Pesach (2)
God opens the way to Life

André H. Roosma
6 April 2012

Perhaps you know the phenomenon that some passages in the Bible have a twofold meaning: both a physical, short term one, and a deeper and more spiritual one on the long term. That surely counts for many words as well; e.g. words that had, in the old Semitic, pictographic script, a palm tree in them. Often the meaning of those words is tied to some physical aspect of the date palm, while in the deeper, more spiritual meaning, the palm tree symbolizes the Tree of Life, or everlasting Life in general.

Earlier in this series we already encountered the Hebrew word חסד - chesed as a characteristic aspect of God’s Character: His mercy, gracious love and goodness. This word is central in the Hillel or praise Psalm always read and/or sung in Israel on Pesach: Psalm 136. In the old script chesed was written like this: – literally: entering or (re)moving the wall or boundary of the palm tree.
Allow me to give you a little bit of background information.

palm tree in development, with ‘skirt’ of dead fronds

A palm tree grows almost continuously with fresh leaves at the top. Just below the top the leaves wither and die. They start to hang down, dry out and get entangled with each other. In this way they form a kind of ‘skirt’ or ‘nest’ of dry, prickly leaves around the trunk, obstructing people who want to climb to the dates at the top. In origin Chesed may well have referred to removing that nasty ‘skirt’ of the palm tree, existing of hard and sharp, dry fronds hanging around the trunk.

Palm tree (not a Date) with ‘skirt’ clearly visible, in Beth Saen, Israël

Remarkable detail: This removal job is hard to do from below, by yourself, even if you might happen to be a well-trained palm climber. The good way to do it, is from above, say the experts.²
In the symbolism of the palm tree as representing the Tree of Life (see Genesis 3) there had been put a kind of fence around that tree, such that man could no longer eat its fruits. God had done this, after man had listened to the adversary and started to distrust the one truly pure God. God did not want this distrust to continue forever. Metaphorically the word chesed refers to giving access inside this fence around the Tree of Life, so to new (eternal) life, out of grace. Of course this access is meant for the one who chooses to trust God after all.

Now to Pesach and the related verb פסח - pasach. In the old script: – literally: [make] an opening in the palm tree boundary/fence; or an opening in de fence around the Tree of Life.

And there is still more in the word Pesach – . For the question is: can we make such an opening to the Tree of Life ourselves? In the case with the physical palm tree we already couldn’t without great danger. Here the answer to that question is even clearer: no we cannot. For forgiveness and reconciliation there has to flow blood (Hebrews 9: 22), to fulfill God’s Word. God’s Word said that if, in distrust, we would yet eat from the fruit of that one tree ‘of knowledge of good and evil’, death would surely follow (Genesis 2: 17).
Not surprisingly, pasach also means: to be lame, unable to do something.³
Only God can give Pesach, and blood has to be shed, so much is clear now. Man’s task is to trust God.

To make this all some more graphic for the people such that it would stick with them for life, God involved the doorway of their own little houses in it. And, because as we said, without bloodshed there was no forgiveness, no grace, that is: no chesed and no Pesach, they had to smear the door posts and the lintel with blood. Only by slaughtering that innocent, one year old Pesach-lamb, the ones who partook in it got access to the Life as God meant it to be for them. The blood on the doorposts halted the dark power of death that night, as it were. They had to trust that.
There is a deeper lesson in this: When we want to partake in the Life, we have to radically separate from death, and from the distrust towards God that brought on that death.⁴

All of this is a clear reference to Yeshu‘ah and to the redemption that He prepared via His blood on that other big upright pole, the Cross of Calvary. There is only access to the Tree of Life via the cross of Yeshu‘ah Ha Mashiach, or in the wordings of the usual English translations of the New Testament: Jesus Christ. He has prepared the way, goes in front to lead the way to the Promised Land: a wonderful future with Him!

Hallelu YaH !

Notes

1	More information on the oldest pictographic Bible script in: André H. Roosma, ‘The Written Language of Abraham, Moses and David – A study of the pictographic roots and basic notions in the underlying fabric of the earliest Biblical script’ , Hallelu-YaH Draft Research Report, 1st English version: 18 April 2011 (1st Dutch original: January 2011).
2	How dangerous such a ‘skirt’ can be, appears from the fact that e.g. in the United States of America almost yearly fatal accidents happen with it (on average 1 per year, only in California already) when people want to cut it away. The heavy (up to 500 kg!) skirt can let go and come down any moment and crush the one who wanted to access it from below. See e.g. this news item from 2010: Tree trimmer suffocated to death while working in palm tree. There is a spiritual lesson in this as well: we should not allow sin in our lives to flourish and grow unlimitedly. Removing any dead frond immediately is much safer!
3	A relatively frequent cause of becoming lame on the feet was falling from some height where people broke an ankle or got hurt on their feet in some other way. Climbing palm trees with a big knife in hand (to cut away the nasty ‘skirt’) was one of the risky activities that often resulted in such damage to legs or feet. In 2 Samuel 4: 4 it says that Mephiboset got pasach - lamed - when his nurse dropped him during a flight while he was a small child. In 1 Kings 18: 21 Elia uses pasach for being spiritually lame of people who did not choose wholeheartedly to serve God. And in 1 Kings 18: 26 he jokes with the wish of people to get life via their own ‘gods’ (idols). For the vain endeavors of idols priests at their altar he also uses a form of the verb pasach. They wanted to reach life via another way, but it did not work. Pasach - that reminds of climbing the palm tree to remove the skirt - has been translated there with jumping or dancing about but that is most strange; as we saw that it points to being powerless, also in thie context here. Possibly this has to do with thee Septuagint, which translates διετρεχον (dietrechon) = ‘ran’, what in all likelihood must be διετρεχαν (dietrechan) = ‘were at’ [in the sense of: sitting there lame].
4	Concerning that aspect of separating, see also the previous edition on Pesach.

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This is a sequel to: Pesach (1) God separates His own, has them escape death, and pulls them away from Egypt.

The next article is: Pesach (3) Yeshu‘ah fulfills Pesach.

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