Ye shall keep it up. — Heb., ye shall have it in custody: separate it, i.e., from the flock, and keep it in or near your house for four days. During this time it could be carefully and thoroughly inspected. (Comp. Exodus 12:3.)
The whole assembly of the congregation... shall kill it. — Every head of a family belonging to the “congregation” was to make the necessary arrangements, to have the victim ready, and to kill it on the fourteenth day, the day of the full moon, at a time described as that “between the two evenings.” There is some doubt as to the meaning of this phrase. According to Onkelos and Aben Ezra, the first evening was at sunset, the second about an hour later, when the twilight ended and the stars came out. With this view agrees the direction in Deuteronomy 16:6 : — “Thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun.” It is objected that, according to Josephus (Bell. Jud., vi. 9, § 3), the actual time of the sacrifice was “from the ninth to the eleventh hour” — i.e., from three o’clock to five — and that there would not have been time for the customary ceremonies during the short twilight of Palestine. The ceremonies consisted in the slaughter of the lambs at the tabernacle door, and the conveyance of the blood in basins to the altar, in order that it might be sprinkled upon it. For this operation a period of several hours’ duration would seem to have been necessary: hence the time came gradually to be extended; and when this had been done, a new interpretation of the phrase “between the evenings” grew up. The first evening was explained to begin with the decline of the sun from the zenith, and the second with the sunset; but this can scarcely have been the original idea.