Passover: From Egypt to the Cross
In the last series, we explored the life of a typical Jewish person in the first century, the world that Jesus lived and taught in, and the geographical landscape of the Gospels. This new series will focus on Jewish festivals, their origins, and their development through history.
Before there was a Temple in Jerusalem, before Israel had a king, and before the Hebrew people ever entered the Promised Land, there was Passover.
Exodus 12 lays out the origins of Passover. The Hebrew people are still in Egypt and Pharaoh won’t let them go. Then God told Moses how the last night would unfold. Each household was to take a lamb without blemish, and on the fourteenth day, at twilight, they were to kill it and put some of the blood on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the house. That night they were to eat the flesh roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, dressed for travel and eating in haste. “It is the LORD’s Passover” (Exodus 12:11).
God would pass through Egypt that night and strike the firstborn. “Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you” (Exodus 12:13).
Their slavery in Egypt was coming to an end, but they would carry the memory of a lamb, a marked door, and a night when death passed over the houses God claimed as His own. “This day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations” (Exodus 12:14).
Passover was an act of remembrance long before it became a pilgrimage feast centered on the Temple in Jerusalem. That is where the feast begins. What did God establish that night? How did Israel keep it in the land? What did it look like by the first century? And how does that change the way we read the Gospels?
Passover and Unleavened Bread
Believers often treat Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread as if they were simply two names for the same thing; however, Scripture is a little more precise than that.
The Passover lamb was killed on the fourteenth day of the first month, as evening approached. The meal was eaten after sunset. As we learned in From Sunset to Sabbath, the new day began in the evening at sunset. The Feast of Unleavened Bread then ran seven days, from the fifteenth through the twenty-first. “On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD’s Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; seven days you must eat unleavened bread” (Leviticus 23:5-6).
The two sit back-to-back and they belong together. One remembers the lamb and the blood; the other remembers the quick departure and the bread that had no time to rise. But they do not begin as a single feast with the same name. Over time, Scripture even begins to speak of them as one connected season. Deuteronomy treats the sacrifice and the seven days of unleavened bread in one set of instructions (Deuteronomy 16:1-8). Luke does the same: “Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called Passover” (Luke 22:1).
By the first century the two names often described one pilgrimage week in Jerusalem. That distinction is worth keeping though. It will matter later when John speaks of “the Preparation Day of the Passover.”
You Shall Keep It as a Feast
The first Passover was in Egypt as the Lord passed over the houses marked with the blood of the lamb. There was no Temple and no king, but it didn’t stay that way.
When God’s people were in the wilderness, the Lord made room for those who could not keep the feast on time. Those who were away on a journey or who were ceremonially unclean because they touched a dead body were given the opportunity to remember the Passover in the second month (Numbers 9:6–13). It was not cancelled.
As Israel prepared to enter the Promised Land, Deuteronomy added another change. The people were no longer to sacrifice Passover “within any of your gates,” but “at the place where the LORD your God chooses to make His name abide… at twilight, at the going down of the sun” (Deuteronomy 16:5–6). That command centralized Passover worship. Centuries later, Jerusalem became the center of Israel’s sacrificial worship, including the Passover.
The historical books of the Old Testament, which we introduced in What is the Bible, show how this unfolded and changed through the leaders of Israel. Under Hezekiah, Judah kept the Passover delayed to the second month. Messengers even went to the remnant of the northern tribes. Some came, some laughed, and many who did come were not properly cleansed, but Hezekiah prayed for them. The Chronicler still calls it a time of great joy in Jerusalem, unlike anything since Solomon (2 Chronicles 30).
Josiah’s Passover went back to the words of Moses, as he commanded that the feast be kept as written. “Such a Passover surely had never been held since the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah” (2 Kings 23:22; see also 2 Chronicles 35).
After the exile, the returned community kept Passover. “And the descendants of the captivity kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month” (Ezra 6:19). They slaughtered the lambs, ate with those who had separated themselves from the people of the land, and kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy.
These accounts tell us something important before we reach the first century. Passover could be delayed, neglected, recovered, centralized, and treated as a national act of covenant remembrance. It was never only a private household custom. Its observance developed considerably between Exodus 12 and the time of Jesus and the Gospels.
Passover in the Time of Jesus
By the first century, during Jesus’ time, Passover had grown from the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt into one of their greatest pilgrimage feasts, and Jerusalem filled with worshipers for the celebration.
Jerusalem was crowded. Pilgrims came from Galilee, Judea, and much farther away. Josephus, writing as a first-century Jew, gives us an idea of how large the crowd was. He says that when Cestius Gallus, the Roman governor of Syria, wanted to know how many people were gathering in Jerusalem, the high priests counted 256,500 Passover sacrifices. Since at least ten people shared each sacrifice, Josephus estimated the crowds in the millions. These numbers are almost certainly exaggerated, but the picture is clear: the city was packed, rooms were hard to find, and Rome paid attention when the Passover came.
Households prepared, leaven was removed from the house, and pilgrims arrived early enough to be ready for the sacrifice. John tells us that many went up to Jerusalem before Passover “to purify themselves” (John 11:55).
The sacrifice itself took place on the afternoon of the fourteenth of the first month. Josephus says the animals were slain from the ninth hour until the eleventh, in companies, and that a company was not to be fewer than ten, though many were about twenty. The meal was then shared that night in Jerusalem by groups of pilgrims, often large enough for several people to share one animal.
The Mishnah is a collection of Jewish oral traditions and laws compiled about AD 200. It was written well after the time of Jesus, but some of its material preserves or reflects earlier traditions and can help us understand Jewish practices and debates closer to the first century. The Mishnah remembers the Temple scene in detail: groups entering the courts in turn, priests passing bowls of blood toward the altar, and the Hallel (Psalms 113–118) being recited during the offering. It was not an eyewitness account, but it is a useful later memory of Temple practice.
At the table, the Torah’s meal was still recognizable: roasted lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. By the first century, wine would have been included with the meal. The Gospels also show them reclining at the meal (Mark 14:18; Luke 22:14; John 13:23). Later Jewish teaching explained reclining as a sign of freedom, but we should not read that later symbolism back into the upper room with Jesus and the disciples. The Hallel psalms were associated with Passover praise, and Mark tells us that Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn before leaving for the Mount of Olives (Mark 14:26).
When we think of Passover in the time of Jesus, it is important that we do not insert later traditions into the first century. A fully developed Haggadah, the familiar seder plate, later explanations and names attached to the four cups, the hidden afikomen, and Elijah’s cup should not be read back into Jesus’ day. Some of these traditions do have ancient roots, while others were developed much later. The Passover that Jesus celebrated stood within the same Jewish tradition that continued to develop after the destruction of the Temple, but the modern seder was not there yet.
Jesus and the Passover
Jesus came to Jerusalem for the feast the nation was already keeping. Luke says His parents went up every year at Passover, and He spent His final week there before His crucifixion during this pilgrimage (Luke 2:41; John 11:55; 12:1, 12). The crowds, the lamb, the bread, and the hymns formed the setting for His final week.
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) present the last supper as a Passover meal. Mark says the disciples prepared it “on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb” (Mark 14:12). Jesus reclined with them, took bread, broke it, and gave it to them. He took a cup and told them to drink, and He foretold his approaching death. Luke records the cup as “the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). The old meal of deliverance was still on the table, but Jesus placed Himself at the center of it.
John tells the week differently, and he leans harder on the lamb. At the beginning of the Gospel, John the Baptist sees Jesus and says, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). At the end, John sets the trial and the cross on “the Preparation Day of the Passover” (John 19:14). He also records that the soldiers did not break Jesus’ legs, and he presents that fact as the fulfillment of Scripture: “not one of His bones shall be broken” (John 19:36). Exodus 12:46 says that none of the Passover animal’s bones were to be broken. John emphasizes that fact in the context of Passover and other Scripture.
The New Testament does not treat every detail of Exodus 12 as a checklist of predictions about Jesus. For example, the Passover animal was to be a year-old male from the sheep or the goats. Instead of trying to force every regulation into a parallel, the apostles make the connections clearer.
The lamb was to be without blemish (Exodus 12:5). Peter describes believers as redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19). In Egypt the blood marked the houses of God’s people, and death passed over them. At the table Jesus speaks of a new covenant in His blood. John points to the unbroken bones. Paul says, “For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us,” and in the next verse “Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven… but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7–8).
The Synoptic Gospels present the Last Supper as a Passover meal, while John says that the Jewish leaders would not enter Pilate’s headquarters because they wanted to remain clean “that they might eat the Passover” (John 18:28), and later calls the day of Jesus’ trial “the Preparation Day of the Passover” (John 19:14). Scholars have proposed several ways to reconcile these accounts, including the possibility that different calendars were being used or that the word Passover could refer to more than the meal itself. Others understand John and the Synoptic Gospels as preserving different chronologies.
There is more involved in that discussion than we need to settle here. The Synoptics show Him interpreting the Passover meal around His approaching death, while John places His crucifixion against the preparation for the feast. However the chronology is ultimately understood, Passover is the unmistakable setting through which the Gospels ask us to view Jesus’ final meal and His death.
Passover Today
After the Temple was destroyed in AD 70, the sacrifice at the center of Passover could no longer be offered. Jerusalem was no longer filled with pilgrims bringing lambs to the courts. The feast did not disappear. Without the sacrifice, its center increasingly moved to the table.
Over the centuries, Jewish communities shaped a home observance around the telling of the Exodus. That night is now called the seder, from a word that means order. The Haggadah, a word meaning “telling,” became the guide for recounting the Exodus during the seder. A seder plate holds symbolic foods, and four cups of wine mark the evening. Later customs include the hidden piece of unleavened bread called the afikomen and setting a cup for Elijah.
Some of these practices have ancient roots. Wine, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and the retelling of the Exodus go way back. Others took shape after the Temple fell, and some are medieval or later. The seder is a living tradition. It is not a snapshot of Jesus’ day.
That tradition deserves respect. It has been one of the central ways Jewish families have continued the command to remember through nearly two thousand years without a Temple. It should not be read as though it belonged to the Last Supper. The Passover Jesus knew stood within the same story, but it was not yet the seder on most modern tables.
From Exodus to the Cross
Passover began with Israel in Egypt. A lamb was sacrificed. Blood marked the houses God claimed as His own. Death passed over, and a people in bondage walked out free. God told them not to leave that night behind. “This day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations” (Exodus 12:14).
They kept it unevenly, in the wilderness, in the land, under Hezekiah and Josiah, and after the exile. By the first century, Jerusalem was still filling with worshipers to remember the same deliverance, and Jesus came to that feast for the last time. He reclined with the Twelve. He took the bread and the cup and spoke of His own death. John sets the cross against the Preparation Day for the Passover. Paul wrote to Corinth, “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7).
The Exodus and the Passion are not the same event. The New Testament intentionally draws them together. Lamb, blood, bread, and deliverance were already Israel’s language for the night God brought them out of slavery. The apostles used that language for what God did in Jesus. Understanding the feast should make those words carry more weight when we read the Passion narratives.
Passover began with a people waiting through the night for God to deliver them from bondage. More than a thousand years later, Jerusalem filled again with worshipers remembering that night, as Jesus gathered with His disciples and went to the cross. Once we see the feast behind the Gospel accounts, familiar words about the lamb, the blood, the bread, and deliverance begin to carry the weight of the history that came before them.
Sources and Further Reading
Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War, Book 6.9.3. Josephus is the main first-century source for the size of the Passover crowds, the afternoon slaughter of the sacrifices, and the practice of sharing one animal among a company of at least ten. His numbers are almost certainly inflated, but they still show why the Gospels assume a packed Jerusalem. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/war-6.html
Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book 3.10.5. Josephus’s paraphrase of the biblical feast, including the fourteenth-day sacrifice and the seven days of unleavened bread that follow. Useful for how a first-century Jew retold Exodus. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-3.html
Philo, On the Special Laws 2.145–149. A first-century description of Passover from Alexandria: large numbers of sacrifices from noon until evening, households sharing in the offering, and unleavened bread tied to the haste of the Exodus. https://beta.perseus.tufts.edu/urn%3Acts%3AgreekLit%3Atlg0018.tlg024.1st1K-grc1%3A2/
Mishnah Pesachim 5. Compiled around AD 200, this chapter remembers the Temple sacrifice in groups, priests handling the blood, and the Hallel recited while the offering went on. Later rabbinic memory of Temple practice, not an eyewitness account from Jesus’ lifetime. https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Pesachim.5
Mishnah Pesachim 10. An early rabbinic outline of the evening order that developed into the seder, including wine, the telling, and the interpretation of the special foods. The place to see how Passover was reshaped after the Temple fell. https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Pesachim.10
“Rabbinic Development of Passover.” My Jewish Learning. A clear overview of how the home seder took shape after AD 70, and why four cups, the Haggadah, and later table customs should not be read straight back into the first century. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/rabbinic-development-of-passover/
Baruch M. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism. University of California Press, 1984. A major scholarly study of why the mature seder cannot be treated as a photograph of the meal in the upper room. Bokser traces the shift from the Temple sacrifice to the rabbinic table after AD 70. https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-origins-of-the-seder/paper
Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. Fortress Press, 1969. Still useful for the pilgrimage crowds, lodging, and the practical pressure Passover placed on the city, read with the usual caution about his crowd estimates. https://archive.org/details/jerusalemintimeo00jere_0