When Should We Keep the Passover?

by Jamie McNab

home: www.t-cog.net

Do you remember just a few short years ago, when the Church of God was unified when we all held to the SAME BELIEFS?

One of the vital truths that we all shared up until recently was the understanding of the Passover. We were confident we knew WHEN Passover fell, and understood what it signified.

We were familiar with Mr. Armstrong's teaching in Pagan Holidays or God's Holy Days — Which? showing that Passover was on 14th Abib. We knew Passover came on that date once a year, as covered in Mr. Armstrong's booklet, How Often Should You Partake of the Lord's Supper.

But times have changed.

Over recent years there has been an onslaught of false teaching, with endless questions and challenges against the Truth we once knew. Almost everything we have learned and once believed is under attack the nature of God, the Sabbath, the Holy Days, the Calendar, the identity of Israel, the name of God, and so on.

One teaching currently the subject of much debate among the Churches of God is the Passover and, in particular, the date on which we should keep the Passover.

Does Passover fall on 14th Abib? Does it fall on 15th Abib? Can you prove it? And does it matter?

I have looked at many of the articles attempting to show that we have been IN ERROR all these years, and trying to show that Judaism is correct in placing Passover on the evening of the 15th Abib (or Nisan).

For those who wish to look into the matter further, I hope the following comments and explanations will assist in showing why we can HOLD FAST with confidence to what God taught us under Mr. Herbert Armstrong.

I will start by discussing those Scriptures which make it plain, to my mind, that Passover falls on 14th Abib. Then I will look in some detail at those Scriptures which some people use to show that Passover could be on 15th Abib. Hopefully, the truth will become clear as we continue.

The Meaning of "Evening"

Ex 12:6 says that Israel were to keep the Passover lamb until the 14th day of the first month and "kill it in the EVENING" (KJV).

One of the key areas of the Passover dispute is the meaning and use of this term evening in the Bible.

Let us examine this word by starting in Genesis, the book of origins. Gen 1:5 tells us, "God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day". (All scriptures are from the New King James version, unless otherwise stated).

If we look closely at Gen 1:5 we see that God inspires four different words when describing a day. I do not believe God is being vainly repetitive here. Each word has a different meaning in Hebrew, and a different meaning in English. "And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day".

Notice in this verse we have: day, night, evening, morning—four different terms. There is no reason here to equate "day" with "morning", as though they were identical. Or "evening" with "night", as though those two terms had the same meaning.

Mr. Roth brought out in his June 1999 taped message on How God Keeps Time, that Moffatt gives the latter part of this verse as "evening came, and morning came, making one day". That is obviously true and common sense. In any day you will have a morning (around sunrise), and an evening (around dusk)—but the morning and the evening don't constitute the whole day—they are simply stages we will pass through in a 24 hour period.

My Oxford Wide-Margin KJV has a marginal note against this verse, giving the original Hebrew reading as "And the evening was, and the morning was", one day.

The RSV has: "And there was evening, and there was morning, one day".

If we think about it, we do not go instantaneously from the bright light of day to the pitch black of night. The effect of the atmosphere, and our latitude and longitude, mean that for most of us we have a transition period between day and night, which can be up to an hour, or even longer. This is how it looks:

i) At around sunset, the light starts to diminish, and we enter a more or less short period known as evening—or twilight. (Some Scots refer to it as the "gloaming"; Harry Lauder made this period famous in one of his songs years ago, when he referred to "roaming in the gloaming").

ii) When twilight fades away and full darkness is upon us, we have night.

iii) At the end of night, the sun makes its way back towards the eastern horizon, and the sky starts to lighten again—we come to dawn, or twilight, or morning.

iv) The sun rises fully, "rules" the day, and gives us daylight.

So there are four quite separate components to a full day—starting from sunset (which is how God starts His day), we have: evening then night then morning then day.

That fits in empirically with what we observe, and is clearly stated in Gen 1:5 (and other verses I'll come to later).

Where does this lead us? Very simply: if the Passover lamb is to be killed on the 14th Abib IN THE EVENING—and it is according to Ex 12:6—then there is only one period of time in the 14th which can be called EVENING—and that is just after sunset, and before night falls.

Biblically, the hours after midday are still daytime. When the Jews say they killed the lamb at 3 o'clock to 5 o'clock "in the afternoon", it was indeed just that—the afternoon!

The term "midnight"

In view of the misunderstanding associated with the term midnight, I would like to spend a little time discussing it.

The term "midnight" plays a very important part in OUR calendar, today. Our days begin at midnight—and this is a very precise moment.

It can have significant legal implications. Many insurance policies, for example, expire at midnight, and if an insured event happens even one short minute after midnight, it will not be covered (unless the policy is officially renewed).

At midnight, we change from one day to another. A baby born at five minutes to midnight has a different birthday from one born at five minutes past midnight.

After midnight, since we have started another day, WE often refer to the time as being, for example, "two o'clock in the morning”.

The Roman calendar divides the day into 24 hours. The precise moment when the sun transits the overhead meridian—at its zenith—we call noon. The precise moment when the sun passes the opposite meridian—albeit out of sight in the Northern hemisphere—we call midnight. From these points in time we derive the expressions ante meridiem (a.m.) and post meridiem (p.m.). [Technically, the times relate to the passage of the mean sun—the actual sun can run about 15 minutes ahead of, or behind, the mean sun].

We are so familiar with these details we rather take them for granted. However, when we come to deal with the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures—which long antedate the Roman calendar—we need to carefully avoid reading our "modern" ideas into the various texts.

The word midnight appears seven times in the Old Testament. For example:

Ex 11:4, "Thus says the LORD: About midnight I will go out into the midst of Egypt".

Ex 12:29, "And it came to pass at midnight that the LORD struck all the firstborn...”

This does not refer to the moment between 11:59 p.m. on one day, and 00:01 a.m. on the next! Neither God nor Moses was using a Roman calendar!

The Hebrew simply means that these events happened in the middle of the night.

Ex 11:4 uses the Hebrew chatsoth layelah—two separate words meaning "middle" and "night".

Ex 12:29 uses chatsi layelah—a similar expression meaning middle, or midst, or halfway, and night.

And note that the expression is middle of the night—the hours before are the early part of the night, the hours after are the late hours of the night—but the hours after are very definitely still the NIGHT—NOT "the morning".

When the Israelites heard that the Eternal would go through the land of Egypt "about midnight" and slay the firstborn, they did not look at their Rolex watches and battery-powered kitchen clocks and say "Oh, it's only two hours and ten minutes left till midnight...” Midnight was not some astronomically precise moment to them—it was simply some rather loosely defined period occurring in the middle of the night.

It will clear up so much if we can remember that in the Hebrew reckoning we do not go from night to morning at "12:00 o'clock midnight". The Hebrew day starts at sunset, and morning arrives just around sunrise—not six or more hours before sunrise, at midnight.

I will deal with the topic of "morning" a little later, and show how, rightly understood, the use of the term "morning" in Ex 12:22 proves the correct Passover date.

Does God Have a Limited Vocabulary?

God does not need to leave us in confusion through any lack of vocabulary on His part.

If He wants us to do something in the early afternoon, or in the late afternoon, He is well able to tell us so. Consider:

"And the LORD appeared unto [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day", Gen 18:1. The Hebrew here is chom ha-yom, and refers to early afternoon, when the sun is high in the sky, and the suns rays are still very powerful.

So, if God wants the Passover lamb killed at that time of day, He need only inspire the expression chom ha-yom, and we will all understand.

Or God can use another expression, "And he arose early in the morning on the fifth day to depart: and the damsel's father said, Comfort thine heart, I pray thee. And they tarried until afternoon, and they did eat both of them", Judges 19:8. The term "afternoon" here comes from the Hebrew netoth ha-yom. Netoth means to stretch out or decline (Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon).

Therefore, if God wants the Passover lamb killed in late afternoon, as the day is declining, He need only use the expression netoth ha-yom.

For even later in the day, we have ruach ha-yom, as in "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden", Gen 3:8.

But God did not choose any of these expressions for the slaying of the Passover lamb. Rather He chose evening—Hebrew ereb—which we saw earlier comes at the very beginning of the day, AFTER SUNSET.

Strong's gives as the meaning of ereb (no. 6153): "dusk, from 6150, to grow dusky at sundown:- be darkened, (toward) evening".

Evening is not afternoon. Teachers of Judaism would have us believe that evening begins around noon (!)"as the sun starts to descend in the sky". They would have us believe that the Passover lamb could be slain from 1:00 p.m. onwards, and that this was "the evening". (In practice, they generally slew the lambs around 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.)

This makes no sense in terms of the meaning of the words, or their Biblical usage, or even common sense. If I said I was going to pop round to see you for a chat "tomorrow evening", you would be quite nonplussed if I turned up at your door at three o'clock in the afternoon! However, if I turned up at, say 7:30 p.m., you would feel that indeed I had arrived in the evening—and we would probably greet each other with a "good evening, how are you?” At 3:00 p.m. we would be saying "good afternoon"—because that's all it would be—afternoon, not evening.

So, God has a wide and appropriate vocabulary at His disposal. If He meant afternoon, He would have said so—using, for example, chom ha-yom, or netoth ha-yom, or ruach ha-yom, or some similar expression dealing with daytime. If He meant evening—dusk—He would say so—and He did.

"At evening"

One scripture which Bill Dankenbring and others seek to use to "show" a late 14th killing of the Passover lamb is Ex 12:18. This verse states, "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening". Since we know that there are only seven days of unleavened bread, we can see that these verses are referring to the very end of the fourteenth day, up to the very end of the twenty-first day, i.e. days 15 to 21, inclusive.

Mr. Dankenbring writes in The Mystery of Ben Ha Arbayim - When Was the Passover Killed, “Letting the Bible interpret the Bible, then, 'on the fourteenth day AT EVEN' plainly means at the END of the fourteenth", and "...logically, then, the same should be true in speaking of the Passover (Exodus 12:6)". He states elsewhere in his article, "[so]...we find proof positive that the term ba ereb or "evening" refers to the time of late afternoon, before sunset".

We are assured that the expression "at evening" means late in the afternoon, before sunset. And since the Passover is to be slain in the "evening", it must mean late in the afternoon. (Although remember that the Jews and Mr. Dankenbring believe it is acceptable to kill the lamb as early as 3 o'clock in the afternoon!)

Further proof (allegedly) is given in Lev 23:32, where we are told regarding the Day of Atonement, "on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate your Sabbath". Once again Mr. Dankenbring claims that evening as used here "would be the afternoon, up until sunset". Hence, the Jews would be correct to kill the Passover in late afternoon "up until sunset".

However, if you look closely here you will see some "sleight of hand" is being practised. Does "at evening"—Hebrew ba ereb—really mean "late afternoon up to sunset"?

Let's examine the passage in Lev 23 about Atonement. When—EXACTLY—is the Day of Atonement? We all know the answer—the tenth day of the seventh month. When EXACTLY does the tenth day begin in God's calendar? Answer: at the precise moment of SUNSET. So when does Atonement run FROM and TO? It can only—and MUST ONLY—run from the precise moment of sunset on the ninth of Tishri to the moment of sunset on the tenth of Tishri.

It most certainly does not run from "late afternoon" on the ninth to "late afternoon" of the tenth!! This year in Worcester, England, sunset on the ninth of Tishri was about 7:15 p.m. If I go along with Bill Dankenbring's explanation of "evening", would I have been entitled to start Atonement at, say, 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock in "late afternoon before sunset"?? I think not! Would each person decide individually which part of "late afternoon" they would start Atonement from? Nonsense!

The clear meaning of Lev 23:32—the only meaning that fits all the facts—is "on the ninth day of the month at sunset, from sunset to sunset, you shall celebrate your Sabbath".

Indeed Brown Driver Briggs gives as the meaning of ereb: " evening, originally sunset, and hence perhaps at time of sunset".

As Mr. Armstrong says in his booklet Pagan Holidays or God's Holy Days, "Notice, too, in Lev 23:32, the expression 'from even unto even shall ye celebrate your Sabbath.' Every Sabbath-keeper quotes this passage to show that the Sabbath begins at SUNSET".

If we reconsider the other passage, in Ex 12:18, Mr. Dankenbring would have us believe that unleavened bread is to be eaten only from "late afternoon" on the 14th Abib, to "late afternoon" on the 21st Abib. On this basis, would I be entitled, therefore, to start eating leavened products—perhaps some thick toast and marmalade—at, say, five o'clock in the "afternoon" of the 21st—and with sunset not due till around 7 p.m.?!

Well, I think we can see that this makes no sense. The days of unleavened bread are the 15th to 21st of Abib, inclusive (Lev 23:6), and start at sunset at the end of the 14th till sunset on the 21st of Abib.

It is necessary to carefully put all the scriptures together when looking at "evening" or "sunset", because there is an obvious and well understood ambiguity—in common with our English usage today of the term "midnight". If I said I would meet you at "midnight next Tuesday"—when would you expect to see me? "Midnight on Tuesday" could be either midnight as Tuesday begins, or midnight as Tuesday ends. Both moments are "midnight on Tuesday", even though 24 hours apart. To make matters absolutely clear, and beyond dispute, I would need to qualify our meeting time as, say, "midnight at the end of Tuesday".

So, likewise, God makes it clear that Atonement starts at the sunset (ereb, evening) that comes at THE END of the 9th Tishri—and the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins at the sunset that comes at THE END of 14th Abib. Simple!

So we can safely conclude that none of these scriptures that Mr. Dankenbring or others use shows us that "evening" means late afternoon.

Mr. Dankenbring's sleight of hand also includes a misleading cross-reference of verses. After trying to show that "at even" in Ex 12:18 means "late afternoon, up to sunset", Mr. Dankenbring states that this principle must logically apply to when the Passover is killed. In this regard, he refers to Ex 12:6 in brackets (see full quote given earlier).

But hold on a moment. Ex 12:6 does NOT say the Passover lamb is to be killed "at even"! The Hebrew is NOT ba ereb as used in Ex 12:18 or Lev 23:32! The Hebrew here is ben ha arbayim—which has an entirely different significance. God inspired a different expression to be used when referring to the killing of the Passover lamb.

Ben Ha Arbayim

When giving what are very detailed instructions for the keeping of Passover, God stated in Ex 12:6 " Now you shall keep [the lamb] until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight (KJV gives "in the evening").

The Hebrew here is ben ha arbayim.

The KJV margin says, "between the two evenings".

This expression is translated as "twilight" in the NKJV, NIV, NASB, NRSV and New Jerusalem versions. The Revised English Bible and Moffatt have "between dusk and dark". Even the Jewish Publication Society Holy Scriptures translation gives "AT DUSK".

None of these translations imply any period IN THE AFTERNOON. They all refer to that period of time following sunset when the light fades, and just before darkness falls.

The Jewish Soncino Commentary defines ben ha arbayim as the "period of approximately one-and-a-third hours between sunset and the disappearance of the light which subsequently penetrates through the clouds".

God has been very specific here. When it comes to killing the Passover lamb, don't start before sunset and don't wait till after dark. Get it done between the two evenings—between sunset and nightfall.

The Jewish Rabbinical leaders would have us believe that the two evenings here are "noon" and "sunset". As shown earlier, however, there is no way that the baking hot hours of early to mid-afternoon can be construed from the scriptures as meaning "evening". Even common sense should tell us that if you have to wear a powerful sun-block cream at two o'clock in the afternoon in the Sinai wilderness, you could hardly expect to say you were trying to protect yourself from the "evening sun"!!!

"Evening" begins at sunset, as the new day starts. Evening ends as the darkness of NIGHT takes over. Then, as mentioned earlier, we come to morning at around sunrise, followed by the day proper.

In fact, even referring to the term "afternoon" can be rather misleading. "Noon" to us means 12 o'clock midday—a very precise moment in time; and afternoon means any time after 12 o'clock—after NOON.

But as with midnight, the Hebrews did not use a precise moment to divide the daytime (e.g. into forenoon and afternoon). In fact, the word "afternoon" only appears once in the Bible (in Judges 19:8 where the Hebrew is netoth ha-yom, and simply means "declining of the day", rather than "after 12 o'clock").

"Until morning"

Having killed the Passover lambs on the 14th Abib "between the two evenings", the Israelites were told "And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning", Ex 12:22. Also, if there were any leftovers from the Passover meal, "what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire", vs. 10.

In the morning—after the LORD had passed over them, and had slain the firstborn of the Egyptians—the Israelites were able to leave their homes, burn the Passover-meal remains, finish packing together all their belongings, further spoil the Egyptians, congregate at Rameses toward the end of the day, and finally leave Egypt. Deut 16:1 tells us "...in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt BY NIGHT".

Which night would this be? Obviously the night of the 15th Abib. This is confirmed in Num 33:3, "They departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month...".

This all seems straightforward, and harmonises perfectly. Yet the proponents of a 15th Passover want to dispute matters. Apparently all is not as it seems, they would tell us. The important point that we have missed, they say, is that morning doesn't mean morning. In fact, morning really means night!

Their problem is this: they teach that the lamb is slain in late afternoon of the fourteenth Abib, that the Passover is then eaten in the evening hours of the 15th, and that God went

through Egypt "at midnight" of the fifteenth. Since Deut 16:1 and Num 33:3 show that Israel left Egypt on the night of the 15th, this means that Israel must have left Rameses within just a very few hours of the slaying of the firstborn, and while still night. The quandary is: Scripture says the Israelites were not even to leave their front doors till morning, let alone leave Egypt!!

How is this dilemma overcome? Quite simple; just redefine morning to mean night! Or, more specifically, redefine morning to be the "wee small hours" after midnight—thus allowing the Israelites to leave their homes anytime after perhaps one or two a.m. Within an hour or two of the killing of the firstborn, therefore, the Israelites were already heading out and away from Rameses—whilst still night—and obviously some hours before daybreak.

This, however, is just not credible.

As explained earlier, going from before midnight to after midnight has no impact within the Hebrew calendar. Midnight does not refer to a specific moment of the night, but means just the "middle of the night". The hours after midnight are STILL NIGHT—no different to the hours before midnight.

It is in the Roman calendar that there a change at midnight. In our calendar, we go from one day to the next at midnight, and we call the first few hours "the wee small hours of the morning". That is what we do in our Western culture. It doesn't apply in the Pentateuch!

When is "morning" (Hebrew: boqer)? As I showed at the beginning of this study, the day comprises four separate parts: evening, then night, then morning (boqer), then day (Gen 1:5). Morning is the transitional period when the darkness of night fades away, the light gradually appears, and the sun finally rises to bring in the daytime.

The Israelites were not to leave their homes, therefore, until shortly before daybreak at the earliest. They were to stay indoors all night—and night lasts until morning —until twilight.

So, how do the 15th Abib proponents attempt to demonstrate that morning can occur at night?

One writer among the Churches of God states, "There are a number of passages which show that boqer can be applied to the early hours of the morning, between midnight and sunrise and while it was still dark". He then quotes a number of passages that show nothing of the sort! And note the reference to midnight—which we have already seen is misleading and irrelevant as God counts days. But let's look at a couple of these passages that apparently show that morning can mean night.

The first passage quoted in the article is Ruth 3:14, “So she (Ruth) lay at his feet until morning, and she arose before one could recognise another. Then he (Boaz) said, Do not let it be known that the woman came to the threshing floor".

Does this prove that the term "morning" can mean two or three o'clock in the night? Does it conclusively prove that it was still the pitch black of night which was being referred to as "morning"? Hardly. All we read here is that—for the sake of propriety—early in the morning, and before the light got so strong that Ruth could be easily recognised—she got up and made her way home.

Boaz was clearly a very noble and thoughtful individual. He would not be likely to send the woman he loved home from the threshing floor out in the fields in the middle of the night, when it was still dark! There were no street lights in those days! It is obvious that the morning light was strengthening enough for her to make her way home. Note also verse 15, "And he said, Bring the shawl that is on you and hold it. And when she held it, he measured six ephahs of barley, and laid it on her. Then she went into the city". It would be pretty tricky measuring out a specific quantity of barley into a lady's shawl in an unlit barn in the pitch black of night, wouldn't it?

No—I think the only natural understanding of this passage is that morning is the twilight period just before daybreak—when there is enough light to move around, yet before full daylight, and before it would be too easy to recognise someone from a distance. This fits in entirely with everything we have said up to now.

The next scripture quoted is Ex 14:24, "Now it came to pass, in the morning watch, that the LORD looked down upon the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud, and He troubled the army of the Egyptians". Here, we are assured, is proof positive. The article continues, "The last, or early morning watch, was from 2 a.m. to sunrise. The morning watch was called the morning watch because it took place in the early hours of the morning".

Yes, the "morning watch" took place from what we would call about 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. But does this scripture say that 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. IS morning? Does is it explicitly state that the dark of night IS morning? Or—in the context of everything we have already read—does it not make more sense that the "morning watch" is the watch that brings you UP TO MORNING, and ends with the arrival of morning?! The watch that leads up to and terminates AT MORNING!

Moffatt gives "And in the watch before the dawn the Eternal looked out from the column of fire ..."

The NIV translates as, "During the last watch of the night the LORD looked down ...".

The next example the article gives us to prove that morning means night is, "As soon as morning dawned, the men were sent away, they and their donkeys", Gen 44:3.

Hmmm. Seems to me that this could only be at early light? From a practical point of view, these men are not likely to be leaving on a journey in the middle of the night, are they? But it makes sense if it is the twilight period before full sunrise.

The article I have been quoting from gives two more scriptures (even less useful to its cause than the ones I have already quoted!), then rather astonishingly concludes “boqer is a general term which could be applied to any time after midnight through to the light of day".

Well—bluntly—NO!!

The passages used in the article surely show, if anything, that morning is the end of night, and the period around sunrise and leading to full daylight!

So—back to Ex 12:22. The Israelites were not to leave their homes "until morning (boqer)". So they must have stayed indoors ALL NIGHT until morning light was breaking.

And, since they left Egypt at night—on the 15th Abib—then the Passover slaying of the firstborn must have been around midnight on the previous night—the 14th Abib.

Indeed this is confirmed if we read all of Num 33:3. "They departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the DAY AFTER THE PASSOVER the children of Israel went out with boldness in the sight of all the Egyptians".

[Now remember, the Passover these people had observed wasn't just the ceremonial killing of a lamb! It was the fact that the LORD had PASSED OVER them, whilst slaying hundreds of thousands of the firstborn of Egypt. Passover represented their deliverance from death!].

So, if the 15th was the DAY AFTER the Passover, then the Passover must be THE 14TH of the month!

Remember, the Bible starts the days at sunset. The 15th of Abib started at sunset—and the 15th of Abib is stated to be the DAY AFTER Passover. So THE Passover—the slaying of the firstborn of Egypt, and the deliverance of Israel—must have taken place in the day commencing at sunset on the 14th Abib!

Some misunderstand Num 33:3 in the KJV which reads, “... on the morrow after the Passover the children of Israel went out ...". They misread this to mean "on the morning after" the Passover, taking "the morning" as being just a few hours after midnight, and still part of THE SAME DAY.

However, the Hebrew in Num 33:3 is not boqer—morning. It is mochorath—an entirely different word, meaning the next day, or the day after.

Num 33:3 in some other translations reads:

"... the DAY AFTER the Passover ...", NIV.

“...on the DAY AFTER the Passover ...", Amplified

“...on the DAY AFTER the Passover ...", RSV

Despite these clear translations, a number of people insist that the KJV reference in Num 33:3 to "on the morrow after the Passover" means simply "the morning after the night before". And, as we saw earlier, "morning" to these people actually means around 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. in the night, rather than around daybreak.

One Bible Study, which is currently circulating on the subject of Passover being on the 15th, purports to show how Scripture uses the Hebrew word mochorath in the sense of the "following morning after the preceding night". They give three illustrations of this alleged usage. Let's have a look at them.

The first example is Gen 19:33-35. The study paper states, "Lot and his incest. Here the incest with his 1st daughter was the preceding night period, and the 1st daughter describes it to the 2nd daughter the next daylight period, "mohorot" = morrow, and makes plans for the following night. The context here demands that "mohorot" = morrow means the next daylight period, following the night time before".

[Mohorot and mochorath are different ways of spelling the same Hebrew word, in English]

So, according to these authors, Lot's incest took place in the evening, or night, and the two daughters talked about it the next morning. True? Yes. So mochorath means the "morning after"? NO!!

These authors are failing to read the entire context. If we start reading, not at verse 33, but at verse 31, we can pick up all the details of what took place, and when.

"Now the firstborn SAID TO THE YOUNGER, 'Our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come into us as is the custom of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we preserve the lineage of our father'. (WHEN did this conversation take place? Surely sometime during the daylight hours. They would need some time to talk it over, and make their plans for the evening ahead. I suspect it may well have taken quite a bit of time for the girls to work up the courage to take such a drastic step!). Continuing, "So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. It happened on the NEXT DAY (KJV: it came to pass on the morrow...) that the firstborn SAID TO THE YOUNGER, 'Indeed I lay with my father last night ...” Gen 19:31