Passover Tidbit No. 14

The Passover for Today

We are told some 300 times in Scripture to keep the Pesach Seder, to keep the Feasts of YHVH. If fact, the Hebrew word translated in English as keep is shaw-mar' שמר, and it actually means to guard or protect, or attend to. We are told to guard and protect the Feasts. So how have you been doing at that?

All through the TaNaKh we see the kings and the people sometimes keeping the feasts, but mostly ignoring them. Even the children in the wilderness, it seems, did not keep Pesach while they traveled in the wilderness. It was not until Yahusha (Joshua) from the Hebrew word for salvation, led the children across the Yordan River and into the Promised Land that they celebrated the Pesach as recorded in Yahusha 5:10 "And the Children of Yisrah-el’ encamped in Gilgal and kept (shaw-mar') the Pesach on the fourteenth day of the month even at the Plains of Jericho".

The name Gilgal is from the root meaning a cycle or circle, and indeed that is exactly what the Children were doing, completing the cycle from bondage to freedom. They were guarding the protecting the Pesach by celebrating it again for the first time in the Promised Land.

I might add the word translated as encamped is from the word khane חב from which we translate the word grace. So YHVH’s grace is not a get out of jail free card, it means we are camping with Him, agreeing with Him, and doing what He does. They are His Feasts; you can do the math.

2 Melek (Kings) 23 is the account of Melek Yo-she-yaw’-hoo (King Josiah) tearing down the places of pagan worship in Yisrah-el’ and rebuilding the Temple of YHVH, verse 21 and 22 read like this "And the king commanded all the people, saying Keep the Pesach unto Yahuah your Elohiym, as it is written in the Book of this covenant, Surely there was not holden such a Pesach from the days of the judges that judged Yisrah-el’, nor in the days of the kings of Yirah-el’, nor the kings of Yahuda” Reading the chapter is exciting and interesting as Yo-she-yaw’-hoo details the many sites of pagan worship in the land and in the Temple he destroyed.

Then again as recorded in 2 Diveri Hayamiym (Chronicles) we see King Hezekiah breaking down the temples of pagan worship and beginning in verse 1 of Chapter 30 we read " And Hezekiah sent to all Yisrah-el’ and Yahuda, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, they should come to the house of YHVH at Yerusalem, to keep the Pesach unto YHVH Elohiym of Yisrah-el’” And by the time the chapter closes in verse 27 we read "Then the priests and Levites arose and blessed the people; and their voice was heard, and their prayers came up to His Holy dwelling place, even unto Heaven"

These are not isolated incidents; we see time and time again when the people are out of YHVH's favor, when they have begun to look exactly like the world, when they had forgotten the commands of Yahuah, they return to Him by celebrating the Pesach. They break down the places of pagan worship in their lives and replace it with Yahuah’s Pesach.

In these examples the Elohiym of Yisrah-el’ was slowly replaced with the gods of the world over the course of several hundred years. In our "kingdom" it has not even been 80 years and the Elohiym, so much a part of our schools, is now not only gone, but illegal. Prayer has been replaced by shootings, men of Adonai replaced by planned parenthood, and the local LBGTQTRSV groups.

I don’t know, celebrating the Pesach right now in these times seems like a good idea to me ... just say'n

CB