Deuteronomy 16:4

16:1-17 The laws for the three yearly feasts are here repeated; that of the Passover, that of the Pentecost, that of Tabernacles; and the general law concerning the people's attendance. Never should a believer forget his low estate of guilt and misery, his deliverance, and the price it cost the Redeemer; that gratitude and joy in the Lord may be mingled with sorrow for sin, and patience under the tribulations in his way to the kingdom of heaven. They must rejoice in their receivings from God, and in their returns of service and sacrifice to him; our duty must be our delight, as well as our enjoyment. If those who were under the law must rejoice before God, much more we that are under the grace of the gospel; which makes it our duty to rejoice evermore, to rejoice in the Lord always. When we rejoice in God ourselves, we should do what we can to assist others also to rejoice in him, by comforting the mourners, and supplying those who are in want. All who make God their joy, may rejoice in hope, for He is faithful that has promised.

And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy coasts seven days,.... For before the passover they were to search diligently every room in the house, and every hole and crevice, that none might remain any where; see Exodus 12:15 , neither shall there be anything of the flesh, which thou sacrificedst the first day at even, remain all night until the morning; which may be understood both of the flesh of the passover lamb, as Aben Ezra, according to Exodus 12:10 and of the flesh of flocks and herds, or of the Chagigah; according to Jarchi this Scripture speaks of the Chagigah of the fourteenth, which was not to remain on the first day of the feast (the fifteenth) until the morning of the second day (the sixteenth).

Verse 4. - No leavened bread ; properly, no leaven ( שְׂאֹר ) (cf. Exodus 12:15 ). Not only was no leavened bread ( מַצָּה ) or dough ( חָמֵץ ) to be used by them, leaven itself was not to be in the house (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:7 ; see Kitto's 'Cyclop. of Bibl. Lit.,' vol. 3. p. 429). Deuteronomy 16:4

At even, i.e. of the passover properly so called, and by these words plainly described; which circumlocution may seem to insinuate that the word passover, Deu 16:1 , was improperly used, and therefore he chose rather to describe it than to name it, lest the ambiguity of the word should occasion some mistake.

Sacrifice the passover - "i. e." offer the sacrifices proper to the feast of the Passover, which lasted seven days. Compare a similar use of the word in a general sense in John 18:28 . In the latter part of Deuteronomy 16:4 and in the following verses Moses passes, as the context again shows, into the narrower sense of the word Passover.

Israel was to make ready the Passover to the Lord in the earing month (see at Exodus 12:2 ). The precise day is supposed to be known from Exodus 12 , as in Exodus 23:15 . פּסח עשׂה (to prepare the Passover), which is used primarily to denote the preparation of the paschal lamb for a festal meal, is employed here in a wider signification viz., "to keep the Passover." At this feast they were to slay sheep and oxen to the Lord for a Passover, at the place, etc. In Deuteronomy 16:2 , as in Deuteronomy 16:1 , the word "Passover" is employed in a broader sense, and includes not only the paschal lamb, but the paschal sacrifices generally, which the Rabbins embrace under the common name of chagiga; not the burnt-offerings and sin-offerings, however, prescribed in Numbers 28:19-26 , but all the sacrifices that were slain at the feast of the Passover (i.e., during the seven days of the Mazzoth, which are included under the name of pascha) for the purpose of holding sacrificial meals. This is evident from the expression "of the flock and the herd;" as it was expressly laid down, that only a שׂה, i.e., a yearling animal of the sheep or goats, was to be slain for the paschal meal on the fourteenth of the month in the evening, and an ox was never slaughtered in the place of the lamb.

But if any doubt could exist upon this point, it would be completely set aside by Deuteronomy 16:3 : "Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it: seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith." As the word "therewith" cannot possibly refer to anything else than the "Passover" in Deuteronomy 16:2 , it is distinctly stated that the slaughtering and eating of the Passover was to last seven days, whereas the Passover lamb was to be slain and consumed in the evening of the fourteenth Abib ( Exodus 12:10 ).