The Full Picture of Passover
The animal became a resident and a pet. Imagine seeing your children playing with the lamb as it jumps and happily wags it’s stump of a tail. The youngsters squeal with delight as they laugh and play. You feed it, care for it, and within three days he comes to accept you as family. He feels safe and settles down at night, sleeping contentedly.
The 14th of Nisan comes and you have a sad obligation. It is ordained by God that this lamb, now the beloved pet—healthy, spotless, and innocent—must die. With a heavy heart, you pick up the lamb again. He doesn’t kick and squirm like he did the first time you met.9 You were a stranger then, now he trusts you. You exit the house as the children, who only the night before were playing and frolicking with the woolly one, now wail behind you, tears streaming down their faces. Your household popularity has sunk to an all time low. You mutter to yourself hopefully, “someday they’ll understand,” but you’re not even sure you understand. You do it because God requires it.
Once again, you make the trek to the Temple, climbing its ramps and entering its grand bronze gates. Musicians play and the priestly chorus sings Psalms 118 as you approach the brazen altar. “Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I give thanks to You; You are my God, I extol You. Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting.”10 You bring the lamb down from your shoulders, it’s brown eyes looking at you innocently. Even now, you see it as the carefree giver of love and devotion, the friend and playmate of your children. Even now, at the threshold of its demise, he trusts you completely. Your pulse thumps along the veins of your temples with guilt and your throat squeezes tightly as you try to hold back a flood of tears. “I’m sorry,” is all you can choke out as the priest’s knife slices his throat and blood spills out into the bowl below. You watch as that innocent lamb, so full of life a moment ago, slips away into darkness. The bowl of blood is swiftly taken away and the limp body removed. You follow, watching as it’s body is quickly and prepared for the altar, stretched out on a scaffold not unlike those the Romans crucify men on outside the city walls.11 Great care is taken not to break any bones.12
A priest returns to you in a while, with the roasted meat. Still distraught emotionally, you leave the Temple, casting a glance toward the Kidron Valley. There the blood of the millions of lambs have formed a stream. Somewhere in that sanguine river is the life of your lamb, shed for you. This visage emblazons itself on your brain as you continue home. If you were unpopular before, stealing the lamb away from home, it was now going to get worse. The family had to eat their newfound, beloved pet. A thought obsesses you on your way home, knowing that you’re going to have to face the horrified faces of your children, “The cost, O God, is too great.”
Category: Biblical Studies, Summer 1999
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