Exodus 13:1-16

Dedication of the firstborn (13:1-16)

Since God had spared the firstborn of Israel’s people and animals in the Passover judgment, these rightly belonged to him. The people were to acknowledge this by dedicating, or setting apart, their firstborn to God in an act of thankful worship (13:1-2; see also v. 15). This act also symbolized the consecration (or dedication) of the entire redeemed nation to God, since Israel as a whole was God’s firstborn (see 4:22). The people were reminded again to keep the Feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread, for the event that the feast commemorated was the reason for the dedication of the firstborn (3-10).

Animals considered ceremonially clean, such as sheep and cattle, were dedicated to God by means of sacrifice. Animals considered ceremonially unclean and therefore unfit to be offered as sacrifices, such as donkeys, had to be redeemed. That is, they had to be bought back from God, and this was done by the payment of a clean animal in the place of the unclean. If an animal was not redeemed, it had to be destroyed. Human sacrifice, however, was forbidden. Instead the parents ceremonially presented their firstborn to God, and then redeemed the child by a payment of money (11-16; cf. Numbers 18:15-16).

Note: The instruction in 13:9,16, which speaks of the necessity for true religion in one’s inner life and outward behaviour, is in figurative language that Jews of later generations understood literally. This resulted in the creation of phylacteries. These were small boxes containing strips of cloth on which people wrote selected teachings from the law of God. The Jews usually wore phylacteries on their arms or foreheads (see Matthew 23:5).