VINEGAR AND YESHUA
by Avram Yehoshua
(Endnotes in red. Click on the number to go to endnote. Click the BACK button on your browser to return to the article)
The idea of Passover week is not to eat anything that is hah-maytz. This includes yeast/leaven products such as breads and cakes, and also vinegar (or anything soured). So things like Hellman's Mayo (and all mayo with vinegar in it), is out as well as mustard, ketchup, pickles, etc., or any fermented (yeast) food or beverage, like beer.
If one doesn't know the Hebrew, then it would be impossible to understand that anything more than yeast products is being commanded by Yahveh. It doesn't come up in English but it's plain in the Hebrew. For instance, in
Ex. 12:15: 'Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread (matzah), but on the first day you shall remove leaven (sih-ore) from your homes; for whoever eats anything leavened (hah-maytz) from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.'
Ex. 12:19: 'Seven days there shall be no leaven (sih-ore) found in your homes for whoever eats what is leavened (hah-maytz), that person shall be cut off from the Congregation of Israel, whether he is an alien or a native of the Land.'
Ex. 12:20: 'You shall not eat anything leavened (hah-maytz) in all your dwellings; you must eat unleavened bread (matzah).'
Hah-maytz means, 'to be sour, to be leavened, or bread' 'what is leavened, fermented' and the word for vinegar comes from hah-maytz. It is hoh-metz.1 It 'is forbidden at Passover (Ex. 12:15; 13:37; Deut. 16:3), in all sacrifices (Ex. 23:18; 34:25)' 'exceptions are the bread of hah-maytz of the peace offering (Lev. 7:13), and the wave offerings (Lev. 23:17).2
The noun for vinegar, hoh-maytz was a 'common condiment (Ruth 2:14); forbidden to Nazarite (Num. 6:3), but offered in cruelty to a thirsty man (Psalm 69:22). Figuratively for harshness and lack of sympathy.3 This is why Yeshua didn't swallow the vinegar drink that was offered to Him when He was pierced to the tree.
The four Accounts of His Life all tell us that He either refused to drink it after He had tasted it (Matthew 27:34); or that He was offered it but it doesn't say if He took it (Matt. 27:48); or that it wasn't given to Him even though someone wanted to give it to him but was stopped by others (Mark 15:36); or that it was offered to Him but it doesn't say if He took it (Luke 23:36); or that He 'received' it (John 19:29-30), but most likely spit it out even though John doesn't relate that.
Matt. 27:34: 'They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when He had tasted thereof, he would not drink.'
Matt. 27:48: 'And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave Him to drink.'
Mark 15:36: 'And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed and gave him to drink, saying, 'Let alone; let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.'
Luke 23:36: 'And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar,'
John 19:29-30: 'Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar and put it upon hyssop, and put it to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, 'It is finished: and he bowed His head, and gave up His Soul.'
The word for leavened is hah-maytz, which would include vinegar. The word for 'leaven' in the sentence (remove leaven) is sih-ore and this is translated as yeast.
That's why Yeshua wouldn't have drunk the vinegar when offered to him. It would have been a sin. Can you imagine? How diabolical is Satan? Just before Messiah would die, if He sinned, then the whole Plan of Salvation would have been nullified. What an incredible Messiah we have!
The word sih-ore means, 'leaven.'4 It comes from the verb, 'sah-are' which means, 'to boil up'.5 (Baking powder or baking soda is alright as it is not a yeast or sour.)
Why no leavened bread? Because leaven is seen in this instance as representing pride and those who are saved by the Blood of the Lamb, must not be filled with pride but with the Pure and Holy Bread from Heaven, Yeshua. He was sinless and bread without yeast pictures sinlessness:
1st Cor. 5:6: 'Your boasting (pride) is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?'
1st Cor. 5:7: 'Purge out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump (loaf of bread), just as you are in fact unleavened. For Messiah our Passover also has been sacrificed.'
1st Cor. 5:8: 'Therefore let us celebrate the Feast (Passover), not with old leaven (pride), nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.'
When we walk for seven days in the Passover Week (Feast of Unleavened Bread), and we eat the unleavened bread (matzah) as we are commanded, what we are symbolically doing is saying that we are putting off 'pride' and taking in sinlessness (Yeshua as the Bread of Life). Consequently, when if we eat something sour or bitter like vinegar, we are saying that even though Yahveh has delivered us from the Kingdom of Satan, our existence is bitter and that we have bitterness in our soul. That's why Yeshua didn't drink the vinegar that was given to Him and why we shouldn't either.
ENDNOTES:
- Benjamin Davidson, The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1979), pp. 264-265.
- Dr. Francis Brown, Dr. S. R. Driver, Dr. Charles A. Briggs, based on the lexicon of Professor Wilhelm Gesenius; Edward Robinson, Translator and E. Rodiger, Editor, The New Brown, Driver, Briggs, Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon (Lafayette, IN: Associated Publishers and Authors, 1978), p. 331.
- Ibid. p. 330.
- Davidson, The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, p. 695.
- Ibid.
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