Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 12:2
This month [shall be] unto you the beginning of months: it [shall be] the first month of the year to you.
2. This month, &c.] The ‘month’ is the one corresponding to our Mar. Apr., called in J and E (Exo 13:4, Exo 23:15, Exo 34:18) and Deu 16:1) ‘Abib,’ and in the later post-exilic writings (Neh 2:1, Est 3:7) by its Bab. name, Nisan. P never, like the older pre-exilic writers, calls the months by their Canaanitish or Phoenician names, Abib ( ll.cc.), Ziv (1Ki 6:1; 1Ki 6:37), Ethanim ( ib. 1Ki 8:2), Bul ( ib. 1Ki 6:38); but, as do the late parts of Kings (1Ki 12:32-33 [compiler], 2Ki 25:1; 2Ki 25:3; 2Ki 25:8; 2Ki 25:25; 2Ki 25:27), Jer. (Jer 1:3, Jer 28:1; Jer 28:17, Jer 36:22 al.), Ezek. (Eze 1:1, Eze 8:1 al.), Hag. (Hag 1:1; Hag 1:15, Hag 2:1), Zech. (Zec 1:1; Zec 1:7, Zec 7:1; Zec 7:3), and Chron., denotes them by numbers (1Ch 16:1; 1Ch 19:1; Lev 16:29, &c.). The old Hebrew year began in autumn (Exo 23:16; cf. Exo 34:22, 1Sa 1:20); and P here refers the later custom of beginning it in spring (see Jer 36:22) to the time of the institution of the Passover in Egypt. The Bab. year began in spring; but whether the Hebrew custom was due to Bab. influence is uncertain. The earliest clear cases of the Heb. year beginning in spring are in the dates quoted above from Kings and Jer.; but 2Ki 19:29 (= Isa 37:30) perhaps pre-supposes it. As the passages from Kings and Jer. shew, the reckoning from spring was more than a merely ecclesiastical calendar, it was used also for dating civil events. See further Nowack, Arch. i. 217 ff. DB. iv. 764; EB. iv. 5365 f.; Knig, ZDMG. lvi. (1906), p. 624 ff. There is a survival in P of the old mode of reckoning in the first day of the seventh month being celebrated as New Year’s day (Lev 23:24).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
This month – Abib Exo 13:4. It was called Nisan by the later Hebrews, and nearly corresponds to our April. The Israelites are directed to take Abib henceforth as the beginning of the year; the year previously began with the month Tisri, when the harvest was gathered in; see Exo 23:16. The injunction touching Abib or Nisan referred only to religious rites; in other affairs they retained the old arrangement, even in the beginning of the Sabbatic year; see Lev 25:9.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 2. This month shall be unto you the beginning of months] It is supposed that God now changed the commencement of the Jewish year. The month to which this verse refers, the month Abib, answers to a part of our March and April; whereas it is supposed that previously to this the year began with Tisri, which answers to a part of our September; for in this month the Jews suppose God created the world, when the earth appeared at once with all its fruits in perfection. From this circumstance the Jews have formed a twofold commencement of the year, which has given rise to a twofold denomination of the year itself, to which they afterwards attended in all their reckonings: that which began with Tisri or September was called their civil year; that which began with Abib or March was called the sacred or ecclesiastical year.
As the exodus of the Israelites formed a particular era, which is referred to in Jewish reckonings down to the building of the temple, I have marked it as such in the chronology in the margin; and shall carry it down to the time in which it ceased to be acknowledged.
Some very eminently learned men dispute this; and especially Houbigant, who contends with great plausibility of argument that no new commencement of the year is noted in this place; for that the year had always begun in this month, and that the words shall be, which are inserted by different versions, have nothing answering to them in the Hebrew, which he renders literally thus. Hic mensis vobis est caput mensium; hic vobis primus est anni mensis. “This month is to you the head or chief of the months; it is to you the first month of the year.” And he observes farther that God only marks it thus, as is evident from the context, to show the people that this month, which was the beginning of their year, should be so designated as to point out to their posterity on what month and on what day of the month they were to celebrate the passover and the fast of unleavened bread. Hi words are these: “Ergo superest, et Hebr. ipso ex contextu efficitur, non hic novi ordinis annum constitui, sed eum anni mensem, qui esset primus, ideo commemorari, ut posteris constaret, quo mense, et quo die mensis paseha et azyma celebranda essent.”
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
This month was the first month after the vernal equinox, called Abib, Exo 13:4; 23:15; Deu 16:1, and Nissan, Neh 2:1; Est 3:7; containing part of our March, and part of April.
The beginning; Heb. the head; which, I conceive, notes not so much the order, which is more plainly mentioned in the following words, as the eminency of it, that it shall be accounted the chief and principal of all months; as the sabbath hath been called by some the queen of days. And justly must they prefer this month before the rest, whether they looked back to their prodigious deliverance from Egypt therein, or forward to their spiritual redemption by Christ, and to the acceptable year of the Lord, Luk 4:19; for in this very month our Lord Jesus suffered, Joh 18:28.
It shall be the first month: heretofore your first month for all affairs hath been Tisri, which in part answers to our September, and is the first month after the autumnal equinox; and so it shall be to you still as to civil affairs, as it appears from Exo 23:16; 34:22; Lev 25:8-10; but as to sacred and ecclesiastical matters, this shall henceforth be your first month.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
2. this month shall be unto you thebeginning of monthsthe first not only in order but inestimation. It had formerly been the seventh according to thereckoning of the civil year, which began in September, and continuedunchanged, but it was thenceforth to stand first in the nationalreligious year which began in March, April.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
This month shall be unto you the beginning of months,…. Not only the first, as after expressed, but the chief and principal of them, now famous for their coming out of Egypt in it, and would be more so for the sufferings and death of the Messiah, and redemption by him from sin, Satan, and the world, law, hell, and death, for he suffered at the time of the passover. This month was called Abib, Ex 13:4, which signifies an ear of corn, and at this time we find that the barley was in ear, Ex 9:31 which clearly shows in what month the above things were transacted; afterwards it was called Nisan, which seems to be the Chaldean name for it, Ne 2:1: it shall be the first month of the year to you; which before was the seventh; while the Israelites were in Egypt they observed the same beginning of the year and course of months as the Egyptians, as Josephus z intimates; and with the Egyptians, the month Thot was the first month, which answered to Tisri with the Jews, and both to our September, or a part of it, so that the beginning of the year was then in the autumnal equinox, at which season it is thought the world was created; but now to the Israelites it was changed unto the vernal equinox, for this month of Abib or Nisan answers to part of our March and part of April; though indeed both beginnings of the year were observed by them, the one on ecclesiastic, the other on civil accounts; or, as Josephus a expresses it, the month of Nisan was the beginning with respect to things divine, but in buying and selling, and such like things, the ancient order was observed; and so the Targum of Jonathan here paraphrases it,
“from hence ye shall begin to reckon the feasts, the times, and the revolutions.”
Indeed the Jews had four beginnings of the year according to their Misnah b; the first of Nisan (or March) was the beginning of the year for kings and for festivals; the first of Elul (or August) for the tithing of cattle; the first of Tisri (or September) for the sabbatical years, jubilees, and planting of trees and herbs; and the first of Shebet (or January) for the tithing the fruit of trees.
z Antiqu. l. 1. c. 3. sect. 3. a Antiqu. l. 1. c. 3. sect. 3. b Misn. Roshhashanah, c. 1. sect. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(2) The beginning of months.Hitherto the Hebrews had commenced the year with Tisri, at or near the autumnal equinox. (See Exo. 23:16.) In thus doing, they followed neither the Egyptian nor the Babylonian custom. The Egyptians began the year in June, with the first rise of the Nile; the Babylonians in Nisannu, at the vernal equinox. It was this month which was now made, by Gods command, the first month of the Hebrew year; but as yet it had not the name Nisan: it was called Abib (Exo. 13:4), the month of greenness. Henceforth the Hebrews had two years, a civil and a sacred one (Joseph., Ant. Jud., i. 3, 3). The civil year began with Tisri, in the autumn, at the close of the harvest; the sacred year began with Abib (called afterwards Nisan), six months earlier. It followed that the first civil was the seventh sacred month, and vice versa.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. This month (Abib or Nisan) shall be unto you the beginning ( head) of months first month of the year Hitherto the year had commenced with the month Tisri, (or September,) but henceforth the year was to be reckoned from Abib, the month of Israel’s birth . Abib signifies “an ear of grain;” it was the month when barley ripened, corresponding with our close of March and beginning of April . The Hebrew months were lunar, and Abib was the month commencing with the new moon just after or just before the vernal equinox. This was the sacred year, by which the festivals were reckoned; but the civil or common year was still reckoned from Tisri. The passover was, then, instituted some time in the month of Israel’s deliverance, but not after the final interview with Pharaoh described in the last chapter, since four days, inclusive, were to elapse after the choice of the lamb before the passover.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Exo 12:2. This month shall be unto you the beginning of months The Jews, like most other nations, began their year, before this event, about the autumnal equinox, in the month Tisri, after their harvest and vintage: but that which was their first month, now became their seventh; as the month Abib, which answers principally to our March, was, by God’s appointment, and in commemoration of this their deliverance, constituted the first month of their sacred year. Abib signifies the green corn; and the month was so named, because the corn in those countries began to ripen about this time. See ch. Exo 13:4.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
“Handfuls of Purpose”
For All Gleaners
“This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.” Exo 12:2 .
God is the Ruler of time. We do not invent years and months and weeks. These are really, when searched into, the creations and appointments of the Divine power. New days are new opportunities. New days enable us to forget the evil of all yesterdays. Consider the dawning year in this light, and the opening day. The true birthday of a man is the day on which his soul was born into a purer and nobler life. A birthday may be determined by a vow. The birthday of the body is the poorest of all anniversaries. When the great idea entered the mind, inspiring and ennobling it, and filling it with Divine enthusiasm, the man was truly born. We are entitled to date our existence from our regeneration, otherwise our memory might become an intolerable torment Regeneration destroys the recollections of remorse. Man is breaking a Divine ordinance when he goes beyond the day of his recreation, and insists upon making alive again all the iniquities that corrupted and degraded his earliest life. Beautiful is the word beginning. It is one of the first words in the Bible. God himself alone could have invented that word. It is a dewy term; it is tender with the brightness of morning; it is beautiful with the bloom of heaven; a very holy and most helpful word. Blessed is the man who knows he has begun his life again, and who can confidently date his best existence from a point in time which separates him from every evil and accusing memory.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Exo 12:2 This month [shall be] unto you the beginning of months: it [shall be] the first month of the year to you.
Ver. 2. This month. ] Called Abib in Exo 13:4 ; with us called March or April; when the day lengthening, and the sun ascending, each thing begins to revive. To show, saith one, that by the true Passover, Christ Jesus, not only is our time and all other things sanctified, but also that we should in recent remembrance of that benefit of our redemption, all our days and years be thankful to our gracious Redeemer, and that by his death, true life and reviving came unto mankind.
It shall be the first month,
a Antiq., lib. i. cap. 4.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
month. Hebrew name Abib, or “green-ear-month”. Becomes the first month, and the fifteenth the ruling date, henceforth. Compare Exo 13:4; Exo 23:15. Deu 16:1. Afterward called Nisan (Nehemiah 2. Est 3:7). “First”, Compare Exo 40:2, Exo 40:17. Lev 23:5, in place of Tisri, which thus be-came the seventh month.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
first month
i.e. April.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
am 2513, bc 1491, An, Exod, Isr, 1, Abib or Nisan, Exo 13:4, Exo 23:15, Exo 34:18, Lev 23:5, Num 28:16, Deu 16:1, Est 3:7
Reciprocal: Exo 11:2 – borrow Exo 19:1 – the third Exo 40:2 – the first month Num 9:11 – fourteenth Num 33:3 – in the first Jos 4:19 – first month 2Ch 29:17 – the sixteenth Eze 45:18 – In the first month
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A NEW START
This month shall be the first month of the year to you.
Exo 12:2
Egypt behindSinai beforeCanaan beyondthis is the exact account of the position of Israel when God said to him, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. Redemption was the starting point of the new: from it all that follows shall take a new character, a new life.
The text is chosen, all will understand, not with a view to historical retrospects, but to the circumstances of this day, and of this congregationkept alive by Him who created, to take part in the public worship of the first Sunday of a new year. This shall be to you the beginning of months: the first month of the year to you.
I. The idea of a new start is naturally attractive to all of us.We are fatigued, we are wearied, we are dissatisfied, and justly so, with the time past of our lives. O for a gift of amnesty and of oblivion! O for some one to say to us, The past is gone and done withnothing shall come back from it to scare, to encumber, or to accuse,God and man have agreed together to bury it in the earth, to drown it in the depths of the sea! Let us have a beginning of months once again; let this be indeed the first month of a second first year!
There are senses, indeed, in which this is impossible. The continuity of life cannot be broken. Neither lapse of time, nor division of time; neither transition from childhood to youth, nor from youth to uttermost age; neither change of place, nor change of position, nor change of circumstance, nor change of companionship; neither joy nor sorrow; neither prosperity nor disappointment; neither pain nor love (the two most powerful factors in mans life) can snap in twain the unity of this being, or make me, save for a few rare and fallacious moments, so much as dream that I am not the thing I was. When any accidental evidence comes to me out of the pastthe sight of an old letter, to me or from methe greeting of a former schoolfellow, unseen for twenty or thirty yearsI start as I recognise my present self in the mirror of that pastthe same mixture of a manthe same good points, whether of mind or heart, which I hoped were newthe same bad points, whether of feeling or character, which I flattered myself were the creatures of circumstance, recent, accidental, evanescent. I seem to understandand it is no pleasant discoveryin such confrontings of the old self and the new, how it is that Scripture is able to fix that character which to us appears ever dissolvinghow it may be possible for God in the great day, without witnesses, without a jury, to judge a man as one thing all along, all through, and not manyeven to write his epitaph, as He has done for so many in the pages of His BookHe did that which was good, or, He did that which was evil, in the sight of the Lordhis name, and his mothers name, and his birth, and his burial!
There is a continuity, a unity, an identity, which annihilation onlynay, not annihilationcould destroy. And there are those who overlook thisdeal too lightly, too flippantly, with this re-beginning which is our textare startled, almost angry, if they find the Israel of Sinai bewraying by his murmurings his identity with the Israel of Egypts flesh-pots, or the Israel of Canaan itself dwelling contentedly amidst abominable idolatries which he was commissioned and charged and set there to exterminate. Against this false teaching we must earnestly warn such as will hearken. It will come to us, most often, in the garb of evangelical doctrine, true and scriptural and salutary in its principlewrong only, yet most wrong, in its inferences and its corollaries.
II. The beginning of months is made so by an Exodus.The Passover, the sprinkling of sacrificial blood, the faith thus evidenced, the part thus taken, the choice thus made, the lot thus cast in with God and His people as against Egypt and its pleasures of sin for a seasonthis was the starting-point. Brethren, it is so still. Redemption, the Redemption of the worldundertaken as at this season, completed on Calvary, by our Lord Jesus Christthis is the groundwork of the new life. It is no re-commencement of the life to write a new year in our books or on our letters. This is indeed a change marked in sand, written in watera mere name, a mere fancy, if we treat it as anything but just a signal or symbol of Gods call and of our duty. We waken in the new as we slept in the old. This is nothing. If there be in any of us a real desire for changefor a life different in kind from the formerfor a life higher, nobler, purer, more real, more consistent, more spiritualplant your foot firmly upon redemption. See the Paschal Lamb bearing the sins of the world. Behold Him, Divine and Human, undertaking to deliver man, coming into the world to save sinners, making atonement for us, opening the kingdom of heaven to all believers. View the enterprise in this large, bold, broad way. Believe that it was successful. Believe that your sins were there. See God, your Father, in His Son Jesus Christ: and doubt not that He who spared not Him will spare nothing else that is good.
Dean Vaughan.
Illustration
(1) There is nothing so great, nothing so supreme for thought now, as the coming, in our wrong-doing world, of that kingdom of Christ which holy men from the beginning of time have looked forward to. And, as we enter on another year, when new and gigantic developments of the working of evil sound alarm, prayer is what the Spirit is pressing on us.
(2)Charge not thyself with the weight of the year,
Child of the Master, faithful and dear.
Choose not the cross for the coming week,
For that is more than He bids thee seek.
Bend not the arms for to-morrows load:
Thou mayst leave that to thy gracious God,
Daily only He saith to thee.
Take up thy cross and follow Me.
(3) God is the ruler of time. We do not invent years and months and weeks. These are really, when searched into, the creations and appointments of the Divine Power. New days are new opportunities. New days enable us to forget the evil of all yesterdays. Consider the dawning year in this light, and the opening day. The true birthday of a man is the day on which his soul was born into a purer and nobler life. A birthday may be determined by a vow. The birthday of the body is the poorest of all anniversaries. When the great idea entered the mind, inspiring and ennobling it, and filling it with Divine enthusiasm, the man was truly born. We are entitled to date our existence from our regeneration, otherwise our memory might become an intolerable torment. Regeneration destroys the recollections of remorse. Man is breaking a Divine ordinance when he goes beyond the day of his re-creation, and insists upon making alive again all the iniquities that corrupted and degraded his earliest life. Beautiful is the word beginning. It is one of the first words in the Bible. God Himself alone could have invented that word. It is a dewy term; it is tender with the brightness of morning; it is beautiful with the bloom of Heaven; a very holy and most helpful word. Blessed is the man who knows he has begun his life again, and who can confidently date his best existence from a point in time which separates him from every evil and accusing memory.
(4) It is a good thing for us to keep up such anniversaries as affect us as a people, or as households, or as believers in Jesus Christ. He clung, says the biographer of Baron Bunsen, with affection to signs and seasons, and days and years, though not to the extent that would have degenerated into superstition; a date once marked by an event for good seemed to him a point round which all that was good and desirable might cluster for ever.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
12:2 This {a} month [shall be] unto you the beginning of months: it [shall be] the first {b} month of the year to you.
(a) Called Nisan, containing part of March and part of April.
(b) Concerning the observation of feasts: as for other policies, they reckoned from September.