Exodus 12:5 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Your lamb shall be without blemish— It was an indispensable qualification in sacrifices, to be perfect, as the Hebrew has it, or without blemish. See Leviticus 20:24. This was not peculiar to the sacrifices offered to the true God. The heathens were no less careful in this respect. As the paschal lamb was a lively and expressive type of Jesus Christ, there is no doubt but the perfection of that Lamb of God was signified by this circumstance, 1 Peter 1:19 while, at the same time, that moral purity and sincerity, without which no act of worship can be pleasing to the Deity, and the entire consecration of our whole man to God, might also be figured out by it. The lamb was not only to be perfect, but a male. Leviticus 3:10. Many of the nations, in contradiction to this, (as some have observed,) held the sacrifice of the female sex, as the more proper: Though Herodotus informs us, that the Egyptians counted it unlawful to offer any other but male animals in sacrifice to the gods, Herod. l. ii. c. 41. Indeed, in the ritual of the Hebrews, it appears to have been indifferent which sex was offered in peace-offerings or eucharistical sacrifices, Leviticus 3:1.Numbers 19:2.Deuteronomy 21:3. Freedom from blemish was required in every sacrifice; but the limitation of sex seemed to have been fixed to those which were more immediately typical of the great expiation. The lamb was to be not only perfect, and a male, but of the first year: Hebrew, a son of the year, i.e. not exceeding the first year in age. They were counted unfit for sacrifice after the first year; because, according to Bochart's remark, they then were not so proper to be emblems of purity and innocence. And, as they were not to be offered after the first year, so were they not to be offered before they were eight days old; see ch. Exodus 22:30. Leviticus 22:27 before which time they were scarcely supposed to have attained the perfection of animal life, or to have been sufficiently purified. Pliny says, Pecoris foetus die octavo purus est, the young of cattle are pure on the eighth day.