If you are doing the “Our Daily Bread” Bible reading plan, you will see in today’s reading the words “this day is to be for you the first day of your year”. That day is not today and it isn’t January at all. The Hebrew calendar hinges completely from this verse and the hundreds of times scripture names a day of an event, also swings on this very verse. We mostly pay zero attention to these dates but if every word in there is ‘useful for teaching, rebuking, encouraging’ then the dates it pains to include are a part of that.
The easiest way to remember anything about the calendar in the Bible is to know this first month mentioned today is the month Easter falls within. Why? Because Easter marks the events that took place at the first Passover which is the content of the rest of the reading today.
There is a surprising number of other events that happened on repeat days which increases the significance of their inclusion massively.
Every date that follows Exodus 12:2
a) hinges here and
b) matters
If you’ve never noticed the dates before – let them jump at you from now on. There’s a bunch of them in Exodus and Leviticus in particular!
– you already know what happened at Passover time 1500 years after the first one.
– do you know what happened on the 10th day 1500 years after the first time they chose a lamb specifically on that date? Or the same day only 40 years later on these dates?
We have to dig a bit for these treasures, and first – notice the clues in plain sight 🙂