EXODUS CHAPTER 12
The character of the Passover sacrifice — for it is called ze-vakh (sacrifice) — is pretty plain. There was nothing burnt to the Lord; the holy character of the lamb was preserved by anything remaining over to be burnt, no bone to be broken,
[p. 210] nor any part carried out of the house; but there was no sweet savour to the Lord, it had not that character of sacrifice — no altar or place of approach, neither hik-riv (brought near) nor hik-tir (burnt in sweet savour). It was not in character nor effect, coming to God; it was keeping God, as a righteous Judge, out, so that they escaped — keeping Him righteously out (we can say by glorifying gloriously His righteousness), but still as a needed means meeting the case, and excluding the Judge as having now no ground for entering. Deliverance by God (that is, the Red Sea), drawing near to God, a sweet savour to Him, or coming to Him in any way of worship or communion, are not found here.
— 8, 10. The fact that the Passover was to be eaten at night, and nothing left till the morning or burned, seems, I think, to intimate that it was entirely apart from the whole course and scene in which nature and sense are conversant — a matter between God and the soul abstractedly, in the full undistracted claim and holiness of the divine nature. No circumstances entered into it — no question of compassionate apprehension of seen misery. It was sin and the holy judgment of God met, where nothing else was; so, as a sign of this deep and infinite truth, all was darkness for three hours with Christ on the cross — nature hidden — all between God and Him. Then all was to be burnt — there was no mixing it with any thing common; Israel was sanctified by it, like the priests, so that they ate it, but it could not be mixed with other food.