“You may not sacrifice the Pesach offering in just any of the towns that Adonai your God is giving you; but at the place where Adonai your God will choose to have his name live — there is where you are to sacrifice the Pesach offering, in the evening, when the sun sets, at the time of year that you came out of Egypt. You are to roast it and eat it in the place Adonai your God will choose; in the morning you will return and go to your tents.”-Deuteronomy 16:5-7
Today we’re going to discuss an issue that will deepen our understanding of the exact timing of Yeshua’s death and resurrection.
Note the Scripture says in Deuteronomy 16:5-7 that the Passover lambs are to be brought to the central sanctuary and slaughtered “in the evening when the sun sets“.
What’s important for you to know is that this phrase specifically means…
…at the end of the day but BEFORE the darkness sets in.
Remember, the Hebrew 24 hour day is calculated differently than how we do it in the West.
In the West, we have just arbitrarily decided that that a new day begins at a time we call midnight (12:00).
However, that is NOT a Biblical day.
A Biblical day is based on the position of the sun in the sky and whether or not it is dark or light outside.
Therefore, in the ancient Middle East, the day ended at sundown which was also the precise moment that a new day began.
Traditionally, a new day was considered to have begun when the sun set over the horizon AND…
…a cluster of three stars became visible in the evening sky.
If we are going to properly understand when certain key events took place in Scripture, this is another one of those areas where we have to adjust our Western ways of thinking so that they are in sync with Scripture
The whole point of verses 5-7 is that the Passover lambs had to be slaughtered on AVIV 14th BEFORE the sun set.
If they waited too long to the point where the sky darkened, the day would have switched over from AVIV 14th to the 15th, and Israel would have been guilty of breaking the law at that point.
After Israel settled in the Promised Land and began regularly observing PESACH, thousands of people would show up to the Tabernacle (later the Temple) with their lambs to be slaughtered with the assistance of a Priest.
However, over time, it became practically impossible to slaughter the scores of thousands of lambs the people brought within such a short span.
As a result, a precise definition of just what “sun set” meant was established.
Given that the Hebrews always marked the mid-day by the sun reaching its highest point or zenith in the sky at around noon time, it was considered that the sun began setting from that time onward.
In Yeshua’s time, the slaughtering of the lambs usually began about three hours after the sun’s zenith (about 3pm our time) and usually ended around 6pm because it was somewhere between 6:30-7:00pm that the sun would begin setting in Jerusalem during the Springtime.
Keep everything I’ve just shared with you in your back pocket, because this information is going to come in mighty handy when we begin discussing the timing of Yeshua’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection.
With all my being, I used to believe that the day began in the “night” or “sunset”. But it does not. How do I know this? Because YaHuWaH said so. In Genesis he called the “light” day. When it was evening then morning, day one, morning is the transition to the new day. How can the “night” be a new “day”. He called the light day, not the night. When it became evening, you can’t deny the introduction of light and the separation from it in the beginning. It became evening from being light of day. How can the day begin when it is night? It cannot. Because it is not the next day. Because the light is called day. Not the night. So the new “day” begins at the break of dawn. Boqer, the breaking of darkness into light. Similar to coming into existence. You were once nothing, void of being anything. Then the light broke the darkness, you came into being.
A day is defined by BOTH the nighttime period and the daytime period. BOTH periods of darkness and light comprise one day.