made; when offerings long due would be brought, and purification long needed be
obtained - and all worship in that grand and glorious Temple, with its gorgeous ritual.
National and religious feelings were alike stirred in what reached far back to the first,
and pointed far forward to the final Deliverance. On that day a Jew might well glory in
being a Jew. But we must not dwell on such thoughts, nor attempt a general description
of the Feast. Rather shall we try to follow closely the footsteps of Christ and His
disciples, and see or know only what on that day they saw and did.
4. See the Jerusalem Gemara (Jer. Pes. 27 b, towards the end). But the detailed
quotations would here be so numerous that it seems wiser to omit them.
For ecclesiastical purposes Bethphage and Bethany seem to have been included in
Jerusalem. But Jesus must keep the Feast in the City itself, although, if His purpose had
not been interrupted, He would have spent the night outside its walls.5 The first
preparations for the Feast would commence shortly after the return of the traitor. For, on
the evening [of the 13th] commenced the 14th of Nisan, when a solemn search was
made with lighted candle throughout each house for any leaven that might be hidden, or
have fallen aside by accident. Such was put by in a safe place, and afterwards
destroyed with the rest. In Galilee it was the usage to abstain wholly from work; in
Judea the day was divided, and actual work ceased only at noon, though nothing new
was taken in hand even in the morning. This division of the day for festive purposes was
a Rabbinic a ddition; and, by way of a hedge around it, an hour before midday was fixed
after which nothing leavened might be eaten. The more strict abstained from it even an
hour earlier (at ten o'clock), lest the eleventh hour might insensibly run into the
forbidden midday. But there could be little real danger of this, since, by way of public
notification, two desecrated thankoffering cakes were laid on a bench in the Temple, the
removal of one of which indicated that the time for eating what was leavened had
passed; the removal of the other, that the time for destroying all leaven had come.6
5. Comp. St. Matt. xxvi. 30, 36; St. Mark xiv. 26, 32; St. Luke xxii. 39; St. John xviii. 1.
6. The Jerusalem Talmud gives the most minute details of the places in which search is
to be made. One Rabbi proposed that the search should be repeated at three different
times! If it had been omitted on the evening of the 13th, it would be made on the forenoon
of the 14th Nisan.
It was probably after the early meal, and when the eating of leaven had ceased, that
Jesus began preparations for the Paschal Supper. St. John, who, in view of the details
in the other Gospels, summarises, and, in some sense, almost passes over, the
outward events, so that their narration may not divert attentio n from those all-important
teachings which he alone records, simply tells by way of preface and explanation - alike
of the 'Last Supper' and of what followed - that Jesus, 'knowing that His hour was come
that He should depart out of this world unto the Father7 . . . having loved His own which
were in the world, He loved them unto the end.'8 But St. Luke's account of what actually
happened, being in some points the most explicit, requires to be carefully studied, and
that without thought of any possible cons equences in regard to the harmony of the
Gospels. It is almost impossible to imagine anything more evident, than that he wishes
us to understand that Jesus was about to celebrate the ordinary Jewish Paschal