Passover: Not a Bone Broken

Feasts of Israel Series: Part 8

God added an interesting detail to the treatment of the Passover lamb once Israel had escaped Egypt. They were to be careful not to break any of its bones.^[1]

It was a command they followed until the temple was destroyed. After that, there was no authorized place to slay the lamb, no altar holy enough to receive its consecrated blood. Still, though the lamb could no longer be slain or eaten, it did continue to appear in future Passovers in the form of a bare and unbroken shank bone on their tables.

Why was the leg bone so important?

For one thing, the Gospel of John likens Jesus’ unbroken legs to Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah when he quoted, “not one of His bones shall be broken”(John 10:36). Other than confirming Jesus’s Messiahship, I think this odd little detail must be communicating something more.

No One Took His Life

Legs were very important to people being crucified. Body weight pulled them into a sag that collapsed their lungs. Unless they could push themselves up, they couldn’t expand their ribs to draw in air. It wasn’t a position they could maintain long. Soon their knees would have to bend again. Long hours of bobbing and sinking preceded death as they gasped for air like drowning men in the slow asphyxiation that was crucifixion.

When the guards trudged up Golgotha hill to break the legs of the condemned that evening they were surprised to find Jesus already dead. He had only been hanging for six hours, after all, not long by crucifixion standards. The two hanging beside Him were still breathing, though, and the soldiers had been ordered to get them off the crosses before Sabbath arrived. They couldn’t come down until they were dead and broken legs brought a swift end.

The didn’t need to speed anything up for Jesus so His legs were untouched. But why had He died so quickly? Was He just weaker than the others? Not likely.

He was the one who had legions of angels at His beck and call.^[2] He was the one who’d sent grown men into a faint just by saying “I AM”?^[3] He could have prevented His own death. He said as much when He declared no one could kill Him. “I lay [My life] down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:18). His unbroken legs proved He chose His own moment to die.

Unbroken Fellowship

There’s one more cue in the unbroken lambs of Passover. Historical evidence suggests they would have been skewered from nose to tail and roasted upright. Separate crossbeams holding their forelegs apart was the picture of crucifixion.^[5][6] Like Jesus’ body hanging on a tree, bloodied and bruised as Messiah might be, He would be whole.

Centuries later, the Apostle Paul would point to this body and liken believers to individual members of it.^[7] If we compare the body of Christ to that of the Passover lamb, it brings our need for unbroken fellowship into greater focus. How Jesus must groan when we refuse to stay knit together–when we resist the unity He worked so hard to preserve.

The Messiah who so boldly proved His identity by keeping His body whole, who demonstrated with intact legs He was able to give His life to His Father without any help, deserves the honor of our unbroken fellowship. May we always be careful not to break the bones even Roman soldiers dared not touch.

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^[1] Exodus 12:46

^[2] Matthew 26:53

^[3] John 18:5–6

^[4] John 19:30

^[5] Dr. Rickard Booker, Celebrating Jesus in the Biblical Feasts (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, 2016), 34–36.

^[6] Michael Norten, Unlocking the Secrets of the Feasts (Nashville: West Bow Press, 2012, 2015), 3–4.

^[7] see Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12