Two Meanings of Passover

Today we often speak of Passover Week, but in the Bible originally the term Passover referred to just one day, the fourteenth day of the first month of the Israelite calendar (Lev. 23:5: Num. 9:3, 5, 11). That day was the anniversary of the killing of the lambs whose blood was put on the doorposts of Israelite houses so that the Lord would spare the firstborn in those houses (Ex. 12:27). It was a feast day that began with the removal of all kinds of leaven from homes, continued with the slaying of lambs for the meal, and ended with the Passover Meal (Ex. 12:6, 8, 15). The evening of that day overlapped the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread which took place from the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month until the evening of the twenty-first day (Ex. 12:18), a total of seven ceremonial days (from sundown to sundown) that covered eight calendar days. That explains why sometimes the fourteenth day (when it starts) is called the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread and sometimes the fifteenth day (the first full day) is called the first day (Lev. 23:6; Num. 28:17; see Ex. 12:15-16 where both usages occur).

However, as time went on, because the two feasts overlapped, it became common to use the term Passover to refer to both of them. We possibly see this first during the exile to Babylon. Depending upon where the punctuation mark goes, the Passover is said to be a feast of seven days (Ezek. 45:21; compare the KJV, NKJV, ASV, NASB, NIV, and CSB against the RSV, NRSV, and ESV). By New Testament times, the two were used interchangeably. Luke 22:1 says that the Feast of Unleavened Bread was called the Passover. The Synoptic Gospels say that the Passover lamb was sacrificed on the first day of Unleavened Bread (Matt. 26:17; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:7). And Luke in the book of Acts says that during the days of Unleavened Bread, Peter was put in prison until he was to be executed after the Passover (Luke 12:3-4). The Gospel of John does not use the term Feast of Unleavened Bread, but it does refer to the Feast of the Passover (John 2:23; 13:1).

This overlapping usage in John's Gospel has led to some confusion about when the Passover occurred when Jesus was crucified. The Synoptic Gospels are clear that Jesus celebrated the Passover on the evening before he died (Matt. 26:17-19; Mark 14:12-16; Luke 22:7-15). But John says that Jesus was on trial before Pilate on "the day of Preparation of the Passover" (John 19:14), leading some to think that there were two different calendars in use at that time. However, the Greek word here translated Preparation (paraskeuē) is actually the Greek word for Friday. The Jewish days of the week were labelled First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Preparation, and Sabbath. Elsewhere in the Gospels, the term paraskeuē always refers to Friday, the day before the Sabbath (Matt. 27:62; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54; John 19:21, 42). In the first century Josephus uses the term in this way (Ant. 16, 163), and so does the Didache (8:1). In addition, it is the modern Greek word for Friday. Thus, the phrase in John 19:14 does not mean the day that they were preparing for the Passover by killing the lambs, but Friday of Passover Week. In the same way, the phrase "eat the Passover" in John 18:28 does not refer to the Passover meal of the fourteenth day of the month, but to the feast on the fifteenth day of the month (Num. 28:17), a celebration of the day of the exodus from the land of Egypt (Ex. 16:1).

For Christians, however, even though Jesus was crucified on the fifteenth day of the month, not on the fourteenth day when the lambs were being slain, he is our Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7) whose blood offered in heaven (Hebrews 9:12, 24) causes God to "pass over" our sins. This was the true Day of Atonement.