The Lamb

Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” “Here I am, my son,” he replied. “The fire and the wood are here,” said Isaac, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two walked on together.

Isaac asks the question the canon will spend sixty-five more books answering — 'where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?' — and Abraham does not point at anything: 'God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son.' The noun is שֶׂה (seh, H7716), one of a flock. The wood Isaac is carrying is עֵץ (H6086), the same noun the Trees thread follows to Calvary.

Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man must select a lamb for his family, one per household. If the household is too small for a whole lamb, they are to share with the nearest neighbor based on the number of people, and apportion the lamb accordingly. Your lamb must be an unblemished year-old male, and you may take it from the sheep or the goats. You must keep it until the fourteenth day of the month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel will slaughter the animals at twilight. They are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs.

The lamb is now a national ordinance and a domestic one at the same time — 'a lamb for a household' — chosen on the tenth day, kept until the fourteenth, killed at even, its blood put 'on the two side-posts and on the lintel.' שֶׂה (H7716) is tagged in ten verses of Exodus, more than in any other book.

This is what you are to offer regularly on the altar, each day: two lambs that are a year old. Offer one lamb in the morning and the other at twilight.

Passover was once a year; this is 'day by day continually' — one lamb in the morning, one at even, for as long as the tabernacle stands. Exodus 29:42 calls it 'a continual burnt-offering throughout your generations.' The figure is no longer an event but a rhythm.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.

For the first time the lamb is a person: 'as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.' Silence is the detail Isaiah repeats twice in one verse.

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

John points and names it: 'Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!' His word is ἀμνός (amnos, G286), and in the tagged Greek New Testament that word stands in exactly four verses — John 1:29, John 1:36, Acts 8:32, and 1 Peter 1:19. Every one of the four is about the same person, and the Acts verse is a man reading Isaiah 53 aloud.

Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Paul does not argue the identification; he assumes his readers already hold it, and reasons from it to how a church should live: 'For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ.' Exodus 12 has become an ethic.

but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot.

Peter reaches back to the selection rule of Exodus 12:5 — 'Your lamb shall be without blemish' — and applies it to the price of redemption: 'as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.' This is the fourth and last ἀμνός verse in the New Testament.

Then I saw a Lamb who appeared to have been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth.

The word changes. John's Revelation drops ἀμνός for ἀρνίον (arnion, G721) — the diminutive, a little lamb — and then uses it as the throne-name: of the twenty-eight verses in the tagged Greek New Testament that carry ἀρνίον, twenty-seven are in Revelation. The posture is the paradox: standing, and slain.