Commentaria in Exodum
You will say: Tertullian, in his book Against the Jews, seems to say that pascha is not a Hebrew but a Greek name; for he derives it from paschein, that is, to suffer; and what is here said, “For it is the phase of the Lord,” he thinks was said prophetically, as if he said: “For it is the passion of the Lord,” because on this same day Christ would suffer. The same is indicated by Irenæus, book 4, chap. 23, and Nazianzen, oration 2 On the Pasch; and Nazianzen proves it from this, that if pascha were Hebrew, not Greek, it would have to be said phascha, not pascha. For the ancient Hebrews had not the hard v but the soft phe or Arabic, as St. Jerome testifies on Daniel chap. 11; hence we say: Phares, Pharao, Pharisee; and not Pares, Parao, Pariseus. I answer: These Fathers speak not literally but mystically, and explain this place symbolically: for they hold that not without God’s counsel was this word pascha found, which both in Greek and in Hebrew has an etymology most suited to the matter. The argument of Nazianzen is slight; for not only the Greeks, Syrians and Chaldeans, but also the later Hebrews themselves, in place of phe at the beginning of a word, always use pe: for they always put a hard dagesh in an initial pe, as is plain from their Grammar. Pesach, phase, phasech, pischa, pascha are the same.
Note thirdly: there was here a threefold passage: first, of the destroying Angel; secondly, of the Hebrews out of Egypt into Chanaan; thirdly, of the same through the Red Sea: this third passage St. Augustine, tract 55 on John, thinks is signified by the name pascha. Secondly, Philo, Josephus, book 17 of the Antiquities, and Nazianzen above think that pascha signifies the passage of the Hebrews out of Egypt, and this is intimated in Deuteronomy 26, verse 4. But I say that pascha first and immediately signifies the passage of the destroying Angel: for this is what is said here; mediately, however, and finally, it signifies the passage out of Egypt: for to this, as to its end, this passing of the Angel was directed. So St. Jerome and Josephus here, book 2.
Note fourthly: Phase or pascha properly signifies a passage, or rather a leaping over; secondly, it signifies by metonymy the lamb immolated for this passage: so in Scripture it is often said that the pasch is immolated or eaten, that is, the paschal lamb. Thirdly, thence it was carried over to the paschal feast: for the feast on which this paschal lamb was immolated is called the pascha: nay, the seven days of unleavened bread adjoining it are called pascha, Acts chap. 12, verse 4, because the solemnity of seven days began with the pasch and was on account of the pasch itself. Fourthly, pascha signifies any victims of sheep and oxen that were immolated on those seven days, of which Numbers chap. 28: for these were called phase or pascha from the preceding pasch; and these the Jews, about to eat them at the passion of Christ, would not enter the praetorium of Pilate (as being a Gentile’s), lest they should be defiled, as is plain from John chap. 18, verse 28.
Allegorically, the lamb is Christ, who passed from death to life, from earth to heaven, that we might pass from sin to grace, from hell to heaven. Hence tropologically, the soul celebrates the phase, that is, the passage, when it goes forth from the thoughts of Egypt, that is, from the striving of sin, says St. Augustine, tract 55 on John. “The Pasch,” says St. Ambrose, book 1 On Cain, chap. 8, “is a passage from the passions to the exercises of virtue”; and more clearly, book 1 on the Hexaemeron, chap. 8: “The Pasch of the Lord is celebrated every year, that is, the passage of souls from vices to virtue, from the passions of the flesh to grace and sobriety of mind, from the leaven of malice and wickedness to the truth and sincerity of the regeneration.”
“From our country,” he says, “we departed by pride, by disobedience, by following visible things, by tasting the forbidden food: but to it we must return by weeping, by obedience, by despising visible things, and by restraining the appetite of the flesh. By another way, then, we return to our country: since we who departed from the joys of paradise through delight are called back to them through lamentations.”
Hence, fifthly, Zwingli argues: If this proposition is true: “The lamb is the phase,” and in it the metonymy already mentioned is admitted, then the same must be admitted in these words of Christ: “This is my body,” so that the sense may be: This is a figure of my body; and Zwingli adds that this argument was revealed to him by a spirit, who knows not whether he was black or white, and that by it he had convinced the Helvetians, so that they confessed that in the Eucharist the body of Christ is not truly but only typically.
But I answer first, that the antecedent is false; for the lamb is called the phase, that is, a paschal victim, properly, not metonymically: for the lamb possesses this name as its own, imposed on it by God; hence the Jews in common usage spoke in this proper way, calling the lamb the phase: although this imposition, and this usage, had its origin from a metonymy, by which the victim immolated for the passage was called phase, that is, passage: but nowhere has usage, or the propriety of speech, so that a body should be commonly called the very figure of a body.
I answer secondly, by denying the consequence: for the lamb cannot properly be the phase, that is, the passage, because passage and lamb are two things altogether disparate, of which one cannot be the other; but when I say: “This is my body,” this and body are not disparate; the pronoun this confusedly signifies the same that body signifies determinately: in this proposition, therefore, “The lamb is the phase,” that is, passage, a metonymy must necessarily be admitted, but not in this: “This is my body.”
AND AGAINST ALL THE GODS OF EGYPT I WILL EXECUTE JUDGMENTS.—The Septuagint: I will execute vengeance. Hence it seems, says Cajetan, that Apis or Serapis, and all the other idols of the Egyptians, were on the paschal night in Egypt cast down and broken in pieces, either by earthquake or by lightning, as is asserted from the tradition of the Hebrews. The same is taught to have happened by Artapanus the ancient historian, in Eusebius, book 9 of the Preparation, last chapter, and Isaias chap. 19, verse 1, alludes to it.
So Dagon was cast down from before the ark of God, 1 Kings 5. The Hebrews moreover relate that the stone idols of Egypt were then broken to powder; the wooden ones rotted or reduced to ashes; the metal ones dissolved and melted.
Justin the historian therefore lies, who in book 36, from an old fable of the Egyptians, writes that Moses, having stolen the idols of Egypt, carried them away with him.
13. AND THE BLOOD SHALL BE UNTO YOU FOR A SIGN,—as if to say:
The Hebrews are commanded here, therefore, not only in this first Pasch of their deliverance and going out, but also in the others to be celebrated every year afterwards, to sprinkle the posts and lintel of their door with the blood of the lamb, that they may remember that they were once delivered from the destroying angel by a like sprinkling: for that this rite was observed not only in this first Pasch but in the others afterwards, is plain from verse 25, where it is said: “And when you shall have entered into the land which the Lord will give you, you shall observe these ceremonies,” namely that on the tenth day you seek a lamb, which on the fourteenth day you immolate, and eat it holding staves, girded, shod, sprinkling the posts with its blood, etc. For although of these things express mention is not made elsewhere, yet here it is made, and that suffices; for elsewhere Scripture sends the reader hither to seek and learn the ceremonies of the phase. These ceremonies, therefore, as in the first Pasch, so in the others afterwards were prescribed and observed by the Jews; and thus the seven days of unleavened bread, and the other things which are prescribed from verse 14 onward, were prescribed by God not so much for this first Pasch as for those to come, as is sufficiently plain.
15. SEVEN DAYS SHALL YOU EAT UNLEAVENED BREAD.—“Azyma” is the name given to bread without leaven: for zyme is leaven. Leaven (fermentum) is so called because it increases as if by fervent working (fervendo): hence unleavened bread is baked at once; for in leavened bread one must wait until the leaven has dissolved and thinned the dough of which the bread is made; therefore “you shall eat unleavened bread,” that is, that every year you may recall the first unleavened bread of the Pasch, which you ate when about to go out of Egypt: for when on that night you had made dough for baking bread, through haste you had not time to leaven it, the Egyptians compelling you to go forth at once: whence Deuteronomy 16, 3, it is said: “Seven days shalt thou eat of it without leaven, the bread of affliction (because unleavened bread is insipid, heavy, unwholesome, and hard to digest), because in fear thou camest out of Egypt: that thou mayst remember the day of thy coming out of Egypt all the days of thy life.”