Shachat and the Passover Offering

We have now read two of the three words in Exodus 12:6. The lamb was a charge “before(ad עד) the fourteenth day,” and it was offered “between the evenings,” in the evening that opens the fourteenth. The third word tells us what was done in that evening.

The word is shachat שחט shaw-khat'. In Exodus 12:6 the YLV reads, “all the assembly of the congregation of Israel shall offer him (shachat) between the evenings.” Most English Bibles render the word “kill” or “slaughter” there. The King James Version, for example, reads “shall kill it in the evening.” This chapter sets out why the YLV says “offer,” and why the difference bears directly on the timetable of the cross.

A Problem of Numbers

Begin with plain common sense. Picture the whole assembly of Israel at Passover, a household or two to every lamb. Then picture the time Scripture gives for the Passover: one evening, from the first glow of sunset to the last of its light. If shachat meant only the act of killing, every family in Israel would have to slaughter its own lamb in that short evening, and in the land they would all have to do it at one place.

In Egypt the Passover was kept at each house. But Moses told Israel that in the land it would be different.

Deuteronomy 16:5-6 You are not able to sacrifice the Passover within one of your gates that the LORD your God gives you; 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 מוֹעֵד mo-ade') of your coming forth out of Egypt.

All Israel would come to “the place that the LORD your God will choose,” and all of them would offer in that one evening. So great a number could not have killed all their lambs at one place between the first and last light of the sunset. What Exodus 12:6 describes, then, is the assembly bringing to the LORD a sacrifice already made ready, and offering it.

A Feast Cannot Be Slaughtered

Now read the verse that settles the matter. It tells of the Passover kept in the days of King Josiah.

2 Chronicles 35:1 And Josiah kept in Jerusalem a Passover to the LORD; and they offered the Passover (shachat) on the fourteenth of the first month.

Look at what the verb takes as its object. It is not “the lamb” and not “the animal.” It is ha-pesach, the Passover itself. The King James Version renders the verse “and they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month,” and many Jewish and Christian renderings read the same way. But the Passover is an appointed feast, a moed. A feast cannot be slaughtered; “they slaughtered the Passover” makes no sense. When the object of shachat is the Passover, the feast itself, the only meaning that fits is “they offered the Passover.” That is Scripture’s own usage, and the YLV renders it so.

The rest of the chapter bears this out, because the whole of 2 Chronicles 35 is an account of how the Passover was offered. Josiah set the priests and the Levites in their places, and then he gave the command:

2 Chronicles 35:6 And offer the Passover (shachat), and sanctify yourselves, and prepare for your brethren, to do according to the word of the LORD by the hand of Moses."

Offering, sanctifying, and preparing stand together in one sentence. Then the work itself is described.

2 Chronicles 35:11 And they offered the Passover (shachat), and the priests dashed the blood from their hand, and the Levites were flaying.

The priests dashed the blood and the Levites flayed; each had their part, and the whole was one service of offering. The account closes by gathering it up.

2 Chronicles 35:16-17 And all the service (avodah עֲבֹדָה ab-o-daw') of the LORD was prepared on that day, to keep the Passover, and to offer up burnt-offerings upon the altar of the LORD, according to the commandment (mitzvah מִצוָה mits-vaw') of king Josiah. And the children of Israel who were present kept the Passover at that time, and the feast (chag חַג khag) of unleavened bread seven days.

First “all the service (avodah) of the LORD was prepared on that day”; then the Passover was kept, together with “the feast (chag) of unleavened bread seven days.” From its first verse to its last, the chapter describes an offering that was carefully made ready, not a single evening of killing.

When “Slaughter,” and When “Offer”

How a word is rendered must be decided by Scripture’s own usage. Where the text speaks of killing an animal, shachat is “slaughter,” and the YLV itself renders it so in Leviticus 1:5: “And he shall slaughter the son of the herd before the LORD.” But where the setting is the appointed offering, the word is “offer”: in Exodus 12:21, 2 Chronicles 30:15, 35:1, 6, and 11, and Ezra 6:20, where the object is the Passover itself, and in Exodus 12:6 and 34:25 as well. Exodus 34:25 shows it plainly.

Exodus 34:25 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice (shachat) upon leavened bread; and the sacrifice of the feast (chag) of the Passover shall not remain overnight until the morning.

The verse is about what is brought before the LORD, not about where or how an animal dies.

Nor is “killed” found in one place only. In six verses the Passover itself is the object of shachat, and the same pattern runs through them all; the table adds Exodus 12:6 and 34:25 for comparison.

In all six the King James Version reads “kill” or “killed,” and the YLV reads “offer” or “offered,” as it does in Exodus 12:6. Yet in Exodus 34:25 the King James Version itself gives the same word its offering sense: “Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.” Deuteronomy 16:2, 5, and 6 use a different verb, zavach, “sacrifice the Passover.”

A reader who starts from “killed” pictures every household killing its lamb in one evening, and the timetable of the Passover goes wrong from the first step. The usual Jewish reading also keeps “slaughter” in these verses, and read that way, the timetable of the Torah and the timetable of the cross are hard to set side by side. We say this with deep respect, only to show where the reading of one word leads.

Preparing and Offering

Read this way, the lamb was chosen on the tenth and kept as a charge up to the fourteenth. Before the fourteenth came, the offering was made ready with care. Then, in the evening that opened the fourteenth, all Israel offered it to the LORD “between the evenings.”

This places the work of preparation where the calendar already placed it, in the daytime of the thirteenth, the day John calls “the preparation day for the Passover” (John 19:14). As we saw in Chapters 19 and 20, it was also the day by which households had cleared out the last of their leaven.

The Hour of the Offerings

As we will see in Chapter 31, Yeshua was nailed to the cross at the third hour of the thirteenth, and He died at the ninth hour, about 3 p.m., in the daytime of the preparation day. It was the very time when the Passover offerings were being made ready for the whole people to offer in the evening that would open the fourteenth. In those hours the One whom Paul calls “Messiah our Passover” “gave up His pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit)” (Matthew 27:50).

So the question with which Chapter 28 began has its answer. The Messiah did not die a day too early to be the Passover. He died on the day the Passover was prepared. His body was laid in the tomb by late afternoon, and when the evening came and the fourteenth began, and the households of Israel offered and ate the Passover, the offering He made was already complete.

What These Three Chapters Show

These three chapters have read one verse, Exodus 12:6, word by word and with the biblical day in view. It places the keeping before the fourteenth, the offering at the evening that opens it, and the preparation in the daytime of the thirteenth. Each piece is a word of Moses, read beside other passages of Scripture: Genesis 3:19 for ad, Numbers 9 and Joshua 5 for “between the evenings,” and Exodus 34 and 2 Chronicles 35 for shachat.

With the lamb and its hour settled, we can go back to the road from the Praetorium. It ended at Golgotha, and the next chapter takes up the hours that followed there, from the third hour, when they crucified Him, to the ninth, when He cried out with a loud voice.