Exodus 12:48, commentary and pictures

The verse lays down the plain rule that a stranger dwelling among Israel who desired to keep the Passover had to have all his males circumcised, and then he could come near and keep it as one born in the land, for no uncircumcised person could eat of it. By that rite the foreign sojourner was incorporated into the household and congregation, made a partaker of its privileges on equal footing with the Hebrew, showing that belonging was not by ancestry alone. The Passover so kept was a memorial of deliverance from Egyptian bondage when God spared Israel's houses while judging Egypt's firstborn, and its lamb slain on the fourteenth day of the first month was fulfilled in the death of Christ, the Lamb of God. Unlike the seventh-day Sabbath, which binds stranger and Jew alike without circumcision, the Passover was a rite for members of the Jewish church alone, entered by circumcision, proving it ceremonial and temporal while the Sabbath is perpetual and universal. Circumcision was then the required outward evidence and entrance into visible membership, as baptism is now, but as an outward sign belonging to its season it was superseded by circumcision of the heart.

Wording and Historical Setting

Exodus 12:48 belongs to the ordinance for the Passover given in close connection with the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, the hurried departure of Israel from Egypt, and the claiming of the firstborn as the Lord's. It stands in the section of Exodus 6 to 12 that gives the account of the ten plagues upon Egypt and God's merciful deliverance of His children. It is placed in the setting of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, in which God demanded the release of the Israelites from servitude, judged their oppressors, and brought the people out. It is part of the account of that deliverance from Egypt as an episode in the history of the Israelite nation.

The plagues of Egypt were real and literal judgments poured out just before the deliverance of Israel. They shadow forth the seven last plagues to be poured out just before the final deliverance of the saints.

The plain rule is that a foreigner or stranger sojourning and settling among Israel who wishes to keep the Passover must have every male in his household circumcised before joining the observance. After this he is to come near and keep it, treated like one born in the land and made a member of the Hebrew community. No uncircumcised person may eat of it, and an uncircumcised person is barred from eating the Passover. The Passover commemorates Israel's deliverance from Egyptian bondage, and its great antitype is Christ's sacrifice.

Exodus 12 gives the divinely instituted directions for preparing, killing, and eating the Passover, presenting its command, manner of celebration, set time, participants, and purpose. The time of the Passover was expressly appointed, which bears on its set time and not on a rule fixing how often the Lord's Supper must be celebrated. The disciples followed these directions when they made ready the Passover meal Jesus ate with them, supporting the conclusion that they killed and ate the paschal lamb.

The requirements for preparing and keeping that feast, which Christ and His disciples obeyed, permitted nothing leavened or fermented at that sacred memorial feast. The heaviest penalty known was attached to using anything leavened. The word eat implies both eating and drinking, so drink was optional in the requirement but made necessary by a seven-day festival, with the kind of drink left to circumstances and common sense except for the absolute rule that it could not be leavened.

The verse belongs to the original Passover instructions given when the Passover was instituted for the Israelites in Egypt and observed in the wilderness on the journey to Palestine and for some time later. It stands distinct from the later temple form of celebration, which added requirements not found in Exodus 12-13 and hardly possible to carry out in the wilderness, including the use of wine and the closing Hallel song of Psalms 113-118. At most it shows the calendar arrangement for that one year. It does not prove that the week began with the year or that the Sabbath began on a certain day of every month, the Passover holy days were not necessarily always on the weekly Sabbath, and the year did not end with a shortened week.

Memorial of Egyptian Deliverance

The Passover is a memorial of Israel's deliverance from Egyptian bondage, recalling how judgment fell on Egypt's firstborn while the destroying angel passed over Israelite dwellings. It commemorates that deliverance and the power by which the people were saved. That memorial is distinct from the Sabbath, which commemorates creation and the Creator's rest, and the deliverance from Egypt is an added reason to obey God rather than the event for which the Sabbath was instituted. Moses in Deuteronomy 5 does not present Sabbath observance as a memorial of that deliverance.

Abib is the first month of the sacred year reckoned from the Exodus, although counted as the seventh month of the civil year from creation. The Passover kept on the fourteenth day of the first month commemorated the deliverance from Egypt. It did not institute the weekly Sabbath and did not change the Sabbath day.

The ordinance displays wisdom, love, and power in the deliverance, demonstrating ability and right to rule and Israel's obligation to obey, to be tested by whether they would walk in the law. The Passover night gave Israel personal knowledge of and acquaintance with God as King of kings and Lord of lords. The plagues humbled proud Egypt to the dust and annihilated the supposed power of its many gods, while giving each person abundant opportunity to know God. To those who believed, the sparing of their firstborn was surpassingly impressive, while in the homes of those who rejected mercy not one firstborn escaped the destroyer. That deliverance stands with the opening of the Red Sea, the sweetening of Marah, bread from heaven, and water from the flinty rock as thrilling personal experience, so that the fuller title I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of Egypt, means far more than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

After hundreds of years of slavery had unfitted Israel to comprehend the great salvation and the character required, redemption was wrought with a mighty hand and the sanctuary was added as a great multiple object-lesson. By its various forms and rites it would teach the plan of salvation. The power shown through Moses in turning the rivers of Egypt into blood and smiting the land with plague, in Exodus 7 to 12, was not in Moses himself but in the Word God spoke through him.

Type Fulfilled in Christ

The Passover account joins deliverance from bondage in Egypt to forgiveness and the blotting out of sin through the blood of Christ, typified by the blood on the doorposts. It commemorated that deliverance and at the same time served as a shadow of good to be done for the human race. The paschal lamb was slain on the fourteenth day of the first month. That slaying met its antitype in the death of the Lamb of God on that same day, which is the great antitype of the Passover.

The going out from Egypt to Canaan is a type of the deliverance of God's people from the dark Egypt of earth. The plagues visited upon Egypt were real and literal judgments poured out just before Israel's deliverance, known to Egypt and undoubted even by Philistia. They shadow forth the last plagues recorded in Revelation 16, the seven last plagues to be poured out just before the final deliverance of the saints. Israel's experience during those plagues parallels the saints' situation during the final plagues, when they remain on earth through six plagues protected by the seal of God, a comparison invoked alongside the rule that reserved the Passover to the circumcised, by which a sojourning stranger could keep it only after all his males were circumcised and was then counted as one born in the land.

Membership Through Circumcision Requirement

By circumcision foreign servants bought with money and sojourning strangers were made part of the household during their service and naturalized citizens of the state, members of the congregation, and partakers of all the rites and privileges common to the people as one born in the land. The law thus let Hebrews obtain help in tilling the land and increased the numbers of the commonwealth, placing stranger and Hebrew on equal footing before the Lord. All members of the community or nation by birth, by purchase as domestics, or by joining as sojourners were members of the church, initiated or recognized by circumcision, and afterward partook of the Passover as the standing sacrament of the church analogous to the Lord's Supper and enjoyed all its rights and privileges unless cut off from the people, proving there was no separate party within Israel calling itself the church and forbidding other circumcised persons to touch the Passover as if holier than they.

Belonging to Israel was not determined by ancestry alone, since a foreigner by this lawful rite was incorporated without becoming a physical descendant of Abraham. The same law given to Israel was for every other person of whatever race or nationality, with Israel as the chosen people through whom knowledge of God and of what it means to be a member of God's government and God's people was to extend through the earth as a light to the surrounding nations. The Ten Commandments were the constitution of the government of Israel, with added ceremonies and instructions as by-laws to make plain the meaning and depth of that organic law, and the stranger who joined Israel came under that same law.

The rule distinguishes a naturalized resident foreigner who wished to keep the Passover and, with all his males circumcised, could participate and was counted as one born in the land because he took on Israelite obligations, from an unincorporated foreigner who was not entitled to keep it. Strangers therefore had access to Israel's religious privileges under the old dispensation on that condition. The Passover could only be eaten by those who gave outward evidence of conversion by being circumcised, unlike the harvest feast which could be eaten by all. No one was given authority to pry into the secrets of the heart, and a person who deceived in professing conversion must answer to God alone for that deception.

Circumcision was an instituted prerequisite for regular membership in the visible church under the ancient dispensation, as baptism is under the present one. Submission to it was optional for the stranger sojourning in Israel, who was free to choose whether to submit, but with all his males circumcised was necessary before he could come near to keep the Passover to the Lord, for no uncircumcised person could eat of it. The son of the stranger is the Gentile who has joined himself to the Lord, and foreigners who wished to keep the Passover could join Israel's worship after the required circumcision and be treated as native-born, showing that the sons of the stranger, the Gentiles, are included with Israel among those promised God's blessings for keeping His Sabbath holy.

Because children in the wilderness had not been circumcised they were excluded from the Passover, which helps explain why it was not regularly observed during the wilderness sojourn. By contrast the Israelites in Egypt observed this ordinance of circumcision and were ready to eat the Passover, showing they worshiped God, kept His ordinances, and remembered His promises and past dealings and had not forgotten Him. The outward sign belonged to its season and was superseded by circumcision of the heart, so that requiring Gentile Christians to undergo physical circumcision after that change had passed was teaching an obsolete requirement and caused disorder.

Sabbath Contrasted With Passover

The Passover was a purely Jewish ordinance to be observed by members of the Jewish church alone. A sojourning stranger could keep it only after all his males were circumcised, by which outward rite he joined himself to that church and became as one born in the land, for no uncircumcised person could eat thereof. This proves the Passover was not universal like the Sabbath, which binds the foreigner and stranger equally with the Jew. Circumcision is the entrance condition for the Passover and the other yearly festival days, while Gentiles and strangers can keep the seventh-day Sabbath without being circumcised. This difference proves the festivals are ceremonial, temporal, and for one nation, while the Sabbath is unchangeable, perpetual, and for all people.

The rule that no uncircumcised person shall eat the Passover does not mean that no uncircumcised person could keep the Sabbath. Women kept the Sabbath without circumcision, and nearly all Israel kept the Sabbath during the forty years without circumcision, and the two and a half tribes received their inheritance in the land without circumcision. Circumcision was optional for the sojourning stranger, who was free to choose whether to submit to it, but submission with all his males circumcised was necessary before he could come near to keep the Passover to the Lord. This stands in contrast to the Sabbath, which allowed no such option and was binding on all strangers as both duty and privilege.

The Passover ordinance was a memorial of God passing over the Israelites when He struck the Egyptians, observed on the fourteenth day of the first month to commemorate the deliverance from Egypt. The passage shows the weekly Sabbath was not instituted at the Exodus. Moses in Deuteronomy 5 does not present Sabbath observance as a memorial of that deliverance. Calling the Passover and its feast perpetual and everlasting is no stronger than commanded to a thousand generations and does not mean never-ending, for its appointed time has expired just as the everlasting Aaronic priesthood, circumcision, and shewbread have expired.

Seal and Final Application

The verse belongs to the Passover account in which the houses marked with the blood of the paschal lamb were spared as the destroying angel passed over to slay the firstborn of the Egyptians. That marking shows that the seal of God placed upon His servants is a distinguishing mark or religious characteristic. Through it they will be exempted from the judgments of God that fall upon the wicked around them. A foreigner who wanted to eat the Passover had to be circumcised. Once circumcised, he could join those born in the land, for foreigners sat at the Passover only if circumcised.