[313] _Huius moris vestigia quædam sunt reperta in Roman. Flamine Diali. A. Gell. noct. Attic. lib. 10. c. 15._
[314] _Buxtorf. Synag. Judaic. c. 12. p. 317._
[315] _Scalig. de emend. Temp. in prolegom._
In case any did eat leavened bread those seven daies, the penalty was, that such a _soul_ should be _cut off from Israel_, _Exod. 12. 15._ Which penalty hath amongst Expositors a three-fold interpretation.[317] Some understand thereby such a man to be _cut off from his heavenly inheritance_: others, that _God_ would _cut off such from the living by an untimely death_: others, that he should _die without children_, leaving no posterity behind him: To this purpose their Proverb is,[318] _A man childless is lifeless_.
Of these three, the first is most probable in this place, though the same Text may admit the second interpretation in other places of Scripture, as is declared in the Chapter of Circumcision. Notwithstanding here let the judicious Reader determine, whether these words do not imply, besides the secret actions of God touching the soul of such a Delinquent, a direction unto the Church how to deal with parties thus offending by censuring them with Excommunication, which kind of censure elsewhere the Scripture calleth, _A casting out of the Synagogue_, _John 16. 2._ A speech much like this, _A cutting off from Israel_.
Three things may be here demanded. First, who killed the _Paschal Lamb_? Secondly, where it was killed? Thirdly, where it was eaten? First, it was killed by the _Priests_, _2 Chron. 35. 6._ Secondly, it was killed after the first time in the _Court of the Temple_, the place which _God_ had chosen. _Deut. 16. 6._ Thirdly, the owner of the Lamb took it of the _Priest_, and did eat it in his own house at _Jerusalem_, _Christ with his disciples kept the Passover in an upper-chamber at Jerusalem_.[319]
[319] _Maimon. in Korban Pesach c. 1. sec. 6._