Parashat Bo begins with the last several of the ten plagues, but the narrative is interrupted by detailed instructions about the Passover observance at the beginning of chapter 12.
Scholars believe that much of chapter 12 is a retrojection from a later period: some of it seems excessive and unnecessary for the exodus itself. Part of it, however, may represent customs that predate the exodus.
In particular, the Passover observance seems to fuse what may have originally been two separate celebrations. One is a festival of matzah, an agricultural festival that began on the 15th of Nisan, just as other agricultural festivals begin on the 15th of the Hebrew month.
The other is the Pesach sacrifice, which the Torah places on the 14th of Nisan, beginning late in the day. While the matzah festival would have originated among farmers, the Pesach sacrifice would have originated among herders. The Torah presents the Israelites as a group of nomadic herders, but the grain storehouses established by Joseph should remind us of the importance of agriculture in Egypt.
Deuteronomy, which is almost certainly of later origin, adds a third aspect to the Passover observance: the dedication of the first-born to God. This obviously relates to the last of the ten plagues, but probably reflects an even older Near Eastern tradition in which first-born sons would have held a quasi-priestly status within the family. Furthermore, the exodus narrative understands Israel to be God’s first-born, that is, the first among nations.
It would be productive, in teaching about Passover, to study Exodus 12 along with the Haggadah. This chapter of Exodus, even though it lays out observance in detail, embodies high drama in the instructions for the sacrifice and especially in the attitude the Hebrews were to adopt:
This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly: it is a passover offering to the Lord. For that night I will go through the land of Egypt and strike down every first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and I will mete out punishments to all the gods of Egypt, I the Lord. And the blood on the houses in which you dwell shall be a sign for you: when I see the blood I will pass over you, so that no plague will destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. (12:11–13)
The Passover narrative in Exodus has a power that is largely absent from the episodes leading up to it, no matter how interesting we may find them. And yet, partly because we teach more from retellings in story form than from the Torah text itself, we tend to teach more about Moses, Pharaoh, and the plagues than about the Pesach. The observance comes in separately when we teach about Passover-the-holiday.
There are enormous differences between the narrative in this parashah and that in the Haggadah. Each is persuasive in its own way; when we read one, it takes a conscious effort to recall the other. Interestingly, the Torah narrative has an economical structure that seems logical and appeals to modern tastes, while the Haggadah narrative seems loose and disorganized.
But which is more compelling? One of my teachers commented that, as a scholar, he accepted all of modern Bible criticism and thus could not believe much of the narrative in this parashah. And yet, as a Jew, when he participated in a seder and read the Haggadah, every detail of it was true for him, at least for the moment. Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman writes that this is a central function of ritual: to turn a story that is “too good to believe” into one that is too good not to believe.
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