Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

Why Did Paul Tell Women to Cover Their Heads?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In 1 Cor 11:5-6, the apostle Paul tells the Corinthians that a woman should cover her head when praying or prophesying at church assemblies. Some churches today still adhere to this command, but should they? What was the context of Paul’s statement?

Authors E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien provide a possible answer to this question in their book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible.  They write:

Paul tells women in Corinth that they must have their head covered when they worship (1 Cor 11:5-6). It is not immediately clear to us what the problem is, so we may assume something went without being said, which is a good instinct.

So perhaps we assume that a woman’s hair was somehow sexually alluring to ancient people and that therefore a Christian woman needed to cover hers. We may then reason that since hair today is not a sexual turn-on, it is okay for a Christian woman to wear her hair down.

We are correct that something went without being said, but we are wrong about what that was.

If Paul was not talking about sexual modesty, what was he talking about?

Paul is indeed talking about modesty. In our culture, if male ministers are talking about what a Christian woman should be wearing, we are almost always discussing sexual modesty or the lack thereof, so we typically assume that’s what Paul is doing here. We feel affirmed when Paul mentions that it is disgraceful if a woman doesn’t cover her head (1 Cor 11:6).

Likely, however, Paul was admonishing the hostess of a house church to wear her marriage veil (“cover her head”) because “church” was a public event and because respectable Roman women covered their heads in public. These Corinthian women were treating church like their private dinner parties. These dinners (convivia, or “wine parties”) were known for other immoral activities including dinner “escorts” (1 Cor 6), idol meat (1 Cor 8–10), adultery (1 Cor 10) and drunkenness (1 Cor 11).

The issue was modesty, but not sexual modesty. These women were co-opting an activity about God for personal benefit. They were treating church as a social club.

Thus Paul was interested in a broader kind of modesty than sexual modesty. He didn’t want the Corinthian women treating the worship assembly like their private dinner parties, dinner parties that typically went along with being wealthy. Economic modesty at church gatherings was also an important issue for Paul.

Since covering a woman’s head is no longer a cultural indicator of economic or class status, this command by Paul no longer applies to us (in the 21st century America). However, there are certainly other ways that Christians signal their economic and class status that Paul would equally frown upon today.

Church is not a place to emphasize class and economic status. It’s not a country club. It’s a place to worship God.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

What Did Jesus Mean by Hot, Cold, and Lukewarm?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

One of the most familiar passages in Scripture is Rev 3:15-16, where Jesus addresses the Laodicean church:

“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

Many Christians interpret Jesus to be saying something like, “I wish you were passionate for me (hot) or spiritually dead (cold), but instead you are somewhere in the middle. Because you are neither on fire for me or spiritually dead, I am very displeased with you.”

Now, this interpretation never really made much sense to me. I could see why Jesus wanted people to be passionate for him (hot), but I could never understand why Jesus would prefer a person be lost or spiritually dead (cold) instead of somewhere in the middle between the two.

Authors E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien provide a possible answer to this question in their book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible. Richards and O’Brien explain:

In the summer of 2002, however, standing there among the then-unexcavated ruins of Laodicea, another interpretation of that famous passage presented itself. Several miles northwest of Laodicea, perched atop a small mountain, is a city called Hierapolis. At the base of Hierapolis is an extraordinary geological formation produced by the natural hot springs that surface around the city. Even today, the city is known for its steaming mineral baths.

Over the centuries, the subterranean springs have created a snow-white calcium deposit known in Turkish as Pamukkale, or “cotton castle,” that cascades down the slopes like ice. From our vantage point in Laodicea, Hierapolis gleamed white like a freshly powdered ski slope.

About the same distance from Laodicea in the opposite direction is Colossae. The city was not yet excavated in 2002, so we couldn’t see it; but it is almost certain that in the first century, you could have seen Colossae from Laodicea. Paul’s colleague Epaphras worked in Colossae, as well as in Laodicea and Hierapolis (Col 4:13). It was a less notable city than Laodicea, but it had one thing Laodicea didn’t: a cold, freshwater spring. In fact, it was water—or the lack thereof—that set Laodicea apart.

Unlike its neighbors, Laodicea had no springs at all. It had to import its water via aqueduct from elsewhere: hot mineral water from Hierapolis or fresh cold water from Colossae. The trouble was, by the time the water from either city made it to Laodicea, it had lost the qualities that made it remarkable. The hot water was no longer hot; the cold water was no longer cold.

The Laodiceans were left with all the lukewarm water they could drink. Surely they wished their water was one or the other—either hot or cold. There isn’t much use for lukewarm water. I suspect that the meaning of the Lord’s warning was clear to the Laodiceans. He wished his people were hot (like the salubrious waters of Hierapolis) or cold (like the refreshing waters of Colossae). Instead, their discipleship was unremarkable.

So, for Jesus, hot and cold were both genuinely good conditions, and only lukewarm was a bad condition. In other words, in these verses hot and cold are used as synonyms to refer to strong, passionate, remarkable faith. Lukewarm refers to unremarkable faith.

Lukewarm is not some spiritual condition in between hot and cold at all. Lukewarm stands in opposition to both hot and cold, and that is most likely how the Laodiceans would have heard Jesus’s message to them.

To me, this interpretation of the verses makes a lot more sense. It’s amazing how a little geography and historical context can clear things up!

Evil, Pain, and Suffering, Human Nature

Where Is Suicide the Most Common?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 


Most people get this wrong, really wrong. Malcolm Gladwell, in his latest book called David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, shares a bit of knowledge that is well worth pondering. Speaking of human feelings of sadness, happiness, and deprivation, Gladwell writes the following:

Our sense of how deprived we are is relative. This is one of those observations that is both obvious and (upon exploration) deeply profound, and it explains all kinds of otherwise puzzling observations.

Which do you think, for example, has a higher suicide rate: countries whose citizens declare themselves to be very happy, such as Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Canada? or countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, whose citizens describe themselves as not very happy at all?

Answer: the so-called happy countries. . . . If you are depressed in a place where most people are pretty unhappy, you compare yourself to those around you and you don’t feel all that bad. But can you imagine how difficult it must be to be depressed in a country where everyone else has a big smile on their face?

We compare ourselves to the people who immediately surround us. Our feelings of sadness and happiness are relative to our locale.

This is why we should believe people who are desperately poor compared to modern, western standards, but who claim to be happy. They aren’t lying; they really are happy. Likewise, we should believe people who are fabulously wealthy, but who say they are miserable. They aren’t lying; they really are miserable.

This observation proves that there is no magical standard of living or standard of material wealth that guarantees happiness. Once a person has basic food and shelter, his feelings of happiness are more dominated by the people around him than the absolute value of his biweekly paycheck.

Philosophy, Theology

How Do Theology and Philosophy Interact?

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In my opinion, the greatest Christian thinker of all time, after the apostles died, was Thomas Aquinas. Etienne Gilson, in his work The Christian Philosophy Of St Thomas Aquinas, takes on the task of defining what distinguished theology from philosophy for Aquinas.

This issue comes up again and again when I hear cultists and even Christians claim that Christian teaching was hijacked by philosophy during the Middle Ages. We’re told that Plato and Aristotle took center stage and that biblical revelation was shoved aside.

Is it true that men like Aquinas did not take the Bible seriously, that they placed the philosophies of Plato and Arsitotle in judgment over revealed theological truths?

Gilson explains that in the case of Aquinas, nothing could be further from the truth. So how did Aquinas distinguish between theology and philosophy?

It has become customary to label “theological” any conclusion whose premises presuppose faith in a divinely revealed truth, and to label “philosophical” any conclusion whose premises are purely rational , that is, known by the light of natural reason alone. This is not the point of view stated by St. Thomas himself at the beginning of his Prologue to the Second Book of his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. According to him, the philosopher considers the nature of things as they are in themselves, whereas the theologian considers them in their relation to God conceived as being both their origin and their end.

From this point of view, every conclusion concerning God himself, or the relations of being to God, is theological in its own right. Some of these conclusions presuppose an act of faith in the divine revelation, but some of them do not. All of them are theological; those, among them, which are purely rational, belong to theology no less than the others. The only difference is that, since these do not presuppose faith , they can be extracted from their theological context and judged, from the point of view of natural reason, as purely philosophical conclusions.

To repeat, philosophy considers the “nature of things as they are in themselves” whereas theology considers the nature of things “in their relation to God conceived as being both their origin and their end.” Thus every conclusion about God or about the world in relation to God is theological first and foremost. Any theological conclusion which does not presuppose faith (is purely rational) is also a philosophical conclusion.

Gilson explains why this distinction is important:

This is an extremely important point in that it enables us to understand how strictly metaphysical knowledge can be included within a theological structure without losing its purely philosophical nature. Everything in the Summa [Theologiae, Aquinas’s most famous work,] is theological, yet, elements of genuinely philosophical nature are part and parcel of Thomistic theology precisely because, according to St. Thomas himself, the distinction between theology and philosophy does not adequately answer the distinction between faith and reason.

Now we come to Aquinas’s concerns with mixing philosophy and theology. Gilson writes that critics of Aquinas often misunderstand what Aquinas was trying to do.

According to some of his modern interpreters, St. Thomas thought of himself as a philosopher who was not anxious to compromise the purity of his philosophy by admitting into it the slightest mixture of theology. But as a matter of fact , the real St. Thomas was afraid of doing just the reverse. In the Summa Theologiae, his problem was not how to introduce philosophy into theology without corrupting the essence of philosophy; it was rather how to introduce philosophy into theology without corrupting the essence of theology (emphasis added).

Not only the hostility of the “Biblicists” of his time warned him of the problem , but he was himself quite as much aware of it as they were. And the more freely he made use of philosophy, the more was he aware of the problem. As he himself understands it, theology must be conceived as a science of Revelation. Its source is the word of God. Its basis is faith in the truth of this word. . . . For theologians who were not in the least worried about philosophy, no problem actually arose. Persuaded that they should add nothing human to the bare deposit of revelation, they could rest assured that they were respecting the integrity and the unity of the Sacred Science. They proceeded from faith to faith, by faith.

For St. Thomas Aquinas the problem was rather different. It was a question of how to integrate philosophy into sacred science, not only without allowing either the one or the other to suffer essentially thereby, but to the greater benefit of both. In order to achieve this result, he had to integrate a science of reason with a science of revelation without corrupting at the same time both the purity of reason and the purity of revelation.

Thus Aquinas was eminently aware of the dangers of mixing theology and philosophy. Rather than placing philosophy above theology, he did just the opposite.  One can argue about how successful he was, but there can be no argument that Aquinas allowed philosophical considerations to knowingly trump revealed biblical truth.

Archaeology, Creation

What Did Ancient Israel’s Neighbors Think about the Origins of the World?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Ancient Israel was immersed in two dominant cultures, that of the Egyptians and that of the Mesopotamians. The Hebrew accounts of the origins of the universe stand in contrast to these ancient cultures, so it would be interesting to see a summary of what these other cultures believed.

Jim Adams provides a helpful summary of their views on the cosmogony (origins of universe) and theogony (origins of gods) in the New Mormon Challenge. 

First, the people of both Egypt and Mesopotamia were polytheistic (accepted many gods). Although at times each religion acknowledged a superior or high god such as Marduk or Amun-Rê, that did not constitute the dismissal of other gods from their respective pantheons.

Second, each cosmogony contains a theogony that presents the origin and genealogy of the gods with the primary purpose of specifying the hierarchical role of each god in their respective pantheon. In fact, any god in the pantheon could be proclaimed supreme over the others when that god was addressed or called upon for help.

Third, the gods are constituent with the matter of the universe, and in fact the gods are typically depicted as a personification of a particular natural phenomenon (e.g., sun, sky, water). Hence, the gods do not transcend the material world and are limited to the power of the phenomena they personify.

Fourth, the gods are engendered beings and are often depicted as creating other gods by begetting them.

Fifth, fundamental to each of the cosmogonies is a preexisting primordial realm represented by the primeval waters of chaos wherefrom the gods, humanity, and nature find their ultimate origin.

Sixth, this primordial realm transcends the gods. It limits their power, and its fundamental laws of operation are laws to which the gods are subject.

Adams cites the Jewish biblical scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann who believes that the fifth and sixth features above are the fundamental marks of ancient paganism. Kaufmann describes it as

the idea that there exists a realm of being prior to the gods and above them, upon which the gods depend, and whose decrees they must obey. Deity belongs to, and is derived from, a primordial realm. This realm is conceived of variously—as darkness, water, spirit, earth, sky, and so forth—but always as the womb in which the seeds of all being are contained.

Alternatively, this idea appears as a belief in a primordial realm beside the gods, as independent and primary as the gods themselves. Not being subject to the gods, it necessarily limits them. The first conception, however, is the fundamental one. This is to say that in the pagan view, the gods are not the source of all that is, nor do they transcend the universe. They are, rather, part of a realm precedent to and independent of them. They are rooted in this realm, are bound by its nature, are subservient to its laws.

To be sure, paganism has personal gods who create and govern the world of men. But a divine will, sovereign and absolute, which governs all and is the cause of all being—such a conception is unknown. There are heads of pantheons, there are creators and maintainers of the cosmos; but transcending them is the primordial realm, with its pre-existent, autonomous forces.

It is against this pagan background that the Hebrews presented quite a different version of cosmogony and theogony. The Hebrew God had always existed, and was responsible for creating everything that exists in the universe. Therefore, the Hebrew God was not in any way limited by a pre-existing realm.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages, Miracles

Did the Israelites Cross a Reed Sea or Red Sea?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Many Hebrew scholars have noted the words for “Red Sea” (yam suph) can also be translated as “sea of reed” or “reed sea.” This leads to the question of whether the Israelites merely crossed a marsh rather than a deep body of water. A marsh of reeds, after all, would cause the Egyptian chariot wheels to get stuck, and maybe this is how the Israelites escaped.

By looking at the rest of the Old Testament, we can see what other biblical authors thought. Robert Bergen, in the Apologetics Study Bible, notes that the

biblical text states that the waters were deep (Is 63: 13), but that God split them and made them stand “like a wall” (Ps 78: 13) on either side of the fleeing Israelites (Ex 14: 22, 29). When the waters returned to their original position they covered the Egyptians’ chariots, horses, and soldiers (v. 27; 15: 1; Dt 11: 4; Jos 24: 7; Ne 9: 11; Ps 78: 53), thereby killing all the enemy (Ex 14: 27-28, 30; Ps 106: 11).

Bergen also notes that in the NT, “three times the body of water is referred to as a sea (Ac 7: 36; 1 Co 10: 1; Heb 11: 29).”

The bottom line is that regardless of whether it is translated “Red Sea” or “Reed Sea,” all of the biblical authors understand it to be a deep body of water east of Egypt and adjacent to the Sinai Peninsula.

Bible Interpretation, Books of the Bible, Sunday School

Commentary on Exodus 14 (Parting of the Red Sea)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In chapters 12 and 13, the Israelites escaped from Egypt due to the mighty hand of God, and have traveled some distance to the southeast, but not out of Egyptian territory. Chapter 14 begins the account of one of the most famous miracles performed by God for the Israelites, the parting of the Red (or Reed) Sea.

In verses 1-4, God tells Moses to stop their progress and turn back. They are to park themselves right on the coast of a sea. The purpose for their turning around, traveling back the way they had come, and then stopping, is to make Pharaoh believe that they are confused and unwilling to travel into the desert (which is the only way for them to escape Egyptian territory). This will cause Pharaoh to pursue them with his army.

The exact location of the Israelite encampment by the sea is unknown. The very northern tip of the Gulf of Suez, which is part of the Red Sea, could be where the Israelites camped and crossed, or the other options are Lake Balah or Lake Timsah, which are two larger bodies of water further north. In any case, from the text it is clear that it is a body of water that is deep enough to drown men.

God’s purpose is to invite Pharaoh to attack Israel so that, once again, God can demonstrate his power over Pharaoh and the Egyptian gods. “The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.” The Egyptian gods don’t exist, and the Egyptians must come to understand that the God of the Hebrews is the only true God.

In verses 5-9, Pharaoh does exactly what God said he would do. Pharaoh and his officials regret the fact that they have lost the Hebrew slaves, and so they decide to dispatch chariots to bring the Israelites back to Egypt. At least 600 chariots are sent and this hastily gathered army quickly catches up to the Israelites who have stopped their progress by the sea.

Why would Pharaoh chase after the Israelites after witnessing the ten plagues brought on by God? Is he crazy? Douglas Stuart, in his Exodus: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture (New American Commentary), explains:

The answer requires appreciating Egyptian religion in its ancient Near Eastern context. To all the ancients (except those Israelites who were beginning to understand the only true God) the gods and goddesses that controlled the world were arbitrary and capricious, quick to change their actions and attitudes, constantly vying with one another for power, not omnipresent but manifesting themselves at given locations and then leaving those locations unpredictably. . . . Likewise, the Egyptians’ gods were considered beings who might not always be present among their people. Accordingly, Yahweh knew that it would be natural for Pharaoh to think that he, Yahweh, after having expended great effort to demonstrate his power to the Egyptians, might now no longer be directly involved in helping the Israelites so that he, Pharaoh, could once again assert his power over them unhindered.

Seeing the Egyptian army advancing upon them, the Israelites, in verses 10-12, cry out to Moses that he should have never brought them out of Egypt to die at the hands of Pharaoh’s chariots. They were better off as slaves. Douglas Stuart notes that

this was the first of the postexodus declarations by Israelites that they should have stayed where they came from. The others (e.g., Num 14:1–4; Josh 7:6–9) share considerably the theme of this one: when hardship is encountered, the miserable past suddenly looks like the good old days.

Moses, however, is confident that God will save them. God tells Moses, in verses 15-18, “Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground.” God promises that the Egyptians will follow them so that God “will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army.”

In order to give the Israelites time to break camp and prepare themselves for crossing the sea (the remainder of the day and almost the entire evening were used in the process of getting the Israelites out of their camp and across the sea), the angel of God, who was in the form of a pillar of cloud, moved from the front of the Israelites to the rear, as a barrier between the Egyptian army and the Israelite camp. The Egyptians cannot attack with the angel of the Lord protecting the Israelites.

When Moses held out his staff, God caused a strong east wind to blow back the waters and clear a dry path for the Israelites to cross the body of water. There were walls of water on the right and left of the people as they advanced.

In verses 23-28, as God predicted, the Egyptian chariots, with the angel of God no longer impeding their progress, followed the Hebrews into the sea. God, however, caused the chariot wheels of the Egyptians to get stuck and come off, throwing their drivers into confusion and chaos.

Douglas Stuart elaborates on the problems with the chariot wheels:

The sea floor was soft and sandy/silty so that even though it was dry, it was not a suitable surface for narrow, metal-bound chariot wheels bearing the weight of a chariot and two or three armed men. The horses pulling the chariots, like the Israelite goats and sheep, would have been able to get through satisfactorily; the chariot wheels, however, effectively sliced deep into the soft ground and bound so that the horses could not pull their own weight and that of the fully loaded chariots.

Once the army of chariots had advanced far enough into the sea, God instructed Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea, and the walls of water collapsed and drowned the army of Pharaoh. Not one of them survived.

Verses 30-31 summarize the lesson the Israelites learned that day: “That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.”

General Apologetics, Skeptics

Will You Wait for a Long Answer to Your Short Question?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Questions can be really short. Why is there so much evil in the world? Who is God? Why did Jesus have to die? Why do you think Christianity is true? What is the meaning of life?

Most of the time, though, answers are a heck of a lot longer. On this blog, I answer a question on almost every post with a 500-word answer. The question might be 10 words long, so my answer is 50 times longer than the question.

Most non-fiction books are written to answer a single question that the author poses. An author may use 70,000 words to answer a single short question.

My point is that there is an asymmetry between questions and answers. Answers are often far more complex than the question they are answering.

It seems that many skeptics of Christianity (actually most people in general) forget about this asymmetry when they demand short, pithy answers to their short, pithy questions. Well, here is my challenge to skeptics of Christianity. Are you willing to wait for the long answer to your short question?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been talking to a skeptic and something like the following happens:

Skeptic: “If God is all-powerful and all-good, then why is there evil?”

Me: “Well, let’s start by defining what evil is. Evil is …”

Skeptic (cutting me off): “Let’s face it. You don’t have an answer to this. You’re probably going to mention free will, but that just leads me to another question. Christians can’t really believe in free will because they believe God knows everything. How do you answer that?”

Me: “OK, so you want to discuss God’s sovereignty and man’s free will now. Maybe we’ll come back to evil. Just because God knows what I will do doesn’t mean that I’m not free to do it. Here’s an analogy….”

Skeptic (cutting me off): “Free will can’t exist because physics basically determines everything we say and do. We are a product of natural laws and the more we discover in science, the less we need God to explain anything. Aren’t you concerned that every time you assume we need God for something, that science will eventually provide the answer?”

Me: “Umm, so now we’re on to the God of the Gaps argument? I’m getting exhausted. Can we stick to one thing for a minute?”

Skeptic: “It’s not my fault you don’t have answers for these questions.”

This kind of conversation is one of the things that originally drove me to start writing a blog. I could finally answer questions without getting constantly interrupted!

So skeptics, when you’re talking to a Christian, are you willing to actually wait for an answer? Or are you just going to pepper him with question after question and never let him get an answer out of his mouth?

When I’m dealing with a skeptic who won’t wait for an answer, that’s usually a pretty good sign that the skeptic does not want answers. They just want to fight. As fun as fighting is (I used to do a lot more of it years ago), I just don’t have time for it any more. There are skeptics out there who actually will wait for the answers, and those are the ones I want to talk to.

Bible Interpretation

How Long Did the Israelites Live in Egypt?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

Verse 40 in chapter 12 of Exodus looks like it’s saying that from the time Jacob brought his family to Egypt to live with Joseph in Gen 46, to the time of the Exodus, 430 years passed. In fact, this is the traditional view, but it may not be correct.

There are three ancient texts from which scholars translate the Book of Exodus into English: the Masoretic Hebrew text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint. These three texts appear to contradict each other when it comes to verse 40 in Exodus 12.

According to Robert Bergen in the Apologetics Study Bible, the

Hebrew text used as the basis for English translations of this verse states literally that ‘the dwelling of the sons of Israel which they dwelt in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.’ The Samaritan Pentateuch, on the other hand, states that the Israelites spent 215 years in Egypt. . . . The Septuagint . . . expands the reading found in the Hebrew text, stating that ‘the dwelling of the sons of Israel, and of their fathers, which they dwelt in the land of Canaan, and in the land of Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.’

What are we to make of these different readings? Is it 215 or 430 years? It seems that the answer depends on when you start counting the Israelites as being in Egypt. The Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch start the clock when Abraham first journeys to Egypt in Gen 12 (not when Jacob brings his family to Egypt in Gen 46), whereas the Hebrew text is ambiguous.

Bergen, however, claims that the New Testament supports starting the clock with Abraham in Gen 12. Bergen writes,

The NT provides conclusive evidence that the chronological clarifications in the Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint are accurate. In Gal 3:17 the apostle Paul noted that the Law was given to Israel 430 years after God’s covenantal promise had been delivered to Abraham. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities 2:15:2) accepted this number, as did many significant voices in Christian history prior to the twentieth century (e.g., Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, Bishop James Ussher). When the NT evidence is considered together with that of the OT, it seems clear that 430 years elapsed from the time of Israel’s first entrance into Egypt, and that the reckoning began with Abraham’s dealings with Pharaoh (Gen 12: 10-20).

Sunday School

Commentary on Exodus 12 (The Passover)

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Post Author: Bill Pratt 

In chapter 12 of the Book of Exodus, we come to the final plague that God will visit upon Egypt. Unlike the other plagues, this one requires preparation by the Israelites, and that preparation will be memorialized by the Israelites forever. Chapter 12 combines the instructions to the Israelites on how to memorialize the events surrounding their salvation from the final plague and God’s rescuing them from Egypt, along with the narrative explaining what actually occurred.

In verses 1-11, God tells Moses and Aaron how the nation of Israel is to commemorate the Passover in the future. We have a break in the narrative and won’t pick it back up again until verses 12-13, and then again at verse 21. The instructions are simple:

  1. On the tenth day of the first month of the religious calendar (Nisan or March/April) each man is to select a lamb or goat for his family. The animal must be a year-old male without defect.
  2. Four days later, all the people of Israel must slaughter the animals at twilight.
  3. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat.
  4. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Anything left over must be burned by morning.
  5. They are to eat with traveling clothes on.

In verses 12-13, God explains what will happen the night of Passover. “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.”

Notice that the blood of the lambs who were sacrificed and placed on the doorframes will save the Israelites from God’s judgment. In like manner, Jesus Christ’s sacrifice saves those who believe in him from God’s judgment. This is why the New Testament writers refer to Jesus as the Passover Lamb (see 1 Cor 5:7-8; 1 Pet 1:19-20; Rev 5:12).

Additionally, the biblical authors remind us several times that key events occur during subsequent Passover celebrations. In Num 9, the Israelites celebrate the Passover in the wilderness. Joshua celebrates Passover after bringing the Israelites into the Promised Land (Josh 5). Passover celebrations are recorded during the reigns of reformers King Hezekiah and King Josiah in 2 Chron 30 and 35. When Israel returns from Babylonian captivity, the Passover is celebrated in Ezra 6. And finally, Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples before being arrested and crucified.

In verses 14-20, God commands the Israelites to also celebrate the week after the Passover. This is known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread. “For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast.” On the first day and seventh of this Feast there is to be an assembly of all Israel. The penalty for eating anything with yeast during this seven days is death or banishment. God explains the importance of the Feast of Unleavened Bread: “It was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt.”

To recap, two new ordinances are commanded by God in chapter 12: the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Passover is to commemorate God’s passing over the Israelites for judgment, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread is to commemorate God’s rescuing the Israelites from Egypt. God saves and God redeems his people.

In verses 21-23, the narrative picks up again with explicit instructions to the Israelites for the night of the final plague – the killing of the firstborns of Egypt. The elders of Israel are told to select and slaughter the animals for Passover sacrifice and then use hyssop (a plant) to spread blood around the doorframes of their homes. If the Israelites obey God, “he will not permit the destroyer to enter [their] houses and strike [them] down.”

In verses 24-28, God reminds the Israelites of the significance of the Passover and the author notes that on the occasion of the first Passover night, the “Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron.”

The narrative continues through verse 40 and describes the events of the evening, next morning, and days following. First, God does indeed strike the firstborn of Egypt, including Pharaoh’s own son. The Egyptians are so devastated that Pharaoh calls Moses and Aaron to him during the night and commands them to leave Egypt, no strings attached. In verses 33-36, the Egyptians are so eager to get rid of the Israelites that they willingly turn over gold, silver, and clothing to them. Everything happens just as God had foretold.

The Israelites leave the area of Goshen where they had lived for generations, and they journey to the southeast to a city named Succoth. We note that the Israelites number many thousands, and that foreigners also left Egypt with them, possibly due to seeing the power of the Hebrew God.

Finally, in verses 40-42, the author reminds us that the Israelites had lived in Egypt for 430 years, but that God brought them out of Egypt, just as he had promised.

A Christian Apologetics Blog