Verse 21. - With the fourteenth day of the month, the day appointed by the Law of Moses for the killing of the Paschal lamb (Exodus 12:6), the Passover (חַפָסַה with the article, the well-known festival of that name) should commence. Though the selection of the lamb upon the tenth day of the first month is not specified, it may be assumed that this would be implied in the appointment of a Passover which should begin on the day already legalized by the Mosaic Torah. According to Wellhausen and Smend, the first mention of the Passover occurs in Deuteronomy 16:2, 5, 6, and the next in 2 Kings 23:22; but this can only be maintained by declaring Exodus 34:25, which occurs in the so-called "Book of the Covenant" - a pre-Deuteronomic work - "a gloss," and by relegating Exodus 12. to the "priest-code" for no other reason than that it alludes to the Passover (vers. 11, 21, 27, 43) - a principle of easy application, and capable of being used to prove anything. Smend likewise regards it as strange that the Passover should be made to commence on the fourteenth of the month, and not, as the autumn feast, on the fifteenth (ver. 25); and suggests that the original reading, which he supposes was the fifteenth, may have been corrected subsequently in accordance with the priest, code. But if the priest-cede was posterior to and modeled after Ezekiel. Why should it have ordained the fourteenth instead of that which its master recommended, viz. the fifteenth? A sufficient explanation of the differing dates in Ezekiel is supplied if Ezekiel, in fixing them, may be held to have followed the so-called priest-cede. A feast of seven days; literally, a feast of hebdomad of days (חַג שְׁבֻעות יָמִים). By almost all interpreters this is understood to mean "a feast of a full week, the exact duration of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which began with the eating of the Paschal lamb (Exodus 12:8, 15-20; Leviticus 23:6; Numbers 9:11; Deuteronomy 16:3, 4). At the same time, it is frankly admitted that, to extract this sense from the words, שְׁבֻעות must be changed into שְׁבְעַת. As the words stand, they can only signify a feast of weeks of days. חַג שְׁבֻעות, in Exodus 34:22 and Deuteronomy 16:10, is applied to the Feast of Pentecost, which was called "a Feast of Hebdomads," from the seven weeks which intervened between the Passover and it. Hence Kliefoth, adhering to the legitimate sense of the expression, understands the prophet to say that the whole period of seven weeks between the first Passover and Pentecost should be celebrated in the new dispensation as a Feast of Unleavened Bread. In support of this Kliefoth cites a similar use of the word "days" in Genesis 29:14; Genesis 41:1; Deuteronomy 21:13; 2 Kings 15:13; Jeremiah 28:3, 11; Daniel 10:2, 3; and certainly no objection can be taken to a Passover of seven weeks, if Ezekiel may be supposed to have been merely expressing analogically spiritual conceptions, and not furnishing actual legislation to be afterwards put in operation. Against this translation, however, Keil urges that the expression, "seven days of the feast" (ver. 23), appears to mark the duration of the festival; but this is not so convincing as its author imagines, since the prophet may be held as describing, in vers. 23, 24, the procedure of each seven days without intending to unsay what he had already stated, that the feast should continue seven weeks of days. A second objection pressed by Keil, that יָמִים "is not usually connected with the preceding noun in the construct state, but is attached as an adverbial accusative," as in the above-cited passages, is sufficiently disposed of by Kliefoth's statement that the punctuation might easily be altered so as to read שָׁבֻעות. Upon the whole, while not free from difficulty, the view of Kliefoth seems best supported by argument.

45:1-25 In the period here foretold, the worship and the ministers of God will be provided for; the princes will rule with justice, as holding their power under Christ; the people will live in peace, ease, and godliness. These things seem to be represented in language taken from the customs of the times in which the prophet wrote. Christ is our Passover that is sacrificed for us: we celebrate the memorial of that sacrifice, and feast upon it, triumphing in our deliverance out of the Egyptian slavery of sin, and our preservation from the destroying sword of Divine justice, in the Lord's supper, which is our passover feast; as the whole Christian life is, and must be, the feast of the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.In the first month, in the fourteenth day of the month,.... Of the month Nisan, that day fortnight from the cleansing of the sanctuary; and that day week from the expiation of the house, and the recovery and reception of backsliders:

ye shall have the passover; Christ the passover sacrificed for us; held forth in the ministry of the word, and in the ordinance of the Lord's supper; for the passover was a type of Christ: his purity and strength were signified by the lamb without blemish, a male of the first year; his separation to his office, his death, and the time of it, by the taking of this lamb from the flock some time before, and by slaying it between the two evenings; the manner of feeding on him, with fervent faith, and as a whole Saviour, attended with true repentance, and being willing also to suffer for him, by the lamb being eaten not raw, nor sodden, but roasted, and all of it, and with bitter herbs; and the security of his people by his blood from wrath and ruin, through the sprinkling it upon their consciences, by the sprinkling the blood of the passover on the lintel and door posts of the Israelites, which the Lord seeing passed by, and destroyed them not; and the new rules of keeping this passover, after observed, show that this respects not the type, but the antitype:

a feast of seven days; kept a whole week; and indeed Christ the passover is by faith to be lived upon throughout the week, as well as on Lord's days, and indeed in every week:

unleavened bread shall be eaten; and not leavened; with reference to which the Gospel feast is to be kept, not with old leaven, with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, 1 Corinthians 5:7.