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Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 16

1 Observe the month Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in that month he brought you out of Egypt by night. 2 You must sacrifice the Passover animal (from the flock or the herd) to the Lord your God in the place where he chooses to locate his name. 3 You must not eat any yeast with it; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast, as symbolic of affliction, for you came out of Egypt hurriedly. You must do this so you will remember for the rest of your lives the day you came out of the land of Egypt. 4 There must not be a scrap of yeast within your land for seven days, nor can any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until the next morning. 5 You may not sacrifice the Passover in just any of your villages that the Lord your God is giving you, 6 but you must sacrifice it in the evening in the place where he chooses to locate his name, at sunset, the time of day you came out of Egypt.⁠ 7 You must boil13 and eat it in the place the Lord your God chooses;⁠ you may return the next morning to your tents.⁠ 8 You must eat bread made without yeast for six days. The seventh day you are to hold an assembly for the Lord your God; you must not do any work on that day. 9 You must count seven weeks; you must begin to count them from the time you begin to harvest the standing grain. 10 Then you are to celebrate the Feast of Weeks before the Lord your God with the voluntary offering that you will bring, in proportion to how he has blessed you. 11 You shall rejoice before him—you, your son, your daughter, your male and female slaves, the Levites in your villages, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows among you—in the place where the Lord chooses to locate his name. 12 Furthermore, remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and so be careful to observe these statutes. 13 You must celebrate the Feast of Shelters for seven days, at the time of the grain and grape harvest. 14 You are to rejoice in your festival,⁠ you, your son, your daughter, your male and female slaves, the Levites, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows who are in your villages. 15 You are to celebrate the festival seven days before the Lord your God in the place he chooses, for he will bless you in all your productivity and in whatever you do; so you will indeed rejoice! 16 Three times a year all your males must appear before the Lord your God in the place he chooses for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Shelters; and they must not appear before him empty-handed. 17 Every one of you must give as you are able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you. 18 You must appoint judges and civil servants for each tribe in all your villages that the Lord your God is giving you, and they must judge the people fairly.⁠ 19 You must not pervert justice or show favor. Do not take a bribe, for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and distort the words of the righteous.⁠ 20 You must pursue justice alone so that you may live and inherit the land the Lord your God is giving you.⁠ 21 You must not plant any kind of tree as a sacred Asherah pole near the altar of the Lord your God which you build for yourself.⁠ 22 You must not erect a sacred pillar, a thing the Lord your God detests.

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 12:31 and Deuteronomy 16:6

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Exodus 12 presents Passover at night, with the meal eaten as the plague strikes at midnight and Pharaoh sends Israel out before morning. Deuteronomy 16 says the sacrifice was at sunset, showing how later tradition reshaped the timing of the ritual.

Passages

Exodus 12:31

Hebrew Bible
29 It happened at midnight—the Lord attacked all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the prison, and all the firstborn of the cattle. 30 Pharaoh got up in the night, along with all his servants and all Egypt, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no house in which there was not someone dead. 31 Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, “Get up, get out from among my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, serve the Lord as you have requested! 32 Also, take your flocks and your herds, just as you have requested, and leave. But bless me also.” 33 The Egyptians were urging the people on, in order to send them out of the land quickly, for they were saying, “We are all dead!”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

Deuteronomy 16:6

Hebrew Bible
4 There must not be a scrap of yeast within your land for seven days, nor can any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until the next morning. 5 You may not sacrifice the Passover in just any of your villages that the Lord your God is giving you, 6 but you must sacrifice it in the evening in the place where he chooses to locate his name, at sunset, the time of day you came out of Egypt. 7 You must boil13 and eat it in the place the Lord your God chooses; you may return the next morning to your tents. 8 You must eat bread made without yeast for six days. The seventh day you are to hold an assembly for the Lord your God; you must not do any work on that day.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

References

"... When Jubilees, a book much concerned with chronology and calendrical precision, did not have to improve upon its sources regarding the date of Passover (as it did in the case of the Festival of Weeks). Several scriptural passages define 1/14 as the date of Passover (e.g., Exodus 12:6; Leviticus 23:5; Numbers 9:3, 5; 28:16), and Jubilees simply repeats it (49:1, 10). If the date was not in question, the specific times for sacrificing and eating the Passover lamb were less clear. Exodus 12 says about these issues: “You shall keep it [the lamb] until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight ... They shall eat the lamb that same night ...” (12:6, 8). Exodus 12:29 names midnight as the time when the Lord struck the firstborn (as the Israelites were feasting), and Deuteronomy 16:6 adds that the Passover sacrifice is to occur “in the evening at sunset, the time of day when you departed from Egypt.” Exodus 12:10 stipulates that nothing is to remain until the morning; if it does it is to be burned. The Book of Jubilees elaborates on these givens, in particular on the sense of “twilight” (literally: between the evenings) ..."
James C. VanderKam, “Exegesis of Pentateuchal Legislation in Jubilees and Related Texts Found at Qumran,” in Pentateuchal Traditions in the Late Second Temple Period: Proceedings of the International Workshop in Tokyo, August 28–31, 2007, ed. Akio Moriya and Gohei Hata, JSJSup 158 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 177–200.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exodus 12:31 and Deuteronomy 16:6

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