Exodus 12:6

The whole assembly. The head of each family was to offer the sacrifice for himself and for his family. Thus, no one outside the family intervened between it and God. This provision was in recognition of the fact that Israel was a nation of priests, as are Christians today (Rev. 1:6; 1 Peter 2:5, 9). The institution of the Levitical priesthood came at a later time (Ex. 32:26-29; Deut. 10:8).

In the evening. The Hebrew words of this phrase read, literally, “between the two evenings.” This provision has been explained in two ways. Some have said that the first “evening” begins with sunset and that the second begins with the end of twilight. The medieval Jewish scholar Eben Ezra considered that twilight lasted for approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes. The command of Deut. 16:6, “Thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun,” seems to support this view. Others have regarded the first “evening” as beginning when the sun begins visibly to decline from the zenith, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, and the second evening as beginning at sunset. In support of this view various texts have been quoted, such as Lev. 23:5; Num. 9:3, which refer to the Passover as being on the 14th of the month. If the slaughtering, they say, took place after sunset, it would then fall on the 15th of Nisan, not the 14th. The prevailing custom in the time of Christ agreed with this explanation; hence, Passover lambs were slain in the late afternoon, approximately the time when the true “Lamb of God” died for guilty man on the cross (1 Cor. 5:7; Matt. 27:45-50).

Since time must necessarily be allowed for the preparation of the paschal meal, which was to be over before midnight, and since the word “evening” in Hebrew, as well as in other languages, is not limited to the time after sunset, the custom of slaying the animal in the afternoon may already have been in use long before the ecclesiastical authorities of the rabbinical age gave it their official approval. According to Josephus it was the custom in his day to offer the lamb at about three o’clock in the afternoon (Antiquities xiv. 4. 3).