The Feast of the

• The custom of sacrifice of the first-born was widespread over the entire ancient Middle East; not only of animals but even of the bekhor - first-born sons.
• According to the torah (The Law - The Five Books of Moses), human sacrifice was emphatically prohibited to the Children of Israel:
  wayedabber adonay el-moshe le'mor: we'el-beney isra'el to'mar ish ish mibeney isra'el umin-hagger haggar beyisra'el asher yiten mizzar'o lammolekh mot yumat 'am ha'arets yirgemuhu va'aven
  (And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, thou shalt say to the Children of Israel, Whoever he be of the Children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that gives any of his seed to Molekh; he shall surely put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.) (Lev. 20:1-2)
• This prohibition is expressed on more than one occasion in this book, which proves that it was a custom among the surrounding peoples, and that there may have been a danger that the Children of Israel would adopt this act of worship.

Place of human firstborn () sacrifices to Moloch

Altar for child sacrifices to Moloch

A burial cave for urns holding sacrificial ashes.

A tombstone for a sacrificed child.

(Photos taken in Carthage by: Pinhas Baraq)

• The terrible practice of human sacrifice of the survived until the time of Hannibal, the Punic Emperor of Carthage, (247-182 BC), as born out by archeological excavations in Tunisia.
• In the we know one example of human offering, in the time of Abraham:
  
  wayyomer qah-na et-binkha et-yehidkha asher ahavta et-itshaq welekh lekha el-erets hammoriyya weha'alehu sham le'olah...
  (And He [the Lord] said to him, Take now thy son, thy only son, Isaac whom thou lovest and get thee into the land Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering...)(Gen. 22-2)
• According to the story, Abraham did not object, and may have known the practice, although it was not his own custom; Isaac was not his , but his second son and first son of Sarah; Ishmael was Abraham's first son and also the eldest child of Hagar, but he did not offer him in sacrifice.
• Isaac did not know the practice, therefore asked:
  wayyomer avi wayyomer hinnenni veni wayyomer hinneh ha'esh weha'etsim we'ayyeh hasseh le'olah
  (And he said [Isaac], My father: and he said, Here I am, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?) (Gen. 22:7)
• From this we can conclude that human offering of the was unknown to Isaac and therefore never practiced by the Children of Israel, until the time of Solomon's Kingdom, when religious decline began, and Canaanite worship and customs were adopted.

• But the Hebrews also believed that all male animals that opened the womb had to be sacrificed to the Lord, whereas if it was a human child they had to "redeem" it:
  
  weha'avarta khol-peter-rehem la'adonay wekhol-peter sheger behemah asher yehiyeh lekha hazzekharim la'adonay:
  ....wekhol bekhor adam bevaneykha tifdeh:
  (Thou shalt set apart to the Lord all that opens the womb, and every firstling that comes of a beast which thou hast; the males shall be the Lord's.(Ex. 13:12)
  .....and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.(Ex. 13:13)

• In spite of the commandments in the torah, after settling in the Land of Israel and following the suppression of Canaanite resistance, pagan rituals and customs penetrated Jewish culture, including that of human sacrifice.
• It was the reformation of the King Josiah (638-609 B.C) which put an temporary end to this practice:
  
  we timme et-hattofet asher begey ven-hinnom levilti leha'avir ish et-beno we'et bitto ba'esh lammolekh.
  (And he defiled the Tofet, which is in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, that no man might make his son or daughter pass through the fire to Molekh)(2 Kings 23:10).
• But after Josiah's death at Megiddo in the fight against Necho, the Egyptian commander, the practice was renewed, as the following lament by Jeremiah proves:
  
  uvanu bamot hattoget asher begey ven-hinnom lisrof et-baneyhem we'et-benoteyhem ba'esh asher lo tsiwiyti welo 'alta 'al-libbi.
  And they have built the high places of Tofet, which is in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My heart.)(Jer. 7:31)
  

• A very interesting verse for our study on the background to the pesah (Passover) offering is found in the Book of Exodus:
  
  wayyomeru elohey ha'ivrim niqra 'aleynu nelakhah-na derekh sheloshet yamim bammidbar wenizbeha la'adonay eloheyni pen-yifganu baddever 'o veharev
  (And they [Moses and Aharon] said [to Pharaoh], The God of the Hebrews has met with us: please let us go, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice to the Lord our God; lest He fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword.)(Ex. 5:3)
• According to this verse, the sacrifice was a means to prevent epidemics and other disasters.

Pharaoh did not fulfil Moses' and Aharon's request to let the Hebrews go and sacrifice to their Lord. The result was that Egypt was ravaged by the ten plagues, the severest plague being the death of their first-born sons - was it the Lord's revenge, for preventing the Hebrews from sacrificing their first-born cattle?

• The offering of the "" lamb was a custom among the Hebrews before the Exodus from Egypt, which the festival celebrates today.

• The word has not yet been explained etymologically to our satisfaction; there are not many examples of the root in other Semitic languages which afford us much insight into its meaning.

• In Babylonian, the root is found in the words pissu (the Semitic sound of the - "het", was not always written with Sumerian cuneiforms); the meaning is probably * "lame", "limp".

*We must be very careful in using the Babylonian language as proof for the meaning of a root, because this language was unknown language till the second half of the 19th century, and was deciphered by using other semitic languages (Arabic and Hebrew), thus we require several examples in this language to confirm or explain the meaning.
In the case of we have not enough examples in the Babylonian language where this meaning is appropriate.

• The same root in Arabic does not help us explain the meaning.
• There exists a theory which connect the root with the root PS'(Pe, Samekh, Ayin) with the meaning of "to step", but this root is known to us only from post-Biblical literature and does not add much more than we already know from the use of the root in the Bible.
  

• Thus, we must concentrate mainly on the use of the root in the Bible.
• The root appears for the first time in the Book of Exodus, but here it is already connected with the festival we celebrate today:
  wayyimer adonay el-moshe we'el-aharon be'erts mitsrayim lemor: hahodesh hazzeh lakhem rosh hodashim ri'shon hu lakhem lehodshey hasshanah: dabberu el-kol-'adat Israel lemor be'asor kahodesh hazzeh weyiqhu lahem ish seh lebeyt-avot seh labayit: we'im-yim'at habbayit miheyot misseh welaqah hu ushekheno haqqarov el-beyto bemikhsat nefashot ish lefi akhelo takhossu 'al-hasseh: seh tamim zakhar ben-shanah yihyeh lakhem min-hakkevasim umin-ha'izzim tiqqahu: wehaya lakhem lemishmeret 'ad arba'ah 'asar yom lahodesh hazzeh weshahatu oto kol qahal 'adat-Israel beyn ha'arbayim: welaqehu min-haddam wenatenu al-shetey hammezuzot we'al hammashqof 'al habbattim asher yokhelu oto bahem: we'akhelu et-habbasar ballaylah hazzeh tsli-esh umattsot 'al-merorim yokheluhu: al-tokhelu mimmenno na ubashel mewusshal bammayim ki im-tsli-esh rosho 'al-kera'aw we'al-qirbo: welo-totiru mimmenno 'ad-boqer wehannotar mimmenno 'ad-boqer ba'esh tisrofu: wekhakha tokhlu oto motneykhem hagurho na'aleykhem berageleykhem umaqqelkhem beyedekhem wa'akhaltem oto behipazon pesah hu la'adonay:
  (And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aharon in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be to you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the Congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house: and if the household be too little for a lamb, let him and his neighbour next to his house take it according to the number of the souls; according to every man's eating shall you make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: you shall take it from the sheep, or from the goats: and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregration of Israel shall kill it towards the evening. And they shall take the blood, and put it on the two side posts and over the upper doorpost of the house, in which they shall eat it. And they shall eat the meat in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Eat not of it raw, nor boiled at all in water, but roast with fire; its head with its legs, and with its entrails. And you shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remains of it until the morning you shall burn with fire. And thus shall you eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste; it is the Lord's Passover:)(Ex. 12:1-10)

• The meaning of in the last verse is the sacrificial lamb itself whose roasted meat the members of the household must eat at night, not the name of the festival.
• The festival was actually a new year's feast.
• Another important fact we can learn from these verses, is that anyone could kill the lamb in his own house, and there was no need to go to a special place to sacrifice it.
• We find the same root again in verse 13 of this chapter:
  
  wehaya haddam lakhem le'ot 'al habbattim asher attem sham wera'iti et-haddam ufasahti 'alekhem welo-yihyeh vakhem negef lemashhit behakoti be'erets mitsrayim:
  (And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt:

• In this verse the meaning of the root is "pass over" or "hop over".
• In some other books we find this root used in this meaning:
  
  'ad matay attem posehim 'al-shetey hasse'ifim im-adonay ha'elohim lekhu aharaw
  (How long will you remain hopping between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him. (I K. 18:21)
• 
  'ketsiporim 'afot ken yagen adonay tseva'ot 'al-yerushalaim ganon wehittsil pasoah wehimlit:
  (As birds hovering, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem; he will defend it and deliver it; he will pass over it and spare it.) (Jes. 31:5)
• 
  wayyehiy behofzah lanus wayyipol wayyipaseah.
  (and it came to pass, as she made haste to flee that he fell, and became lame).
• The semantic connection between "become lame" and "limp" is clear; a person with a lame leg will limp.
• The problem is how this became the lamb for sacrifice "", because it should be without blemish.
• One of the theories says that a young lamb limps, but this is only true for a newborn lamb, while a yearling lamb no longer limps.

• From the verses above we can reconstruct the original nature of the feast of sacrifice of the first born in the normadic lifestyle.

• Later, when the the Hebrews settled down in the Land of Israel, they adopted the festival suited to sedentary lifestyle - the feast of sacrifice of the first fruits of agricultural produce.
• In this way, actually became a synthesis of two festivals.
• When a central religious in Jerusalem authority arose, the nature of the feast underwent further changes; Jerusalem became the central place for worship and sacrifices, it was no longer permissible to sacrifice the first-born lamb at home or on special high-places; people had to go up to to offer their first-born animals in the Temple ("beit hammiqddash"):
  
  shamor et-hodesh ha'aviv we'asita pesah la'adonay eloheykha ki behodesh ha'aviv hotsiy'akha adonay eloheykha mimmitsrayim laylah: wezavahta pesah la'adonay eloheykha tson uvaqar bammaqom asher yivhar adonay leshaken shemo sham:
  (Observe the month of Aviv, and keep the Passover to the Lord thy God: for in the month of Aviv the Lord thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night.(Dt. 16:1)
  Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the Passover to the Lord thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the Lord shall choose to place His name there.(Dt. 16:2)

• Another remarkable contradiction between the text of the commandment in the Book of Deuteronomy and that in the Book of Exodus is that the could be boiled, which was explicitly forbidden in the above verses from Exodus:
  
  uvishalta we'akhalta bammaqom asher yivhar adonay eloheykha bo...
  And thou shalt boil and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose...(Deut. 16:7)
• There are Bible translations which translate this as "roast", based on early Bible interpretation, the verb besshel (boil) is used in the above verse in the Book of Exodus as forbidden for the .
  
• The root of the verb is known from Babylonian "bashalu" and some Arabic dialects (Oman and Socotia); as well as Aramaic, Syriac (a Aramaic dialect). In all these languages, the root has the meaning of "to ripen" (of fruits), and the meaning of "to boil in liquid" compare:
  
  lo-tevashel gedi bahalev immo (Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother's milk.(Ex. 23:19).
• The early traditional translation into Aramaic by Onkelos, dating from the time of the Talmud, used the same root "B SH L" for the word in verse Deut. 16:7, but the later Aramaic translation by Jonathan used the word titwun (thou shall roast), and Rashi, the famous Bible comentator of the Middle Ages, wrote in his explanation:
  
  ubisshalta: zehu tseli esh she'af hu qaruy bisshul
  (And thou shall boil: this means roasted on the fire which is also "bisshul" [boil])
• Before we protest a lack of integrity in translation or commentary, we should read the following Bible verse:
  
  wayevasshelu happesah ba'esh kammishpat wehaqqodashim bisshelu bassirim uvaddewadim uwattselahot...
  (And they "boiled" the paschal lamb with fire according to the ordinance: but the other holy offerings they boiled in pots, and in cauldrons, and in pans...(2Chr. 35:13).
• Ibn Ginah, a noted Medieval Hebrew linguist, explained in his dictionary, "Sefer haShorashim", that the root B SH L refers to two methods: the first is natural: "to ripen"; the second is: "by work of mankind"; either "with water on the fire" or "on the fire only" and quoted the verse in the Book of the Chronicles as evidence of this.
• The root TS l H (roast) is found only in five verses in the Bible.
• The root (boil) is found in twenty-five verses; in one verse the meaning of "roast" is undeniable (2 Chr. 35:13) and in another (Deut. 16:7), self-evident, in order not to contradict the senss of a earlier commandment (Ex. 12:9).
  

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