When the Evening Opens the Fourteenth

The last chapter ended with the closing words of Exodus 12:6: “all the assembly of the congregation of Israel shall offer him (shachat שחט shaw-khat') between the evenings.” The lamb was kept as a charge up to the fourteenth day, and then it was offered. This chapter asks exactly when “between the evenings” falls.

In Hebrew the phrase is bein ha-arbayim בין הערבים bane. Bein means “between,” and arbayim is the word for evening, erev, in a form that speaks of two. Read word for word, it says “between the two evenings.” The YLV renders it “between the evenings.”

Two Ways the Phrase Has Been Read

Because the phrase speaks of two evenings, readers have long asked where the two lie and how much time stands between them. Some have stretched the phrase across the whole afternoon, from the hour the sun begins to decline until it sets, so that the lambs could be killed at any time in those hours. Others have narrowed it to the short space between sunset and full dark. Each view has been held by serious people, and each tries to make sense of a phrase that does sound unusual to us.

This book reads it differently, by the Bible’s own way of reckoning the day. The phrase “between the evenings” is the evening itself: the span from the first glow of sunset, while the sun is still going down, to the last of the afterglow once the sun has crossed the horizon. It is not a span across the afternoon, and it is not a moment after dark. It is the evening, seen from its first light to its last.

That reading is not a guess. Scripture itself confirms it, because the Bible tells the story of two Passovers kept by the same people and names their time in two different ways.

The Passover in the Wilderness

In the second year after the Exodus, Israel was still camped at Sinai, and the LORD told Moses to keep the Passover there.

Numbers 9:3 On the fourteenth day in this month, between the evenings, you shall make it in its appointed time (moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade'); according to all its statutes (chuqqot חֻקָּה khook-kaw') and according to all its judgments (mishpat מִשׁפָּט mish-pawt') you shall make it."

Numbers 9:5 And they made the Passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, between the evenings, in the wilderness of Sinai; according to all that the LORD commanded (tzivvah צָוָה tsaw-vaw') Moses, so the children of Israel did.

The command and the record of its keeping both use the same words: “on the fourteenth day of the month, between the evenings.” This is the phrase of Exodus 12:6, given again as the time of the Passover, “in its appointed time (moed).” An appointed time is not left loose. The LORD fixed it, and Israel kept it “according to all that the LORD commanded.”

The Passover at Gilgal

Forty years after the Exodus the next generation crossed the Jordan. Soon after they entered the land and were circumcised, they kept the Passover.

Joshua 5:10 And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and they made the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at evening in the plains of Jericho.

This is the same nation, keeping the same appointed time on the same day of the month. Numbers says it was made “on the fourteenth day of the month, between the evenings.” Joshua says it was made “on the fourteenth day of the month at evening.” Where Numbers has “between the evenings,” Joshua simply has “evening,” erev, a single evening.

Scripture would not describe the same command in two ways that point to two different times. Joshua’s plain word tells us what Moses’ phrase means. The phrase “between the evenings” names the evening. It is one evening, with its first light and its last light, and the Passover was made within it.

At the Going of the Sun

Deuteronomy adds a third witness, and it is the most vivid of the three.

Deuteronomy 16:6 but at the place that the LORD your God will choose to make His name dwell there, you shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening, at the going of the sun, the appointed time (moed) of your coming forth out of Egypt.

Moses writes “in the evening, at the going of the sun.” He does not say after the sun has gone. He says at its going: while the sun is on its way down. That is the very picture of evening we saw in Chapter 3. The Passover is offered in the evening, and the evening is already present while the sun is going down. The same verse calls this hour “the appointed time (moed) of your coming forth out of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 16:1 had already said that the LORD brought Israel out of Egypt “by night.” The Passover evening is the threshold of that night.

Evening Opens the Day

Now set these verses beside what Chapter 3 showed. When the daytime ends and evening comes, a new day has begun. An evening is never split in half, as though its first part belonged to the day before and only its last part to the new day. One evening has three parts: the evening before the sun goes down, the going down of the sun, and the evening after it has gone down. All three belong to the same new day, and that whole evening is bein ha-arbayim, “between the evenings.” Deuteronomy’s “in the evening, at the going of the sun” stands in its middle, and Joshua’s single word erev names the whole of it. The latter part of the day before, the afternoon from about the ninth hour, is what the Gospels call opse ὀψέ op-seh'. It still belongs to the old day, and in it everything for the evening is made ready.

The phrase “between the evenings,” then, is not a time at the end of the fourteenth. It is the evening that opens the fourteenth, the first part of that day. This is why Leviticus can put the date and the hour together without any strain: “In the first month, on the fourteenth of the month, between the evenings, is a Passover to the LORD” (Leviticus 23:5). The fourteenth comes in with its evening, and the Passover is offered in that evening.

It also explains why the unleavened bread begins at the same time: “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread” (Exodus 12:18). The lamb is offered and the bread begins in one and the same evening: the evening that comes when the thirteenth’s daytime has ended and the fourteenth begins.

Putting the Two Words Together

The first two of these words in Exodus 12:6 now fit together, and they point to the same place on the calendar. The keeping of the lamb runs up to the fourteenth, and the offering is made in the evening with which the fourteenth begins. Numbers, Joshua, and Deuteronomy each say the same thing in their own words, and Leviticus 23:5 gathers it into one line.

This also tells us something about the hours just before. If the offering belonged to the evening that opens the fourteenth, then the work of making the offerings ready had to be done before that evening came on, in the daytime of the thirteenth. A household cannot offer at evening what it has not prepared. John’s name for the thirteenth, “the preparation day for the Passover” (John 19:14), fits this exactly.

One Evening Is Short

A careful reader will notice a difficulty. If the Passover was offered in one evening, from the first glow to the last light, that is not a long time. In Egypt each household offered its own lamb at its own door. In the land, Moses commanded that the Passover be offered at one place only, the place the LORD would choose for His name, as Deuteronomy 16:6 itself says. How could the whole assembly of Israel offer its lambs at one place, in one short evening?

The answer lies in the third of these words in Exodus 12:6, the word shachat. Most English Bibles render it “kill” or “slaughter.” The YLV renders it “offer.” The next chapter shows why that difference matters, and how the work of the thirteenth and the offering of the fourteenth fit together.