words, “holding staves in your hands,” it seems that the Hebrews, as being in haste, ate the lamb standing, and Philo plainly teaches this, in his book On the Sacrifice of Cain and Abel, and Nyssen intimates it, although Ribera denies it, book 5 On the Temple, chap. 3, at the end; for to what purpose holding staves in their hands, loins girded, and shod, if they did not stand ready for the journey? To this the Apostle seems certainly to have alluded, or rather to have given the allegorical sense of this place, Ephesians chap. 6, verse 14, when he says: “Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” You will say, Matthew chap. 26, verse 20, Christ celebrating the pasch is said to have reclined; therefore He did not stand. Maldonatus answers on the same place, that to recline signifies to be present at the table in any posture, whether you sit, or stand, or recline; for since in old times they dined reclining, that phrase has remained to this day, so that we are said to recline at table when we are seated at it.
But since it is expressly said of Christ in John chap. 13: “He riseth from supper, and layeth aside his garments”; and a little after: “being set down again, he said to them”; hence it may more aptly be said that Christ, according to the custom, stood at the supper of the lamb, but reclined at the common supper which followed the supper of the lamb, and thence rose to the washing of the feet, and, that being done, soon reclined again. Finally, many think that this and the other ceremonies of the lamb were observed only at this first Pasch of the Hebrews, and not afterwards. But what is truer in this matter I shall say below at verse 43.
Symbolically, Philo: Those who strive toward the summit of virtues, let them be girded about the loins, that is, ready to serve God and to labour in the exercise of virtues, and let them be shod with shoes, by which they may restrain the fleshly mass by reason: and let them stand upright with firm feet; and let them have discipline, as a rod in their hands, to direct without error all the affairs of life, and let them hasten in this study of virtue.
Tropologically, St. Gregory, homily 22 on the Gospels: He who would eat the Christian phase, let him gird his reins, that is, subdue his pleasures, restrain the flesh from lust; let him have shoes on his feet, that is, let him look upon the life and examples of the dead Saints, that he may guard his steps from the wound of sin; thirdly, let him hold a staff in his hand, that is, let him have pastoral care of those who are committed to him; fourthly, let him eat in haste, that is, let him pant after the solemnity of the heavenly country. Hear also Blessed Algerus, book 1, On the Sacrament of the Altar, chap. 21: “The law,” he says, “gave in the shoes caution, lest we be deceived by vices; in the staff discipline, by which we may correct what has been committed; in the lettuces compunction; in the haste the ardour of desire by which we sigh after heavenly things; in the girded reins continence and chastity, because to Christ the immaculate Lamb, and the crucified Son of the Virgin, and to union with Him, nothing is so adverse as pleasure and the union of fornication.”
Finally, the shoe signifies continence, the girdle modesty, the staff hope, says Nyssen in the Life of Moses: “Let the shoe,” he says, “defend from the thorns of sins by the most strict continence of a thin and hard life; the long and flowing garment, that is, a voluptuous manner of living, is to be drawn in by a certain girdle, that is, modesty, which admonishes to use things for necessity, not for pleasure; but the staff, with which we both drive off the beasts of heretics and are sustained, is hope.”
Verses 11 and 12. FOR IT IS THE PHASE, THAT IS, THE PASSAGE OF THE LORD, AND (that is, because) I WILL PASS THROUGH THE LAND OF EGYPT THAT NIGHT, AND WILL KILL EVERY FIRSTBORN,—as if to say: You shall eat the lamb in haste, because this eating of the lamb signifies the swift and hurried passage of the Angel to strike the firstborn of Egypt.
Note first: For phase the Hebrew is pesach; Theodotion renders it hyperbasis; the Syrians and Chaldeans, adding in their manner an aleph, render pischa or pascha: this the Septuagint followed, rendering pascha, either to give the name a Greek termination, or because the people returning from Babylon commonly used the Chaldean name pascha in preference to the Hebrew pesach. Our translator renders phase, because the last guttural, chet, in the Hebrew pesach, being of harder pronunciation, is wont to be suppressed among the Greeks and Latins. Hence the Septuagint, our translator, and others render chet in dissyllables by e, so that for the Hebrew Noach they render Noe; for Corach, Core; for Therach, Thare; for Jephtach, Jephte; so also for pesach, phase.
Phase, that is, transit, or leaping over. Note secondly: Pesach, pascha and phase signify a passing over, or more properly a leaping over; for the root pasach signifies to leap over, as our Interpreter has translated it, verse 23, and 3 Kings chap. 18, verse 26. Hence also the lame man is called pisseach, because he goes as though hopping. Hence Symmachus and Josephus translate pascha as a stepping over, that is, a passing across, and St. Jerome in the Hebrew Names, a transgression, a crossing over. Our translator here renders it more generally transit, to signify the Angel’s twofold passing, the first by the Hebrews, sparing them, the second by the Egyptians, striking them. It is called pascha, therefore, that is, a leaping over, because the pascha signified that the Angel would leap over the houses of the Hebrews, leaving them untouched, and would spring upon the houses of the Egyptians, slaying their firstborn.