Leviticus 23:4 These are the feasts of the LORD, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. 

5 On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD’s Passover.

At the time of Jesus, the high priest, on the 10th of Nissan, would go to Bethany to get an unblemished lamb and bring it into the Temple to be inspected for four days. As a lamb was brought into the Eastern Gate, pilgrims would line the sides of the street and wave palm branches and say “Baruch Ha Shem Adonai” quoted from Psalm 118. At 9 AM on the 14th of Nissan, the lamb was tied to one of the horns of the altar. At 3 PM the high priest would slay the lamb while saying the words “it is finished.”

This ceremony teaches us about the Messiah‘s death. Jesus left the house of Lazarus in Bethany on Nissan 10 to teach in the Temple. There the scribes asked the hardest questions of Jesus and walked away saying “never a man spoke as this man.” So Jesus was without blemish. Jesus was hung on the cross at 9 AM and died at 3 PM, or “between the evenings” on Nissan 14. He acted as both priest and a sacrifice when he said “it is finished,” and then he died.

—Dr Ken Johnson