Exodus 12’s Passover meal is simple. YHWH asked Israel to eat their roasted lamb with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. Though traditions added other symbolic foods over generations, the basic menu never changed. In this blog, I will look at these three ingredients and their meaning.

Menu: lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread (Exo. 12:8, Num. 9:11)

Lamb
An unblemished, year-old male lamb was chosen by each Israelite family on Abib 10 and kept in the home for four days. On the eve of Abib 14 at twilight, it was slaughtered, and its blood was collected in a basin and struck onto the lintel and side posts of the door to the family’s home using a branch of hyssop. That night the blood protected the life of the firstborns within the house from the death angel, thus maintaining the family lineage. The whole lamb was roasted over the fire without breaking its bones. On average, this takes about four hours, depending on the weight¹, which means the family ate its flesh close to midnight. The lamb’s remains were to be burnt to ashes by morning. The Passover ordinances and statutes all had something to do with the handling of the lamb.

The lamb is a young sheep, gentle, blameless, and vulnerable. Isaiah’s Suffering Servant portrays as a lamb being quietly led to the slaughter. Over eighty times the Torah associates the lamb with sacrifice. Yeshua is called “the Lamb of God” (Jhn. 1:29, 36) who takes away the sins of the world. The Messiah is the Passover lamb sacrificed for us (1Co. 5:7). We are redeemed by “the precious blood of Yeshua, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1Pe. 1:19). Used twenty-seven times, “The Lamb” brings to pass humanity’s return to Eden in John’s Book of Revelation.

The Lamb of God said to us: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven — not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever” (Jhn. 6:53-58).

Bitter Herbs
List: lettuce, endive, horseradish, dandelion greens, chicory, parsley, green onion, and celery²

As was the custom, bitter herbs (known for their cleansing properties) dipped into a bowl of saltwater stood for the hyssop dipped in the lamb’s blood. Both water and blood were cleansing agents in Israel’s worship rites. Eating dipped bitter herbs signified internal cleansing of the heart and mind, a state of repentant humility, recognizing one’s helplessness and great need. Before eating the Passover, we examine ourselves and search our ways, just as the priests examined people’s sickness so they might return to the camp of Israel. The ordinance to eat bitter herbs with the lamb points to the internal purity of heart and mind a person should have to ingest the blameless Passover lamb.

Unleavened Bread
The Scriptures use leavening as a symbol of corruption, the pride of sin. Leavening action spreads throughout the lump of dough, giving it a soured taste. Yeast did not puff up the unleavened bread, so it was sweet and pure. Opposite of pride, unleavenedness signifies the child-like humility mandatory to walk with God. In their flight from Pharaoh, Israel ate unleavened bread for seven days as they followed God’s pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. YHWH imputed their unleavenedness (purity, sinlessness) by grace, sanctioning them to be in His presence. Unleavened bread is equated with manna and doctrine, the Word of God. Eating the unleavened bread of God’s Word grants us to be led by the Spirit of Truth, washing us, engraving His words on our hearts, and establishing us in His endless grace. God resists the proud (leavened) but gives grace to the humble, the unleavened (Jas. 4:6). An unleavened state of a circumcised heart permits us to walk with God, dressed in the white of His holiness, overcoming evil. By eating unleavened bread, His Word, we can walk before God and be blameless (without sin), as did Abraham.

Paul urged the Corinthian church,

“Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1Co. 5:6-8).

Takeaway:
The Passover meal menu calls out that we, in order to eat the Passover lamb, must be pure, washed by the unleavened Word of God. Eating Yeshua’s flesh (symbolic of the lamb and unleavened bread) and drinking His blood (symbolic of wine mixed with water) imparts us with His life force. By YHWH’s favor, Israel left Egypt after the Passover. When we come under the blood of the Lamb on the gates and doorposts of our minds and eat of Him, we, by grace, are free to leave the bondage of sin and death.

Fun Factors:
The three items on the Passover menu, lamb (seh, שֶׂה, letter sum 305, 7² + 16²), bitter herbs (marorim, מְרֹרִים, letter sum 490, 7² + 21²), and unleavened bread (matsowt, מַצּוֹת, letter sum 536, 2³ × 67) when added equal 1331 or 11³.

1331 or 11³ = “The Spirit of knowledge and the fear of YHWH” (Isa. 11:2d).

13 × 31 = 403 = “and God called” the light (Gen. 1:5). Naming light called it into existence.

13 × 31 = the 403 letters of Exodus 25:31-37’s seven verses, the construction of the menorah.

3 × 13 × 31 × 3 = 3627 = “So he [Moses] cried out to YHWH, and YHWH showed [root of torah] him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He set for them a statute and an ordinance and there He proved them,” 18 Hebrew words of Exodus 15:25. (On Passover, Yeshua hung on a tree, giving His life, and by His stripes we are healed, Exodus 15:26, Isaiah 53:5.)

3 × 13 × 31 × 3 = 3627 = “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” 17 Greek words of John 1:1. John’s Gospel is about the new creation through the Lamb of God.

John began his gospel account by introducing the Word of God, Yeshua, as “the Lamb of God” twice and said that His life was the light of humans. He was the true Light, the menorah, that shines in the darkness giving light to every human, so we do not walk in darkness but have the light of life (Jhn. 8:12). As many as did accept Him, letting His light transform us, to us He gave the right to become children of God (Jhn. 1:12). Receiving His Light is numerically connected to the Passover menu, the lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread (sum 1331, 11³), the reality of “the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of YHWH” (sum 1331, 11³). To eat of Him is life.

Yeshua’s Wednesday Passover (day 4 of the week, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) and mid-week of the 19-year Metonic cycle’s leap years (3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, 19) are the centers, the focus of the menorah’s 3-1-3 pattern, the pattern of Genesis 1:1’s seven words. Squaring the mid-point numbers, 4² + 11² = 137, the universe’s constant of how light interacts with matter, equal to the “day of atonements,” 137. Eleven cubed (11³) numerically symbolizes the reality of Light, YHWH’s sacrifice.