In Blogs 25 and 32, we studied Hezekiah’s, Josiah’s, and Ezra’s leading Israel out of idolatry when the people failed to do the divine Word. They had to re-teach the people how to approach YHWH safely and properly, forcefully turning them away from the insidious Canaanite religion, whose practices sometimes were remarkably close to some things in the Torah. These three men exercised their authority to redirect Israel to YHWH by involving the priesthood in the Passover lamb slaughter instead of each head of house exercising the right as initially commanded. In this blog, we will see the downstream effects of their good intentions more closely.

When Israel’s leadership took control of Passover, due to the large number of lambs slaughtered, Passover melded with the opening night of the first of the Unleaveneds. Ezra called the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread “Passover.” This carried over into Yeshua’s day. We find Gospel writers also used the term Passover for the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Moreover on the first of the Unleavened the disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him, “Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?” Mat. 26:17

Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?” Mar. 14:12

Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover must be killed. 8 And He sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat.” Luk. 22:7-8

Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he [Pilot] said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” Jhn. 19:14 [Passover daylight was a preparation day for the Feast of Unleavened Bread.]

But it is Luke who explains, “Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called Passover” (Luk. 22:1), confirming the misnaming. Mark also made the distinction between the two feasts, “After two days it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread” (Mar. 14:1). Toward the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, he sheds light on the lingo slip, “His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem” (Luk. 2:41-43). Since Passover is only one day, we know they went to Jerusalem yearly to celebrate the days of Unleavened Bread as written.

Even when Luke writes The Acts, he uses the cultural jargon “Passover” for the days of Unleavened Bread.

Then he killed James the brother of John with the sword. 3 And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the Days of Unleavened Bread. 4 So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after Passover. Act. 12:2-4

The Gospel of John uses Passover ten times, but for three of the ten, he wrote, “Passover, a feast of the Jews” (Jhn. 2:13, 6:4, 11:55), contrasted to Exodus 12’s Passover naming YHWH nineteen times. Why did he say, “a feast of the Jews”? At this point in history, Israel’s ruling elite had become the oppressor, filled with the devil’s spirit. They had hijacked the mandatory domestic Passover of Abib 14 to an altered temple celebrated rite on Abib 15 only for the elite. After Yeshua’s last Abib 14 Passover and His arrest that night, John commented, “Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning. But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover” (Jhn. 18:28). The Jew’s slaughtered the Passover lambs in the afternoon of Abib 14, but they ate it that night on Abib 15. No longer was Passover a feast unto YHWH, but a feast of the ruling Jews, who justified themselves to eat their Passover while condemning an innocent Man.

Takeaway:
Nowhere in Scripture do we find God changing Passover from Abib 14 to Abib 15. But we do find Israel’s leaders, in an attempt to control the people’s idolatry, inadvertently melded Passover with Unleavened Bread by making Passover a temple sacrifice. Yeshua kept the Abib 14 Passover of YHWH (Lev. 23:5) for the last time before the “Passover, a feast of the Jews.”

Now before the Feast of the Passover [the days of Unleavened Bread], when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. And when supper had been laid…” John 13:1-2a, [] mine

Because Yeshua kept the Passover according to all its ordinances, Paul acknowledges He was “our Passover, sacrificed for us” so that we may be a new lump, truly unleavened (1 Cor. 5:7). He died at the exact time YHWH made the covenant with Abram (Gen. 15). This will be the topic as we move to the next blogs on Unleavened Bread and the Exodus.

Fun Factors:
During the Passover season, the population of Jerusalem and its vicinity swelled to three million or more. Even with all 24 courses of Levites in session, the sheer number of lambs slaughtered for this population was impossible within a 24-hour day, much less the two-hour window (from the 9^th hour to the 11^th hour) that Josephus mentions. Indeed, if all the Passover lambs were killed within the temple space, it would take two weeks at least. Josephus gives the number of lambs sacrificed for Passover as 256,500 and calculated ten persons per lamb (Wars of the Jews, Bk. VI, Ch. IX, Sec. 3). Consequently, the domestic Passover remained in effect in conjunction with the elite’s temple Passover.