Nu. 9: Passover II: It’s Biblical

Well, we’re a month into the second year after leaving Egypt. And everyone did it the way they were supposed to, and observed it the right way and all that. Some of the Israelites had been defiled by a dead body during Passover. But they still wanted to participate, which I find pretty amazing. They wanted to take ownership in this celebration, this commemoration of leaving Egypt.

And I love how they go to the source, Moses. They knew who to ask, they apparently held a deep respect for who he was, and his relationship with God. They wanted to be able to observe this, they needed to know if they could or when. After all, Passover only comes once a year. Moses didn’t know, and that’s cool. He didn’t try to guess at what God would say. He was humble enough to go bring that question to God.

I kind of find it strange that God would have this sort of reactionary command. Why wouldn’t he put in place statutes at the original command? One could argue that God gave the regulations for Passover before he gave the regulations for cleanliness in respect to dead bodies. After all, failure to celebrate Passover resulted in being cut off from one’s people. In my NIV, it says “celebrate,” and not “observe.” Anyway, basically they had to wait an extra month…the fourteenth day of the second month, as opposed to the first.

God made himself obvious to the Israelites with his presence in the cloud. Whenever the cloud lifted off the tabernacle, it was time to move. It could have been a few days, it could have been years, apparently. I couldn’t imagine living like that. Day to day, having to have the mindset that “Today we could be moving again…” I don’t even like thinking about when I might move next, like years down the road. Oh, and the cloud looked like fire at night. A flaming cloud could be like totally sweet. It would be kind of hard to conceptualize visually what that would look like…maybe a big gas explosion…that was stable…I don’t know.