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Exodus 12:43-51

The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 12:43-51

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

The spirit of the Passover ordinance.

The features to be specified reappear in the Lord's Supper. The ordinance was—

I. EXCLUSIVE. (, , .) A stranger, an uncircumcised person, and a hired servant, were not to be permitted to oat of it. Their relation to Israel was wholly external. In like manner, the Lord's Supper is exclusive. It excludes the stranger to the death of Christ, the uncircumcised in heart, and those who sustain a merely legal and hireling relation to the Church. These have "neither part nor lot" in the matter.

II. YET CATHOLIC. (, .) The sojourning stranger who wished to keep the passover had only to be circumcised—he and his males—to be admitted to the ordinance. He was then to be as one born in the land. This catholicity of spirit, and kindliness to foreigners, blending with a stern exclusiveness in religion, is characteristic of the whole Mosaic code. Cf. Vinet on the tolerance and intolerance of the Christian religion ("Vital Christianity"). The Lord's Supper is the most catholic of ordinances. It overleaps all barriers of race, nationality, clime, and religion. At the Lord's table there is neither Greek, nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.

III. EQUALISING. (.) The master and slave sat down at the same board. See last homily. Christianity is the great social equaliser.

IV. UNIFYING. (, .)It taught the congregation to feel its unity.

1. The lamb was to be eaten in one house.

2. Not a bone of it was to be broken. "Through the unity and integrity of the lamb given them to eat, the participants were to be joined into an undivided unity and fellowship with the Lord, who had provided them with the meal" (Keil).

3. All the congregation were to eat it. The Lord's Supper, in like manner, is a social meal, in which the Church, eating "one bread," and drinking "one cup," declares itself to be "one body" (cf. , ). "The preservation of Christ, so that not a bone was broken, had the same signification; and God ordained this that he might appear as the true Paschal Lamb, that was slain for the sins of the world."—J.O.

HOMILIES BY J. URQUHART

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