The first place of the Passover was Egypt (Exod. 12); the second, the Sinaitic wilderness (Num. 9); the third, the land of promise. But not any place in it [the land], but [that] which [was] fixed by a double precept. The one is [in] Deuteronomy 16 v. 5—
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—“5. You shall not be able to immolate the phase in any of your cities which the Lord your God will give you, but in the place which the Lord your God shall choose, that his name may dwell there.” The other [precept] [is] Exod. 12 v. 46: “In one house shall [it] be eaten; nor shall you carry [any] of its flesh outside.” But in the former [precept] you will note, first, [that] a common place (which the philosophers [so] call) is prescribed; and, on the contrary, in the latter, a proper [place]. Secondly: our Latin [translator] and the Seventy render “city” [what] the Hebrew calls “gate.” By this [gate] indeed that [city] is signified. For although certain villages and hamlets sometimes have gates, [it is] more rarely [so], and, in a manner, approaching nearer to the nature of cities, this is done. Thirdly: the place which the Lord chose, that his name may dwell there — there is the tabernacle. As indicates, first, the kinship of the Hebrew verb by which that “to dwell” is expressed, and of the noun which signifies “tabernacle.” Secondly: the description of the Seventy themselves. For when, three times in that cited chapter, the place “in which the name of God may dwell” is named, they themselves render [it] “the place in which the name of GOD may be invoked.” But, you will say, [he] can be invoked everywhere (1 Tim. 2 v. 8). Yet especially in the Synagogues, which were not contained within the circuit of one city, but were found in all the places of the Israelites where only ten heads of households dwell (as [was] said in the preceding question, and is plain [from] Luke 4; Acts 13 and following; and likewise from the [things] which I said about the proseuchae [prayer-houses] at the end of ch. 4 of Judith). But [it is] to be said [that] in the tabernacle the name of God dwells by a certain eminent and excellent manner — as Solomon explains at length (3 Kings [1 Kgs] 8 v. 16, 29, 30, and following). For the Lord wills [that] there he be openly, publicly, by all, legitimately, and ordinarily invoked — and indeed by the very highest kinds of invocation, which are the sacrifices; and in the same place the same Lord wills to hear the prayers and vows of all more willingly and more easily — as is gathered partly from the effects, partly from [the fact] that [there] is no cause why [he] who fills heaven and earth can be said to dwell in that land there rather than elsewhere; [and] partly, finally, from the manifest response and attestation of the Lord himself (3 Kings [1 Kgs] 9 v. 3 and following). I said “legitimately and ordinarily,” first, because to certain men of proved sanctity and authority [it] was sometimes granted to sacrifice somewhere [else]. Secondly, because certain high places, where [God] might be sacrificed to, were tolerated up to the times of Josiah (4 Kings [2 Kgs] 23 v. 8); but others which [were] dedicated to demons [were] always disapproved, of which [in] the same ch. v. 13 & 19. Thirdly, because the ark was sometimes separated from the tabernacle, and set apart for several years (1 Kings [Sam] 6 & 7; 2 Kings [Sam] 6; 2 Paralip. [Chr.] 1); and then sacrifices could be made before the ark (2 Kings [Sam] 6). Yet always, and much more, [they were made] where the tabernacle [was], even [when] empty of the ark. For there were the courts, the altar of holocausts, the priests, the sacrificial vessels, and all the instruments, as Abulensis explains at length (Exod. 20, quaest. 43). I conclude, therefore, [that] — the land of promise being occupied — the place to which the Israelites had to convene from every side for the Passover was always that where the Lord had deigned to fix his tabernacle. Of this kind were, first, Gilgal (Joshua, in this ch. 5); then Shiloh (Josh. 18); thirdly, Nob (1 Kings [Sam] 21); fourthly, Gibeon (2 Paralip. [Chr.] 1); and lastly, Jerusalem, the [Temple] being built—
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—namely, [in] the Temple, both the first and the second. For [in] this place, the tabernacle — before wayfaring and wandering — [was] afterward fixed and firm. But why the Lord willed the Passover to be made only in a place of this kind, the cause is at hand: because [it] was a sacrifice, and indeed [a] very solemn and public [one] (above, quaest. 16). And this [is] the cause why so often — both in the Gospel and elsewhere — at the paschal time so many went up to Jerusalem (2 Paralip. [Chr.] 30 v. 1; Luke 2). This too [is] the cause why the wretched Jews — cast forth into the whole world and dispersed — do not truly keep the Passover: because [there is] to them no Temple, tabernacle, [or] altar. But [it] can be asked: whether it was lawful to slaughter that lamb in that whole city where the seat of religion was? Some think [so] — as Masius (on this ch. 5, fol. 91), Suárez (tom. 2, q. 50, disput. 40, sect. 2; tom. 3, quaest. 73, disput. 41, sect. 1) — because the sacrifices of the natural law (to which the Passover in a manner approaches, since [it] was commanded before the institution of the priests) had no such defined place; nor was the death of CHRIST himself — of which the Passover was a certain type — made in the Temple. For, as St. Leo says (serm. 8, on the Passion): “The Cross of Christ was to be the altar not of the temple, but of the world.” Others deny [it]; but in two ways. For some understand, by “the place in which the Lord had set his name,” only the tabernacle and Temple. But they are refuted from the same ch. 16 of Deut. (v. 7). For in that [same] place the cooking and eating of the lamb is [also] commanded; but both this [cooking] and that [eating] were done in the whole city. This [phrase], therefore, is [to be] understood there [more broadly]; nor can [anything] about the Temple [alone] be gathered from it. Others, therefore, say [that] the place of the immolation [alone] is only the Temple — but by another, and indeed firm, reason: because [it] was both a true sacrifice, and was immolated only by the priests and Levites, as [was] said above (quaest. 21). And so the authors cited in the same place think, and St. Justin (with Trypho), Abulensis (Exod. 23, quaest. 27), Claudius Sainctes (Repetition on the Eucharist ch. 7); among the Innovators, Beza (on Matt. 26); among the Jews, R. Saadia Gaon (by far the most renowned among his own), and other Rabbis — among whom the son of Maimon (in the Corban Pesach ch. 1): “It is not lawful,” he says, “to slaughter the Pascha except in the court of the Temple, as also the other holy [things]; so much so that when the bamoth were free [permitted] (that is, when, on high places and other places, more altars were permitted), yet at a private altar it was not lawful to slaughter the Pascha.” Nor do Bellarmine’s reasons obstruct [this]: because this sacrifice was afterward committed to the priests, as [was] proved in the same place; nor did the place of the sign and of the thing signified have to be entirely the same, as is clear in so many others. But in the latter precept, “house” is taken not for “family,” but properly for “dwelling” [domicilium] — as the adjoined caution declares: “that nothing be carried out of it,” and again (Exod. 12 v. 22): “that none go out of it.” Yet I do not think [it] was necessary [that] every house in which the Passover was eaten should have foundations, walls, and roofs of solid material; but [only] that [it] should have either these, or some likeness of these — as a tent or a hut, constructed in whatever manner. For since so many myriads of men flowed together to Jerusalem — nay, to much smaller places, Shiloh, Nob, Gibeon — for the Passover, [one may ask] whether [there] would have been houses enough; or whether, [because]—
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—in Bethlehem [it] befell the blessed Virgin (Luke 2), [that] to some [there] was sometimes no lack of a place in the inn? Yet again, not so, I think, is [it] called “one house” — as [if] in the same building, and under the same roof, several places could not be distinguished, in which the Passover might be eaten by different [groups]; but so that whatever dining-room [triclinium] is chosen for this banquet be called “one house,” even if [there] were, in the same one building, several dining-rooms and chambers of that kind. For thus we see [it] was done (Luke 22): when the householder had prepared the Passover for himself and his family, and had assigned the place for this his banquet, CHRIST the Lord sent two of his disciples; and in another part of the same house [Christ] received a place, where he himself ate his own Passover with his disciples. And that place is called, in the same [passage] (v. 11), κατάλυμα [kataluma, “guest-room, lodging”]; [in] v. 12, ἀνάγαιον μέγα ἐστρωμένον [anagaion mega estrōmenon, “a large furnished upper room”]; and the same [is] in St. Mark (ch. 14, vv. 14 & 15). The place, therefore, of the paschal banquet — proper and defined — was “one house”: either solid, or [made] of branches, straw, and other like [things], as [is] set up at the feast of Tabernacles; and again either whole, or entire, or some part of it (yet aptly separated from the others and shut off in [its] parts), so that if under the same roof several Passovers were eaten, each was eaten in its own chambers, as [if] in different and different buildings. But in one house of this kind, was the Passover also immolated and roasted? [The] answer was [given] a little before, and above (quaest. 21): [that it] seems rather likely [that] the Passover was immolated in the Temple, [and] afterward carried into the individual houses, and there roasted and eaten. And although this was said with the approval of Abulensis himself, that same [author] wrote [something] little consistent [with it] (Exod. ch. 12, before quaest. 57): “In one house shall [it] be eaten” — that is, in the house in which [it] shall have been immolated, [there] shall [it] be eaten whole.
And for this cause, when the Lord sought a house, and asked a Paschal lodging from that householder, [it was] not of the slaughtering — because that, namely, [was] beyond all controversy done in the Temple — but [he] always makes mention of the eating (Mark 14 v. 14): “Where is my refreshment [τὸ κατάλυμα, kataluma, of which above], where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?” And the disciples said the same (v. 12): “Where wilt thou [that] we go and prepare for thee, that thou mayest eat the Passover?” In St. Luke (v. 8): “[He] sent Peter and John, saying, Go [and] prepare for us the Passover that we may eat [it]”; and (v. 11): “Where is the lodging, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?” [In] Matthew 26 (v. 17): “Where wilt thou [that] we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?” And [it] is indeed subjoined in the same place (v. 18): “At thy [house] I keep the Passover with my disciples.” But from the other two Evangelists [it] is understood [that] “to keep” [facere] here is restricted to the eating, as was indicated above (quaest. 16 & 21). And Claudius, in the cited place, teaches [that] the Jerusalemites were accustomed, from the tenth day of the first month, to prepare both lambs and various dining-rooms [caenacula] for the other Jews about to come. And [he] confirms this from Josephus (bk. 5 of the War, ch. 45). But that book, says Soarez [Suárez] in the cited place (sect. 3), is concluded [ends] with only 14 chapters, in which no mention of this history is made; yet [he] indicates something [of it] (bk. 7, ch. 17), and of itself that history is likely and consistent with the [things] which are narrated in the Gospel. So he. But why did the Lord will [that] the lamb be eaten whole thus in one house? [He] answers—
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—Lyranus [Lyra] [answers that it was done] to signify the first immolation in Egypt, in which [there] was so great [a] care of preparing for the journey, that [there] was no leisure to run about from house to house, nor to send gifts [encaenia]. [This] displeases Abulensis, and not without cause. For, first, since by the other precept already [given] (v. 22) [it] was forbidden [that] a Jew go out of the house that night — even if [there] were no [such] care, [he] was not permitted to go out; and therefore neither to carry gifts [xenia] hither and thither, nor to send [them], since, oppressed then by servitude themselves, they had no gentile slaves. 2. So carefully had the Lord provided concerning the number that would be enough to consume the lamb, that from thence [it] was sufficiently understood [that], even if [there] had been the utmost peace and security, [they] could not have shared anything with others; similarly too [he] had so seriously commanded concerning the remains, [namely] that [they] be given to the fire. But if [it] had been lawful to send portions [apophoreta] to those [others], when would there ever have been anything left over? [The] same author, therefore, gives another reason; and before him [so did] Rupert (bk. 2 on Exodus). For these are his words (ch. 22): “This command (concerning one house), according to the letter, necessarily compels that to be done which was said above: ‘But if the number is smaller, so that [it] cannot suffice for eating up the lamb, [he] shall take his neighbor who is joined to his house,’ and the rest. But according to the spirit, the unity of the holy Church is more attentively commended — namely, that, about to eat the Lord’s table, we be one house, that is, [that] we all say the same thing, and [that there] be not heresies and schisms among us. For then the lamb is not eaten in one house, but its flesh is carried outside, when [it] is indiscriminately given to those cutting the unity of the faith, since in the splitting of minds God is not. Therefore, with the present testimony of Scripture, [one] may confidently say [that it] is not a true sacrifice, [that] which is outside the unity of the Church.”
But that [word] (v. 22): “Let none of you go out of the door of his house until morning” — [was it] to be kept perpetually, or only that night in Egypt? [It] is not to be doubted but that [it] could have been commanded [that it] be kept perpetually, in memory of that first time; yet [that] the Lord commanded [it] concerning that one last night seems to be hinted, [in] that the cause of this precept is at once subjoined (v. 23): “For the Lord will pass through, striking the Egyptians.” For [that] the Hebrew vau and the Greek καὶ [kai] are often taken for causal [particles] has been shown (Gen. 4 v. 18); and this here too, against their own and the other Innovators’ version of that place, Tremellius and Junius confess, who so render [it]: “But go ye not out, any of you, from the door of his house until morning. For Jehovah, advancing to strike Egypt, will pass through.” And in the annotations: “This too is a singular command, as [in] v. 11”; and [it] hints [at] the aetiology [reason-giving] of the following verse.