Final Passover Preparation

Wednesday was primarily spent preparing the lamb. It had to be killed in the temple and then roasted, which was a full day’s job. The meal itself would come after sundown that evening—which in Jewish time was the next day. Thus, the Passover lamb was killed and roasted during the day on Nisan 14, and the meal eaten in the beginning hours of Nisan 15. (Remember, Jewish time runs from sundown to sundown.)

When we come to the question of when this occurred, we find enough opinions—all with supporting argumentation—to almost fill a library. Much of it comes from John’s report seeming to vary from the others. The confusion about John’s report comes from failing to understand what he meant by “Passover.” Again, the term could refer to the evening meal’s beginning, the following daylight hours, or the whole week, depending on its use.

The writers tell us the day these events transpired. The literal Greek is “the first of no leaven.” The “first of no leaven” refers to when the house was cleansed of all products that contained leaven, or yeast. The father’s inspection of the house for leaven was the last act of housecleaning, which came about noon on the day the lambs were killed. The Week of Unleavened Bread began that evening with the Passover meal.

To try to coordinate the events without considering those details, some have concluded that Jesus and his men celebrated Passover before the prescribed day. The idea that Jesus and his men could have celebrated the Passover early and that he was crucified as the lambs were being killed is beyond the capacity of the event.

For example, we are told that about 200,000 lambs were slaughtered in the temple for Passover. The process was to form lines of pilgrims with their lambs. These lines of men with lambs would have been the width of the temple court. Ranks would have extended back as far back as there was space to stand. As priests walked down the front rank, the pilgrim straddled his lamb, held its head up, and a priest slit its throat.

Priests would then catch the blood in bowls for the proper sacrifice. When the line was finished, the pilgrim would take his lamb to a side area to be fully cleaned and dressed and go home with it. As soon as his rank moved out of the way the next line would step forward and follow the same process. It was a full day’s work for everyone, priests and supplicants as well. (For a good description of that process, see The Temple, Its Ministry and Services, by Alfred Edersheim.)

The idea that the priests would have had time on that day to spend most of the daylight hours seeing that Jesus was crucified is out of the question. More obvious, those that made up the crowd would have been too busy preparing their lamb to be involved.

Mark and Luke are even clearer by saying that this initial time of being leaven free and the day the Passover lambs were killed was the same day. This contradicts any view that Jesus and his disciples had an early Passover meal. Luke’s affirmation that the disciples sacrificed the lamb at the same time as the others is stronger. He reminds us that the time to sacrifice the lamb was not at the discretion of the celebrant, but rather “on the day on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.1”

Apparently, Peter and John were selected to take the lamb to the temple for slaughter. Peter as the leader would have had that honor, with John, as a young teenager, taken for the experience.

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1 The command in Exodus 12:6 is to “slaughter them at twilight.” (NIV). The word translated “twilight” is literally “between the two evenings” which gives a broader time frame than the English word implies. Basically, it allowed the slaughter anytime in the daylight hours preceding the evening of Passover.