People pressed into every nook and cranny in Jerusalem. The town’s population always swelled during Passover to almost more than one could count. One historian speculated that more than 2 million people crowded into the city for this special festival multiplying the normal population of about 80,000 (another historical estimate) many times over.
On Friday before Passover the area around the temple was constant activity. Levites spent the day sacrificing paschal lambs that would later be eaten by gatherings of families and friends as part of the Passover memorial.
The blood, liver, kidneys and fat from the animals would be burned in one of the altar fires set up for the occasion but the meat would be taken back and eaten as Jews remembered the time more than 1,200 years earlier when God delivered them from slavery and death by the blood of a lamb swabbed across doorposts.
Some Jewish writings indicate the press of people was so great that authorities opened and closed entrances to the Temple Mount resulting in shifts of people continuously packing the area until sunset.
Nearby commotion
Preparing for Passover was the focus of attention. There was little time to notice the commotion at the Antonia Fortress nearby where the Roman governor Pontius Pilate condemned some wandering religious teacher to be crucified. It was coincidence, some would say, that Jesus of Nazareth was sentenced to die on the same day the Levites would slaughter tens of thousands of sacrificial lambs (John 19:14).
Inside the temple itself the scene was calmer. There the practice was the same every day of every year. According to God’s instruction recorded in Exodus 29:38–40, the priests offered a morning and evening sacrifice. The sacrifice was always the same — a 1-year-old lamb without blemish or spot. Each offering was a sacrifice for the sin of the people.
Shortly after 2 p.m. the evening’s sacrificial lamb was led from its pen where it was examined one last time by the priest to assure there was no spot or blemish. It was watered from a golden bowl, then tied to a ring on the eastern side of the Altar of Incense located in the Court of the Priest in front of the Holy of Holies.
The animal was bound and laid with its head facing south before the sacrificial knife plunged into its neck. The blood was caught in a golden bowl and poured on the Altar of Incense while other priests filleted the sacrificial animal into six parts, all of which would be offered to God as a burnt offering for the sins of Israel.
About 3 p.m. (the usual time of the evening temple offering) the priests were ready to place the meat on the fire of the offering. That is when it happened. The earth shook. The giant stones of the temple rocked. To their horror some of the priests lost their balance falling to the floor with the sin offering still on the platters in their hands.
Worse yet the beautifully ornate blue, purple and crimson veil hanging just behind the Altar of Incense swung wildly from its gold fasteners and then ripped from top to bottom. Horrified the priests looked and there they saw the two large carved cherubims whose wings met at the center of the Holy of Holies where once the Ark of the Covenant had sat.
It was forbidden for any but the High Priest to enter this space. These priests were not even supposed to see it.
Dark as night
How long the earthquake lasted no one knows but everyone knew about the dark clouds that made the afternoon as dark as night. Rocks split in two testified to the enormity of the quake.
Neither the priests in the temple nor the Levites on Temple Mount, not even the men packed in waiting for their offering to be made, knew that just outside the city gates the wandering religious teacher from Nazareth had died at the same time the earthquake struck; the same time the veil guarding the Holy of Holies from the eyes of all but the High Priest was ripped apart from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51).
So busy were they in keeping the ceremonial law to earn God’s pleasure that they failed to see the “new covenant” being worked out in their midst, a new covenant God had promised through the Prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 31:31–34).
They could not see that “what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin” (Rom. 8:3).
John the Baptist had been the first to call Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).
Of Himself, Jesus said He came to give His life a ransom for many (Matt. 26:28). That is what He did when He died on Calvary (Heb. 9:28).
The Prophet Isaiah had described the coming Messiah as One who was oppressed and afflicted; One who like a lamb was led to slaughter (Isa. 53:7). The Prophet Jeremiah made a similar promise (Jer. 11:19).
Isaiah’s description
Jesus’ experience through His arrest, trials, abuse and crucifixion so perfectly fits Isaiah’s description that billboards in Israel used to ask Jewish rabbis, “Of whom does the prophet speak?” Those billboards are no longer allowed.
Some call it coincidence that Jesus died on the day Jews celebrated their deliverance from slavery and death in Egypt.
They also call it coincidence that Jesus died about the same time the priests offered the evening sacrifice for the sins of the people in the temple.
Others see the work of God so clearly that it cannot be missed. The Apostle Paul declared in 1 Corinthians 5:7, “For Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed.”
The Apostle Peter wrote that Christian believers have been redeemed by the “precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”
The writer of Hebrews adds, “Not through the blood of goats and calves but through His own blood He entered the holy place once for all having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12).
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, just as John the Baptist proclaimed.
No wonder the Apostle John foresaw the time when all would stand before the throne of God and there see “a Lamb standing as if slain.” And to the Lamb they would sing, “Worthy art Thou to take the book and to break its seals … for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev. 5:5, 9).
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