by Gerald Brown, Ed.D
Scripture clearly identifies the day Jesus was crucified as the preparation day, the day before the Sabbath. Matthew 27:62; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54; John 19:14, 31, & 42. The traditional explanation of these verses is that the weekly Sabbath and the first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (the Sabbath of Passover) coincided that year. Thus, the term preparation day applies both to the preparation day for the Passover meal, which was eaten on the first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, as well as the preparation day for the weekly Sabbath. This would be a non-issue if all the evidence supported the understanding that the Sabbath of Passover coincided with the weekly Sabbath. But the claim that the first Sabbath of the Feast coincided with the weekly Sabbath that year cannot be supported in light of John 12:1. All the gospel writers tell us about the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:28-48; John 12:12-19), but John is the only one to provide enough specific information so we can know when it happened. It happened on the day after the feast at Simon's home.
While all the gospels tell the story of the triumphal entry, Matthew, Mark, and Luke write about the triumphal entry and the dinner at Simon's as though they are unrelated to each other. Matthew writes about the dinner in chapter 26:6-13, which is 5 chapters after the triumphal entry, Mark writes about the dinner in chapter 14:3-9, which is 3 chapters after the triumphal entry, and Luke writes about the dinner in chapter 7:36-50, which is 12 chapters before the triumphal entry. John is the only one to record the relationship between these two events. He tells us in chapter 12:1 that Jesus arrived in Bethany six days before Passover. He immediately describes the dinner that was prepared in honor of both Jesus and Lazarus. This is the same dinner where Mary anointed Jesus with expensive perfume, Jesus forgave her of her sins, and one of the disciples complained that the perfume should have been sold and the funds given to the poor. While John doesn't name Simon as the host as Matthew, Mark, and Luke do, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke don't name Mary as the woman who poured the perfume on Jesus as John does, proof that this is the same dinner is found in the common events. In all cases, Jesus is anointed by a woman who is considered to be a sinner and Jesus has compassion on her. In Matthew, Mark, and John one or more disciples complains about the expense of the perfume, Jesus tells them to leave her alone, that what she has done is for His burial, that they will always have the poor with them, but they will not always have Him. In Luke's version of the story, Jesus points out how the woman has done for Him what Simon should have done (because her love for Him is great), and He forgives her without her even asking. Luke does not mention the grumbling disciples.
Both Matthew and Mark mention the feast at Simon's home just as they are about to launch into the description of the preparation of the Passover feast that Jesus and His disciples would celebrate in the upper room. It seems as though when they are about to write about the feast that became known as the Lord's Supper, Matthew and Mark remember the feast at Simon's home in honor of Jesus and Lazarus, and write about Simon's feast as if it is a flashback to an earlier event. Each introduces the story by saying "While He was in Bethany..." which seems to make Simon's feast a past event with respect to the story where it is embedded.
The unmistakable relationship between the feast at Simon's home and the triumphal entry is given in John 12:12 where he states that it was the next day after the dinner in honor of Jesus and Lazarus that the large crowd went out to meet Jesus with palm branches and praises. The traditional view teaches that the triumphal entry was on Palm Sunday. But if Jesus arrived in Bethany six days before Passover and Passover that year was on the weekly Sabbath, then Jesus had to arrive in Bethany on the first day of the week. John is explicit that the triumphal entry was the next day, which would place the triumphal entry on the second day of the week on what we call Monday. This also requires the triumphal entry to be five days before Passover. For those who believe in a Friday crucifixion -- Sunday resurrection, the triumphal entry should be called Palm Monday, not Palm Sunday. If this conclusion is not acceptable, one must be willing to recognize that the crucifixion could not have been on Friday. Clearly, if the triumphal entry were on Palm Sunday five days before Passover, it is not possible that the Sabbath of Passover could coincide with the weekly Sabbath if John 12:1 is reliable. Moreover, this necessarily means that the 'preparation day' mentioned in the gospels is not Friday.
This raises other questions about the sequence of events. When was the dinner at Simon's home? And when was the triumphal entry? Since Passover cannot coincide with the weekly Sabbath in light of John 12:1, when was Passover that year? This application of John 12:1 to the story of Passion Week seems to throw all the traditional time values into turmoil. Where can one turn to find assistance to sort out these time factors?
It should be noticed that Passion Week happens in the context of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which the Lord instructed His people to observe forever. Exodus 12:14, Leviticus 23:14. The first Passover happened in Egypt when the people of Israel were about to be delivered from slavery. Nine plagues had fallen on Pharaoh and the people of Egypt, and nine times Pharaoh and his people had rejected the Lord's instructions to let His people go to the wilderness to worship Him. Now the warning had been given through Moses that the Living God would pass over the land of Egypt and take the life of every first-born where the blood of the lamb was not on the lintel and the doorpost. Moses gave the people some very specific instructions, recorded in Exodus 12, regarding the days on which certain events were to be done. On the 10th of this month every man must secure a lamb without blemish for the Passover sacrifice and meal, and place it in a separate pen (vs. 3, 6). On the 14th of this month the lamb is to be slain and the body roasted in preparation for the meal. Some blood from the lamb is to be applied to the doorposts and the lintel (vs. 6-7). That night, now the 15th of this month, the meal is to be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (v. 8). This is the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread which lasts for seven days (vs. 15, 19; & Leviticus 23:6-8). They are to eat the meal in expectation of immediate travel (v. 11) because this is the night the Lord will execute judgments on all the gods of Egypt (v. 12). At midnight the Lord struck down the first-born (vs. 29-32) and the Lord brought them out of Egypt that same night (vs. 42, 51; & Deuteronomy 16:1).
In spite of the fact that the Death Angel passed over the land of Egypt on the 15th of the month, when scripture instructs the people to keep Passover, it usually instructs them to keep Passover on the 14th of the month. Leviticus 23:5; Numbers 9:5; 28:16; Joshua 5:10; 2 Chronicles 30:15; 35:1; Ezra 6:19; Ezekiel 45:21. The question arises then over which day is the Passover, the 14th or the 15th. Especially germane to this issue is the instruction in Exodus 12:18 to observe the feast "from the fourteenth at eventide until the twenty-first at eventide you shall eat unleavened bread." Does this mean that the eating of unleavened bread was to begin at the evening that began the 14th until the arrival of the 21st? The text is certain that the eating of unleavened bread lasts for seven days, but not longer than seven days. Exodus 12:15, 18; Leviticus 23:6; Numbers 28:17. Either the festival runs from the 14th through the 20th or the 15th through the 21st. The texts in Leviticus and Numbers are equally certain that the day the eating of unleavened bread begins is the 15th and not the 14th. The texts in Leviticus and Numbers require the feast to run from the 15th through the 21st. How, then, is Exodus 12:18 to be understood in light of these other passages written by Moses?Second, the word until in the phrase "until the twenty-first" causes some to understand that the festival ran until the beginning of the 21st, but did not include the 21st. The word for until (? = 'ad, ad) has a broader meaning in Hebrew than what is conveyed by the word until in English. The Hebrew is used to convey concepts of space, time, or degree; when used to represent time, it can include either the concept of until or of the duration of an event. The context determines the meaning of the word. A better translation of the Hebrew here would be to say "through the twenty-first at eventide" which would be the sunset that ends the 21st. This sequence provides for a full seven days of the festival that perfectly matches the record in Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28.
Verification that the Passover meal was eaten on the 15th and not the 14th lies in the fact that the Feast of Unleavened Bread lasts for seven days (Exodus 12:15,18) and began on the 15th of the month. The Passover meal is eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. If the Passover meal were eaten on the 14th of the month, that would require that unleavened bread would be eaten for eight days rather than the seven days stipulated by the Lord. Bread made without leavening is not very tasty and there is no evidence that the Hebrew people were eager to add another day of tasteless unleavened bread to the festival.
Passover, then, inherently involves two days: the 14th day of the month is the day the Paschal lamb was slain and its body prepared for the meal (Exodus 12:6), and the home prepared by cleaning and getting the leavening out, while the 15th day of the month is the day the meal was eaten at night and the Death Angel passed over the land of Egypt at mid-night. The 15th of the month is also the first holy convocation day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread and is an annual Sabbath of the Lord. Thus the 14th of the month is the preparation day for Passover, while the 15th of the month is the Passover day and the first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Two days are required for this celebration because it is not possible to eat the Passover meal on the 15th without first having prepared for the meal on the 14th. This is the basis for the reminder to keep the Passover on the 14th. If they failed to prepare the lamb on the 14th, there would be no Passover lamb to eat on the day of Passover.
The annual festivals of the Lord, such as Passover, are tied to the new moon and not the weekly cycle of days. Passover and its preparation day could fall on any two consecutive days of the week. In most years, this Sabbath of Passover would not coincide with the weekly Sabbath.
From this it should be clear that the 10th is the selection day when the blemish free lamb is identified and secured, the 14th is the preparation day when the animal is killed and its body prepared for the meal, and the 15th is the day the Passover meal is eaten. The 15th of the month is also the first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which makes this the Sabbath of Passover. These days set the pattern of events for Passover and the beginning part of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Every year Passover is to be observed following this pattern and it would be no different in the days of Jesus because the command had been given to observe it this way through the centuries forever. Exodus 12:14.
Applying these dates to the events of Passion Week, Jesus was selected as the lamb of God on the 10th of the month, killed on the 14th of the month, and the Passover observed on the 15th of the month. Six days before Passover is the 9th of the month, the day before Jesus was selected as the Paschal lamb, which is also the day Jesus arrived in Bethany according to John 12:1. It appears from John's description of the events that soon followed His arrival in Bethany that the supper at Simon's home was given that evening. Recognizing that the day begins at sunset in scripture, the dinner at Simon's would be on the 10th of the month, the day on which Jesus must be selected as the lamb. This is the exact time that Mary came with her expensive perfume, anointed Jesus on His head and feet, and Jesus connected her act with His burial. Matthew 26:12, Mark 14:8; & John 12:7. Thus Jesus was selected and anointed in this private setting on the evening that began the 10th of the month.
It was the next day, according to John 12:12, that the large crowds who had come to the annual feast in Jerusalem heard that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem and came to meet Him with palm branches and praises. Reference to the next day would be the daylight portion of the 10th of the month, probably in the early afternoon when the triumphal entry took place. While the crowd does not anoint Jesus in the same manner as Mary did the night before, they identify Him as the "Son of David", and shout "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." Matthew 21:9, Mark 11:9-10, Luke 19:38, & John 12:13. This public event is equivalent to the coronation of any of the kings of Israel or Judah and is the public affirmation by the common people that Jesus is the Messiah sent from heaven to bring them salvation. Thus, Jesus was not only selected privately at Simon's home, but also publicly at the triumphal entry to Jerusalem to be the lamb of God, and both events were on the 10th of the month, exactly the correct day for His selection. It is important to notice that the selection day is just four days before His crucifixion on the 14th of the month.
The traditional view teaches that the references to the preparation day are all references to Friday, the preparation day for the weekly Sabbath. This teaching might be based partly on the fact that the Greek word for preparation, paraskeue, is the modern day word for Friday. However, a search of several Greek-English lexicons demonstrates that paraskeuê applies equally to the preparation day for any of the festivals and is not an exclusive reference to the preparation day of the weekly Sabbath. (It might be helpful to remember that the weekly Sabbath is the first of the Lord's festivals. Leviticus 23:1-3.) Following is the essence of what I found in eight sources. In all cases the bold is added, while the italics are in the original.
1. Shorter Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, F. Wilbur Gingrich, 2d edition, p. 150.
παρασκευη, ης, η - preparation, i.e., day of preparation for a festival, Friday
2. Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (From B.C. 146 to A.D. 1100), E.A. Sophocles, Volume II, p. 850.
παρασκευη, ης, η - introduction to a literary work. 2. preparation, i.e., day of preparation for a festival, Friday
3. The Analytical Greek Lexicon, Zondervan, p. 306.
παρασκευαςω - to equip, to prepare, make ready, to prepare one’s self, put one’s self in readiness.
παρασκευη, ης, η - a getting ready, preparation; in N.T. preparation for a feast, day of preparation.
4. A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, G. Abbott-Smith, 1921, p.343.
παρασκευη, ης, η - to prepare, make ready, to prepare, make preparations.
5. Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, Timothy Friberg, Barbara Friberg, Neva F. Miller, p. 298.
παρασκευη, ης, η - literally preparation; in Jewish, NT, and early Christian usage, only of a definite day, the sixth day of the week, the term for the Friday preceding the Sabbath, when all preparation for the Sabbath had to be completed and after which no work was permitted
6. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, 3rd edition, Frederick William Danker, p. 771.
παρασκευη, ης, η - prim. sense ‘preparation’, in our lit. only of a definite day, as the day of preparation for a festival; acc. to Israel’s usage (in this sense only in late pap, ...) it was Friday, on which day everything had to be prepared for the Sabbath, when no work was permitted ...
παρασκευη τtον πpασχα day of preparation for the Passover (or Friday of Passover Week)
7. The New Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon, (1981), p. 3902.
παρασκευη, ης, η - 1. a making ready, preparation, equipping. 2. that which is prepared, equipment. 3. in the N.T. in a Jewish sense, the day of preparation, i.e. the day on which the Jews made the necessary preparation to celebrate a sabbath or a feast.”
8. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, Volume 1, Johannes P. Louw & Eugene A. Nida editors, United Bible Societies, p. 654.
παρασκευη, ης f: a day on which preparations were made for a sacred or feast day –– ‘day of preparation, Friday.’ τη δε επαυριον ητις εστιν μετα την παρασκευην συνηχθησαν οι αρχιερεις και οι φαρισαιοι προς πιλατον, ‘on the next day, which was a Sabbath, they met’ Mt 27.62. The identification of παρασκευη with Friday became so traditional that it eventually came to be the present-day Greek term for ‘Friday’.
If paraskeuê has an exclusive application to 'Friday,' then what is the word that signifies the preparation day of any of the annual festivals which the Lord instructed His people to keep forever? If there is another word with such a distinction, these lexicons should have pointed out such a limited application for paraskeuê and provided the alternative word for the preparation day for an annual festival. Instead, we find that none offers an additional word that would be used to designate the preparation day for any of the annual festivals. This lack of information coupled with the references in the lexicons to the festivals and feast days tells us that paraskeuê has an equal application to the day before the weekly and the annual Sabbaths.
The explanation in the last source may hold the key to the position held by those who promote the traditional view that παρασκευη applies exclusively to Friday, i.e., it eventually came to be the present-day Greek term for 'Friday'. But even if it eventually took on a certain limited meaning in Greek culture, that is not evidence that it does not also properly apply to the annual festivals of the Lord.
Some may place a great deal of importance on the phrase in Luke 23:54 that the women "rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment" and argue that this is proof that the weekly Sabbath is the day the writer intended us to understand. This line of reasoning ignores the fact that the Lord commanded His people to keep holy the annual Sabbaths as well as the weekly Sabbaths. Leviticus 23:5-8. In scripture, the annual Sabbaths have exactly the same degree of holiness as the weekly Sabbaths and trace their origins back to Genesis 1:14, the fourth day of creation when God set the sun and moon as markers for His sacred appointment times. Both are designated kodesh mikrah or holy convocation days. This first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is part of the written record of the Ten Command-ments recorded in Exodus 34:18-22 where the Lord commanded Moses to write it on the tables of stone that His people are to keep holy the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the weekly Sabbath, Harvest Festival, and the Feast of Ingathering. Those who argue that the annual Sabbaths are somehow inferior to the weekly Sabbath make that argument contrary to the record of scripture. Scripture is unaware that the annual festivals with their Sabbaths have been abandoned, abolished, or have become in any way less significant than the weekly Sabbaths.
If the day Jesus died was not the sixth day of the week and the preparation day of the weekly Sabbath, what evidence does scripture offer that this was the preparation day for one of the annual Sabbaths? Aside from the fact that the events of Passion Week occur in the context of the annual celebration of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, there is only one passages that provides the evidence that can answer this question.
A most direct answer is found in John 19:14 which states that this was the preparation day for the Passover. This day of preparation for the Passover is the 14th of the month, the day set aside for killing the Paschal lamb, roasting its body, and otherwise preparing for the meal that celebrated the deliverance of the people of Israel from Egypt on that night many years before when the Death Angel passed over the land. The Passover meal was eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread after sunset that began the 15th of the month. This is also the preparation day for the first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread which also falls on the 15th of the month. In addition to preparing for all the regular Sabbath activities, this preparation day required that the house be thoroughly cleaned of all leaven. Leaven represents sin, and all the leaven must be removed from the property and discarded. No one was allowed to own or possess leaven during this festival. Often the leaven would be destroyed by burning it up on the preparation day. All the meals during the seven days of this festival were to be prepared without any leaven. The Lord gave these instructions to His people to remind them of the importance of removing wickedness and malice from their hearts and lives. 1 Corinthians 5:7. All this is part of the preparation for this Festival of Freedom, which commemorated their freedom from Egyptian slavery as well as their freedom from sin.
There are many other verses that clearly set the events of Passion Week in the context of Passover. Matthew 26:12, 17-19; Mark 12:1, 12, 14, 16; Luke 22:1, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15; John 11:55, 12:1, 13:1, 18:28 & 39. One verse in this list, John 18:28, portrays the religious leaders as carefully looking forward to eating the Passover. When the religious leaders took Jesus to see Pilate at the Praetorium, they did not enter the palace because they did not want to be defiled and miss out on eating the Passover. Anyone who became defiled would be considered unclean and would lose the right to eat the Passover meal. John is telling his readers that the religious leaders were looking ahead very carefully to celebrating the Passover and did not wish to become disqualified from participating in that event. We know the trial was on the preparation day, and this is another piece of evidence that this is the preparation day for the annual celebration of Passover and not the weekly Sabbath.
Those who promote the traditional view of a Friday crucifixion cite John 19:31 as evidence that the first annual Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread coincided with the weekly Sabbath that year resulting in a double Sabbath which is why this is called a high day. A review of the Greek words for this text will reveal whether the meaning of high in this verse derives from the concept of things that overlap or are in some sense doubled. Here is the KJV rendering of this verse.
The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and [that] they might be taken away.
The words in question are part of the parenthetical phrase "for that sabbath was an high day." The context of all these events of Passion Week is the Feast of Unleavened Bread which begins on the 15th of the month, so the word Sabbath in this verse has an unmistakable application to the first annual Sabbath of the feast. The real question is: does the combination of an annual Sabbath with a weekly Sabbath produce a high day?
There is only one other place in scripture where the words high day occur together (Genesis 29:7), but that verse is talking about an event at noon or high day. This is certainly not a parallel for the words in John 19:31 and provides no help in understanding these words.
What is really needed is to understand how the word high modifies the word day in the Greek. A review of this Greek word should reveal the meaning of the word high, and that should lead to other applications and texts where the word is used. From that it should be possible to understand what is meant by a high day in John 19:31.
The word high is translated from the Greek word μέγας (megas) and appears over 190 times in the New Testament. By a wide margin it is translated to be great or greatest, but it is also translated as loud (32 times), large (2 times), high (2 times), and one time each as strong, to years, and mighty. The two places where it is translated high are John 19:31 and Hebrews 10:21. A look at Hebrews 10:21-22 demonstrates what the translators understood it to mean there.
21"And [having] an high priest over the house of God; 22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." [Bold added.]
Should we understand this to be a double priest as some encourage us to take John 19:31 to mean a double Sabbath? Of course not. This reference to the high priest simply signifies the chief priest or most important priest in the sanctuary system. There is no hint that there is any kind of overlap or combination that would result in this high priest. This is a reference to the one person who is the most important priest and in this verse it is a reference to Jesus.
There is one other verse where μέγας μέγας (megas) is used in connection with a day. John 7:37 states, in the context of the Feast of Tabernacles, that "On the final and greatest day of the feast..." The Greek word for greatest in this verse is µ??a? (megas) and the greatest day has exactly the same meaning in this verse as the high day has in John 19:31. It is clear from John 7:37 that the greatest day is the final day of the festival which is one of the annual Sabbaths set out in Leviticus 23:36-39. The first and eighth days of this festival, the days that begin and end the festival, are Sabbaths. There is no hint, not the slightest evidence, that this has anything to do with the weekly Sabbath, but is a reference only to the annual Sabbath that ended the festival. Because the word μέγας (megas) in John 7:37 and 19:31 modifies day in exactly the same way, it obviously has the same meaning in both places. This demonstrates that a high day is not the result of an annual Sabbath coinciding with a weekly Sabbath and the high day of John 19:31 did not result from the combination of an annual Sabbath with a weekly Sabbath, but is merely the first Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
A brief review of some of the principles of the Lord's annual festivals might be helpful at this point. According to Leviticus 23, the entire festival season, from the first day through the last day, is part of the sacred appointment time (Heb. moedim) of the Lord (Leviticus 23:4) and all of those days are to be observed in honor of Him. The first and last days of the feast are especially important because they are days on which no strenuous work is to be done and the people are to assemble for worship. This implies that work could be done on some of the days during the festival even though there would be many activities going on during those days. But the first and last days are Sabbaths. They are more important than the other days of the festival because the Lord has set them as markers to begin and end the festival season which is sacred to the Lord. Thus, the Sabbath that begins or ends any festival is a high day.
That is all that is meant in John 19:31 by a high day. It is one of the two most important days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread - in this case, the day that begins the festival season. The day in question in John 19:31 is also the day the Passover meal is eaten. It should be noticed that, according to Leviticus 23, all the Lord's kodesh mikra (holy convocation) days have exactly the same degree of holiness. The weekly Sabbath is not more holy than the annual Sabbaths. All the days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread from the 15th through the 21st are part of the Lord's festival season, but the days that begin and end the festival are Sabbaths. The high day mentioned in John 19:31 is the annual Sabbath that begins the festival and has nothing to do with the weekly Sabbath. Notice the wording of John 19:31. The pertinent part states "(for that Sabbath day was an high day,)". It does not say "high Sabbath". This should tell us that this day in question is not the weekly Sabbath, but is a high day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Another interesting place where μέγας (megas) is found is in Hebrews 4:14 which reads "Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast [our] profession." In this verse the word μέγας (megas) is translated great and the words high priest come from the word ά?χιε?εύς (archiereus). Taken together, do these words mean that Jesus is a double high priest? Of course not. Here Jesus is identified as the greatest or most important high priest. The word μέγας (megas) does not imply a double.
While the high day of John 19:31 is not the day of His death, it is the day following His death. Knowing that the high day is a reference to the day that began the festival and not a reference to the weekly Sabbath helps to establish that the preparation day mentioned in so many places throughout the crucifixion story is a reference to the preparation day for Passover and is not a reference to the sixth day of the week.
On the day of His death as His friends were placing His body in the grave at the end of the day, the women saw the tomb and how His body was laid, and rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment. Luke 23:55. Those who promote the traditional view rely on this statement as evidence that the day of His death and burial was the sixth day of the week because the day that was drawing near was the Sabbath and they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment. They take this to be the Sabbath command, and so it is. In every case I've seen, Exodus 20:8-11 is given as the reference for this commandment and in that passage the only mention of a Sabbath is the seventh day Sabbath. What they overlook is that the Ten Commandments are expressed in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, and in both cases it is the record of what was spoken at Mt. Sinai. Exodus 20:1 states that God spoke all these words. Deuteronomy 5:4 states that the Lord spoke to them face to face. Neither passage claims any connection with the written record of the Ten Commandments. However, the written record of the Sabbath command is given in Exodus 34:18-22 and it is significantly different from the other passages.
Exodus 34 begins with the Lord telling Moses to make two stone tablets like the ones he broke and "I will write on them the words that were on the former tablets which you broke." Moses took the stone tablets up the mountain to meet the Lord and the Lord told him to pay particular attention to the commandments He was giving him that day (v 11). The Sabbath command recorded in Exodus 34 requires the observance of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (v. 18), the seventh day Sabbath (v. 21), the Feast of Weeks (v. 22a), and the Feast of Ingathering (v. 22b). This was not the first time these four festivals were given together. In Exodus 23:12-17 all four festivals are stated in commandment form to be kept by His people.
Many years later when the people of Judah were in exile in Babylon because of their rebellion against the Lord and His system of worship, the Lord told Ezekiel that He had given His people His Sabbaths as a sign between Himself and them so they might know that He is the Lord who sanctifies them. Ezekiel 20:12, 20. This is a reflection of God's command in Exodus 31:12-17. It should be noticed that the word Sabbaths is in the plural which implies the four festivals of the Sabbath commandment. Ezekiel 44:24 specifies that His people are to observe His rules and regulations at "all My festivals, and they shall maintain the sacredness of My Sabbaths." Every one of the festivals had at least one Sabbath day associated with it. Certainly the phrase "all My festivals" includes the festivals stated in Leviticus 23, which also includes the four festivals of the Sabbath command as expressed in Exodus 23 & 34. Not only are His people to observe His rules and regulations, they are to maintain the sacredness of these Sabbaths. As stated previously, there is no difference in the sacredness of annual or weekly Sabbaths.
The problem that Christians have with the Sabbaths being plural in the 4th Commandment is that it was only the weekly Sabbath that was the memorial of creation in Exodus 20 and Genesis 2, so they interpret the plural "Sabbaths" as meaning the weekly repeating nature of this celebration and they change it to the singular to mean the weekly Sabbath. That would be fine if the weekly Sabbath were the only Sabbath God had given. Unfortunately, the expression of this in the singular appears to exclude the annual Sabbaths from this command. That is actually a mistranslation of scripture. Certainly the weekly Sabbath is the dominant Sabbath as it occurs 52 times a year. The other Sabbaths collectively occur only a total of 7 other times in a year. By far, the weekly Sabbath is the most often repeated of the Sabbaths. However, there is no theological or linguistic basis to exclude the Sabbaths associated with the annual festivals from the 4th Commandment.
When we consider all three references where the Ten Commandments are given, we find that there are multiple Sabbaths that are part of the Sabbath command and that the basis of Sabbath keeping is that we worship God on His days as the source of life and salvation. Even though each of the festivals has it own theme, all the Sabbaths are kept for these reasons. The reference to keeping the Sabbath because God is the creator can not be relied on as an exclusive reason for Sabbath keeping, but is simply one reason for Sabbath keeping. Citing creation as the exclusive reason for Sabbath keeping limits the meaning of the Sabbath and is a distortion of the basis for what God wants us to be thinking of on His sacred days.
Certainly the Jewish community in Jesus' day kept all the festivals with their Sabbaths and understood that all the Sabbaths were part of God's command to do so. The statement that the women and His friends "rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment" does not signify that this is a seventh day Sabbath. Christians seem to have a default bias that anytime the word Sabbath appears in scripture, it automatically signifies the seventh day Sabbath. That bias should be easy to overcome given that the context of the story is the annual Passover. When considered in the context of all the other verses that mention Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, this day was the first day of the festival and the annual Sabbath that began it. Reference to the commandment does not imply the weekly Sabbath.
Now that the time factors for all the major events of Passion Week have been identified, these events can be placed in their proper sequence. Considering that all scripture is inspired for our benefit, all scripture related to the events of Passion Week are taken seriously.
The day Jesus died was the preparation day for Passover, the 14th of the month. The day following His death was the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread which is a kodesh mikrah, a holy convocation day, an annual Sabbath with exactly the same degree of holiness as the weekly Sabbath. The Passover meal is eaten at the beginning of this annual Sabbath which is always on the 15th of the month. After Jesus had been crucified and his death assured, the religious leaders and everyone else went home, not just to celebrate another Sabbath, but to eat the Passover lamb that represented the very One they had just crucified, the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. John 1:29, Revelation 13:8.
The day Jesus died, the preparation day, can be determined by taking into account all of the verses of scripture dealing with the various time factors in the story and aligning them with the 10th, 14th, and 15th of the month just as the Lord had instructed His people to keep Passover in the Old Testament. There is no need to truncate any time element or to promote the notion that any passage should be interpreted as an idiomatic expression or anything other than what the words actually tell us. The term paraskeuê properly applies to the preparation day of Passover and the other annual festivals of the Lord even when they do not coincide with the weekly Sabbath. There is no need for Passover to coincide with the weekly Sabbath because Passover already coincides with the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread which itself is a holy convocation day, a Sabbath of the Lord. The day of His death was the fourth day of the week, the preparation day for Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. All the major events of Passion Week fall neatly into place and we can verify that everything in scripture is absolutely true.
The evidence positively leads to the conclusion that Jesus celebrated the Last Supper on what we call Tuesday night just after sunset that began the fourth day of the week. After supper they went to the garden where Jesus prayed and the disciples slept. At midnight, now the beginning of what we call Wednesday, Judas brought the mob to arrest Him. He was tried before the Sanhedrin at night, taken to Pilate at sunrise, and given over to be crucified by mid morning. Darkness covered the land from noon until His death at the time of the evening sacrifice. His body was taken down from the cross and placed in the grave before sunset. All of the events from the Last Supper to His burial happen on the fourth day of the week.