Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
One Law for the Native and the Stranger
Exodus 12:43-51
43 Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover. No foreigner shall eat of it, · WEB
Membership in the redeemed community is settled by covenant rather than by descent, and a bone of the lamb is not to be broken.
This is the ordinance of the Passover. No foreigner shall eat of it Exodus 12:43.
The restriction sounds ethnic and turns out not to be. Two verses later a bought slave may eat once circumcised Exodus 12:44, and five verses later the door is opened as wide as it goes: when a stranger lives as a foreigner with you, and would like to keep the Passover to Yahweh, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it. He shall be as one who is born in the land Exodus 12:48.
The line is not drawn between nations. It is drawn between those who have accepted the covenant sign and those who have not, and it is crossable in one direction by anyone willing to cross it. The rule is then stated as a principle: one law shall be to him who is born at home, and to the stranger who lives as a foreigner among you Exodus 12:49.
This is placed immediately after the mixed multitude leaves Egypt Exodus 12:38, and the arrangement is not accidental. Foreigners have just joined the nation in large numbers, and before the first day's march is over their standing is settled: the same law, the same feast, the same access. Israel is being defined at its founding as a community anyone may enter and no one may inherit without commitment. Everything the prophets later say about the outsider, and everything the apostles say about the wall being broken down Ephesians 2:12–13, is built on this paragraph rather than added to it.
It must be eaten in one house. You shall not carry any of the meat outside of the house Exodus 12:46. The meal cannot be divided or exported. A family shelters under one lamb in one place, and the rule against carrying portions away keeps the rite from becoming a token.
Do not break any of its bones Exodus 12:46.
The instruction has no evident practical purpose, and it is the one detail of the Passover that the New Testament records as fulfilled to the letter. The soldiers broke the legs of the two men crucified beside Jesus and did not break his, and the account stops the narrative to say why: these things happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled, "A bone of him will not be broken" John 19:36. A regulation given to slaves painting doorframes in the delta is cited as a prophecy at a Roman execution fifteen centuries later.
All the children of Israel did so. As Yahweh commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. That same day, Yahweh brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their armies Exodus 12:50–51.
The formula of exact obedience appears here for the first time in the book. It will return, dozens of times, in the building of the tabernacle, and the repetition in both places carries the same weight: what God specified was done as specified.
settled What this mark means