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Why
Does the Passover Have Two Major Spiritual Meanings?
Why
does the Passover have two meanings? It
has one for physical Israel, such as for the Jews today, and a different,
additional one for Christians as well.
The key reason why the Passover had a literal meaning for ancient Israel
and then a different, additional spiritual meaning for Christians starting
about a thousand five hundred years later is because God uses types as a
teaching tool. Let’s explain why God
uses progressive revelation some and then what a “type” is below and how it
applies to the Passover. So the later,
more spiritual meaning for the Passover is in addition to the original, more
physical meaning for this same biblical festival.
There
are good reasons to believe that dual meanings in Scripture appear in prophetic
contexts, whether they are typological or literal predictions. The Passover has two meanings, one for Jews,
and an additional, deeper, spiritual one for Christians, because God uses
progressive revelation. God used the
animal sacrifices, which includes those of the Passover, as a teaching tool
about what the Messiah would do and represent in the future, such as through
the Day of Atonement ceremony (Leviticus 16).
The book of Hebrews is full of explanations about how various Old
Testament rituals and practices were later superseded or had a greater meaning
for Christians today than in ancient Israel in the past. For example, Jesus today is the high priest
for Christians (Hebrews 2:17-18; 6:20).
The animal sacrifices are no longer required (Hebrews 9:9-14) since
Jesus’ sacrifice fulfilled their meaning and was far greater than they were.
But
why did God do this? Why have two
meanings for the same things? Duality
in meaning is part of the principle of progressive revelation. This principle plainly appears in Jesus'
debate with the Pharisees over the Old Testament's easy divorce law in Matt.
19:3, 6-9: "And Pharisees came up to him [to Jesus] and tested him
by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?' . . . What
therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.' They said to
him [Jesus], 'Why then did Jesus command one to give a certificate of divorce,
and to put her away?' [See Deut. 24:1-4 for the text the Pharisees were
citing]. He said to them, "For the hardness of heart Moses allowed
you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I
say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries
another, commits adultery." Now, this Old Testament passage should
not be cited to justify easy divorce procedures as a New Testament
Christian. That law has been superseded. It wasn't originally intended
as a permanent revelation of God's will, but it served as temporary
"training wheels," so to speak, until such time as a mass of people
(i.e., the Church after Pentecost) would have the Holy Spirit, and thus be
enabled to keep the law spiritually by God's help.
By contrast, ancient Israel as a whole didn't have the Holy Spirit,
and so correspondingly they didn't get the full revelation of God. They failed as a nation to obey God because
they didn’t have the spiritual capacity as a physical nation to obey God’s
spiritual laws (Hebrews 8:6-10). So
merely knowing God’s law isn’t enough; it’s necessary also to have the Holy
Spirit to obey it (Romans 8:3-9).
Now,
what exactly are types? They are "a shadow of
things to come" (Col. 2:17). These differ from
direct fulfilled prophecy, in which a predicted event occurs literally as it
was originally said to, such as the destruction of Babylon or Nineveh (Isa. 13:19-22; Jer. 51:11, 29, 37; Zeph. 2:13).
James Smith explains, in his book, “What
the Bible Teaches about the Promised Messiah,” that the authors of the New
Testament might not even be going that
far:
Sometimes
New Testament writers use Old Testament prophecies merely because they
see an analogy. They borrow Old
Testament language without intending to suggest that the prediction-fulfillment
relationship exists between the two statements. [This may explain how the New Testament applies such texts as Ps. 41:9; 34:20; Jer. 31:15; and Hosea 11:1 to the Messiah]. Even when they declare that
a prophecy was fulfilled there is sometimes a question as to whether or
not they mean that the Old Testament statement was a direct prediction of that
which is said to fulfill it (e.g., Matt. 13:14, 15).
A
type is something, such as an
animal, ritual, or object, that will symbolically represent something else as a
forerunner of what is to come, but which doesn't make any direct, specific
predictions verbally. For example, the
Passover lamb was "an unblemished
male" (Ex. 12:5), which pictured Jesus, the sinless God made fleshly man who died for humanity's sins. Obviously enough, Exodus 12:5 predicts nothing
explicitly in words about a promised Messiah coming to die for humanity's
sins. It (the sheep) remains just a
suggestive physical object picturing what is to come‑‑something
only really knowable upon the type’s fulfillment and the receipt of further
revelation (i.e., the New Testament) that explains the object’s meaning.
For example, Paul explained in I Cor. 5:7-8 about how the Passover and
Days of Unleavened Bread still held meaning for Christians, a spiritual meaning
that would have been unknown to ancient Israel under the old covenant: “Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a
new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened.
For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not
with old leaven nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Clearly no ancient Israelite obeying Ex. 12:46's injunction not to break
a bone of the Passover lamb (cf. Ps. 34:19-20) could possibly have known it referred in advance to the way
the Messiah's body would be treated during His execution (John 19:33, 36).
Smith defines a "type"
as: "A description of an event,
institution or person designed by God to be distinctly prophetic of the Messiah
and his kingdom." Importantly,
when Paul or other Christian writers spot a type in the Old
Testament, that doesn't evaporate the literal meaning into nothingness. When Paul said Israel's crossing the Red Sea was a baptism (I Cor. 10:2), it uses a secondary spiritual meaning which wasn’t known even
to Moses at the time. Dual interpretations or meanings of Scripture are indeed possible, including
typology and in prophecy. Of course, a
Jew or agnostic could always deny
any one case of prophetic types in the Old Testament as
pointing to a man/God who would die for the world's sins as a sacrifice. For example, the secondary
meaning of the narrative about Israel's first sacrifice of the Passover lamb
that foreshadows Jesus' earthly ministry to come (John 1:29, 36; 19:33,
36). Similarly, Ps. 118:22 applies to
Jesus, "The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner
stone," Although this text is indeed primarily an exclamation of praise in
its primary meaning, the secondary, typological meaning needs consideration
also. But as instances of secondary
messianic meanings pile up, counter-explanations wear increasingly thin.
In
order to illustrate better the concept of types, consider a vivid example from the lives of the Patriarchs. God tested Abraham to offer up Isaac on the altar: "[Take] your only son, whom you love
. . . and offer him there as a burnt offering" (Gen. 22:2). Now while going up to
Mount Moriah, Isaac asked his father:
"Behold, the fire and the wood [we have], but where is the lamb for
the burnt offering?" Abraham
replied: "God will provide for
Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son" (Gen. 22:7-8). Later, the Angel of the Lord stopped Abraham
from plunging his knife into his son laying prostrate on the altar, saying He
now knew "that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your
only son, from Me" (Gen. 22:12).
Abraham's earlier statement to Isaac, possibly initially stated as a
white lie to conceal Isaac's (expected) fate from him, was literally
fulfilled: "Then Abraham raised
his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his
horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt
offering in the place of his son" (Gen. 22:13).
An ancient Israelite, pouring over his
or her great ancestor's story, would likely have seen Abraham’s willingness to offer up his only son by Sarah as proof of his great faith and
devotion to God, which is surely the incident's central point. But the Christian, enlightened by the New Testament, sees more: Abraham here
served as a type of God the Father who offered
up "His only begotten Son" (John 3:16), His "beloved
Son" (Matt. 3:17), for the sins of the world.
Isaac initially served as a stand-in
for Jesus, the Son of God the Father, when placed on the
altar. Suddenly, what Isaac represented
then changed, at the moment the Angel of the Lord stopped Abraham from killing
his son. He then represented all of humanity being saved from death due to its
sins. A ram, an adult male sheep, took
Isaac's (re: humanity's) place. The ram prefigured Jesus here, being what
“The Lord Will Provide" (Gen. 22:14) to humanity, to redeem it from an otherwise certain
death. Knowing this, John the Baptist proclaimed when he saw
Jesus: "Behold, the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). True, the types seen in Isaac’s near sacrifice are more suggestive than
decisive as evidence for the New Testament's description of Jesus as the
Messiah who died for mankind's
sins. After all, some Jew or agnostic could always wave
away the parallels by denying the secondary meaning found in this story that
become so clear to the Christian mind in the light of the New Testament. But, as it has been observed, just as
Daniel's prophecies have become more clear as we approach the time of the end,
although he himself couldn't understand them when they were first revealed to
him (Dan. 12:8-9; 8:17, 27), likewise the messianic texts became more understandable
after Jesus came and fulfilled many of them.
Using
the Old Testament alone, can anyone find
justification for the duality principle of interpreting
Scripture? J. Gresham Machen once powerfully supports this view of interpretation, by implicitly
maintaining a sophisticated and objective exegesis can readily co-exist with
duality and typology:
We
[don't] desire to return at all to the allegorical interpretation which in
Philo and in Origen had such a baleful influence
upon the readers of the Old Testament Scriptures. On the contrary, we adhere with full
conviction to the method of grammatico-historical exegesis. But grammatico-historical exegesis does not
demand the exclusion of all allegory from ancient books; it only demands that allegory
shall not be discovered where no allegory was meant. So also grammatico-historical exegesis does not demand the
exclusion of all typology from the exalted language of the Old Testament
prophets; the question whether all typology is to be excluded is a question
which should be settled, not by the mechanical application of modern exegetical
methodology, but only by patient and sympathetic research.
Importantly,
the duality principle's application is
largely, even exclusively, limited to prophecy and fulfilled types, in which an earlier, lesser fulfillment precedes a later, greater
one. Jesus' Olivet prophecy clearly uses duality, such as when He predicts
Jerusalem's fall. His language applies
to both A.D. 70 and to His Second Coming (Matt. 24:1-3, 15-18; Luke 21:20-21, 24). Since Jesus prophesied, "Elijah is coming and will restore all
things," yet He also interpreted Malachi to mean "Elijah already
came" (that is, John the Baptist), the Messiah Himself used the duality
principle to interpret Scripture (Matt. 17:11-12). When the high priest declared, while
conspiring with others against Jesus, "It is expedient for you that one
man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not
perish," an obvious dual meaning surfaces (John 11:50). Caiaphas merely meant it was politically
wise to execute Jesus so His messianic claims didn't bring down the wrath of
Rome upon Judah. But from the Christian viewpoint, Jesus died
physically as a sacrifice so the whole nation of Judah
could be saved spiritually from its sins (Rom. 11:25-26).
But does the duality principle show up in the Old
Testament when used alone? Many times Israel’s return to its homeland
in the Middle East is predicted. Once
it was fulfilled by the return from Babylon under the leadership of Zechariah,
Zerububbel, and Nehemiah. However, it
also has been fulfilled in part by the return of the Jews to the Middle East
through the Zionist movement starting in the late nineteenth century. A future, even greater, return of Israel after
Christ’s second coming is yet to come. For a quick, popular-level discussion of
Israel's returns, although it's hardly mistake free, see Hal Lindsey with C.C. Carlson, The Late
Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan Publishing House, 1970), 32-47. Let’s find this principle in the Old Testament (the Hebrew/Aramaic Scriptures) alone, before any
Christian interpretations arose after the Christ came the first time. Three cases drawn from them need
consideration: The abomination of
desolation, Israel's regathering to the Holy Land, and the “Day of the Lord.” The abomination of desolation can be said to
have appeared twice in Jerusalem. The first time came about
when the Greek Seleucid ruler Antiochus
Epiphanes in 165 B.C. desecrated the
Temple of Yahweh by making a profane sacrifice (a pig) on top of the altar of
burnt offering (see I Maccabees 1:54 in Catholic Bibles). The second time happened when (made somewhat
arguable from the Jewish viewpoint because Matt. 24:15 has to be excluded) the Roman legions leveled Jerusalem and torched
the Temple in A.D. 70. Another, less
disputable case, comes from the texts describing the regathering of
Israel. It first took place after the
Babylonian Captivity (Isa. 39:6-7; 44:28; 45:4; Jer. 25:9-12), but it also will happen when the Messiah rules on earth. The gathering of Judah today in Palestine is a preliminary fulfillment of
the millennial prophecies about all of Israel returning from the Diaspora. (Note Zech. 12:6-11‑‑Judah is already there when Christ returns). Such texts as Eze. 38:8; 37:16-28; Deut. 28:64-68 point to the future millennial gathering. But Jer. 50:1-10, 17-20+ seems to be more
ambiguous, admitting to some dual application to the return from Babylon and
also at the beginning of the millennium.
Similarly, God's description of Israel and Judah as spiritually dull and
imperceptive (Isa. 6:9-10) remained true after Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Land's other cities (Isa.
6:11-13), having other at least partial fulfillments, such as Rome's crushing of the two main Jewish revolts (A.D. 66-73, 132-35) and
(perhaps) the Great Tribulation to come.
Clearly, the New Testament was not wrong to apply these
words to Judah's first-century spiritual condition (Matt. 13:14-15). A third, rather ambiguous case of the
principle of duality may arise in Isa. 13:1-13. Although apparently starting out as an oracle concerning Babylon
(v. 1) serving as the Lord’s punishing instrument (cf. Jer. 25:9), it clearly
becomes a prophecy about the time when the Lord Himself will intervene
personally in the world’s affairs, during which heavenly signs will appear (v.
10) and much of the human race will die (v. 12). Hence, even when using the Old Testament alone, someone can find
good evidence for the duality principle, at least for prophecy and fulfilled
types. But applying the duality
principle outside non-prophetic, non-typical statements in Scripture is hazardous, since the Torah, Writings, Gospels, and Letters are generally non-prophetic.
Paul finds Christian forerunners in the Old
Testament, such as Abraham and Sarah to have meaning for
us today as Christians. We can learn
from the mistakes and sins of Israel, as Paul taught (I Cor. 10:11): “Now these things happened to them as an
example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the
ages to have come.” additional meanings Christians have found in the Old Testament
that mainstream Judaism has overlooked or denied. Paul's allegorical interpretation of Hagar and Sarah (Gal. 4:21-31) or of Israel's crossing of the Red Sea (I Cor. 10:1-2) denies any single-meaning approach to interpreting Scripture that would ultimately deny all
typical and dual interpretations of the prophetic messianic texts. Allegorical interpretative
methods weren’t used by Paul to deny the authority of the Old Testament law in
general or even in particular sections.
But for Paul what canceled the ritualistic/ceremonial law was the death and resurrection of Christ, not the performance of linguistic legerdemain on the Torah.
Actually,
of course, neither Paul in his Letters nor
(conservative) Christians today using types and duality to interpret the prophetic
messianic texts deny the texts' literal meaning
as they find alternative ones. Does
anyone really believe that Paul denied that Sarah and Hagar were actual flesh-and-blood
women or that Israel literally crossed the Red
Sea? Paul mentions that the literal
examples of ancient Israel were relevant to Christians in helping them to learn
what sins to avoid: "Now these
things happened as examples for us, that we should not crave evil things as
they also craved. And do not be
idolaters, as some of them were . . ." (I Cor. 10:6-7; cf. Heb. 11). Furthermore, traditional
ancient Judaism, even apart from the influence of the Eastern Hellenists such as
Aristobulus and Philo of Alexandria, was willing to
use allegorical interpretations of Scripture for homiletic (preaching)
purposes, if not for finding a rationale for a given law. As Edersheim explains in “The Life and Times
of Jesus the Messiah,” p. 35:
“Not
only the Dorshey Reshumoth, or searchers out of the subtleties of Scripture, of their indications, but even the ordinary Haggadist employed,
indeed, allegoric interpretations.
Thereby Akiba vindicated for the 'Song of Songs' its place in the Canon. Did not Scripture say: 'One thing spake God, twofold is what I
heard,' and did not this imply a twofold meaning; nay, could not the Torah be explained by many different
methods?”
True,
the typical sage of the Torah would have rejected looking for
ulterior reasons for God giving a particular law based on the principle of not
taking Scripture beyond its plain meaning. Nevertheless, since Judaism supplies ample precedent
besides the Hellenists for Paul's occasional use of allegorical ways of interpreting the Old Testament, his procedure is hardly "Gnostic” or unsupported by what’s only in the Old Testament itself.
Clearly
God uses progressive revelation and dual meanings in Scripture, including about
the Passover. God didn’t want to
overwhelm people all at once concerning His spiritual truth, so He used
physical objects as types to represent deeper meanings.
Eric
V. Snow
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