Leviticus 23:5

Feasts of the Passover and Unleavened Bread(5 8)

The law in detail is set forth Exodus 12, and is accordingly here assumed as known, and only the chief regulations are mentioned.

5. the first month corresponding to the latter part of March with the former part of April. Here, as elsewhere, P denotes the months by numbers only, whereas JE and Deut. give them the names by which they were known in Canaan or Phoenicia, in this case Abib (Exodus 13:4; Exodus 23:15; Exodus 34:18; Deuteronomy 16:1), while in Nehemiah 2:1; Esther 3:7 it is called by its Babylonian name Nisan. See further in Driver (C.B.), Exodus 12:2.

on the fourteenth day of the month at even The Jewish day commencing at sunset, the Passover lamb was to be killedbefore sunset on the day which both by their reckoning and ours was the 14th, and eaten on what weshould call the night between the fourteenth and fifteenth days.

passover The etymological meaning of the Heb. word peṣaḥis obscure. See Driver, Exod.p. 408 for the various conjectures. The LXX. (πάσχα, Pascha, whence the adjective paschal) and so the N.T. (e.g. Matthew 26:17) transliterate it. Our word is taken from the explanation in Exodus 12:13 which refers it to the sparing of the Israelitish houses on the occasion of the slaying of the Egyptians" firstborn.