Deuteronomy 16:6

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.

But at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name in,.... To place the ark and the mercy seat with the cherubim over them, where he caused his Shechinah, or divine Majesty, to dwell; and this was at Jerusalem, where the temple was built by Solomon: there thou shalt sacrifice the passover; kill and eat the paschal lamb: at even, at the going down of the sun; between the two evenings it was killed, before the sun was set, and afterwards at night it was eaten; the Targum of Jonathan is,"and at evening, at the setting of the sun, ye shall eat it until the middle of the night:" at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt; or as the same Targum,"the time of the beginning of your redemption out of Egypt;''which was when Pharaoh rose at midnight, and gave them leave to go; from thence their redemption commenced, though they did not actually set out until the morning.

But at the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the {e} passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt. (e) Which was instituted to remind them of their deliverance our of Egypt and to encourage them in the hope of Jesus Christ, of whom this lamb was a figure.

There thou shalt sacrifice the passover, to wit, in the court of the tabernacle or temple. This he prescribed, partly, that this great work might be done with more solemnity and care, in such manner as God required; partly, because it was not only a sacrament, but also a sacrifice, as appears because it is so called, Exodus 12:27 23:18 34:25 Numbers 9:7 , and because here was the sprinkling of blood, which is the essential part and character of a sacrifice; and partly, to design the place where Christ, the true Passover or Lamb of God, was to be slain. At the season; understand this with some latitude, as such phrases are commonly taken, about that season, when you had received command from me to go out of Egypt, and were preparing yourselves for the journey.

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.

6. at the season—that is, the month and day, though not perhaps the precise hour. The immense number of victims that had to be immolated on the eve of the passover—that is, within a space of four hours—has appeared to some writers a great difficulty. But the large number of officiating priests, their dexterity and skill in the preparation of the sacrifices, the wide range of the court, the extraordinary dimensions of the altar of burnt offering and orderly method of conducting the solemn ceremonial, rendered it easy to do that in a few hours, which would otherwise have required as many days.

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 ).