Why the Passover Lamb Was Set Aside Four Days Early

"Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, on the tenth of this month [each shall take a lamb]" (Exodus 12:3). Rabbi Yochanan said: but is it not finer only when freshly taken from its pen? Yet you say from the tenth! Rather, this teaches that the lambs were tied to the legs of the beds of Israel from the tenth, and the Egyptians would come in and see them, and their souls flew out of them. Rabbi Chiyya son of Rabbi Adda of Jaffa said: "Draw out and take for yourselves a lamb according to your families, and slaughter the Passover offering" (Exodus 12:21), that each one of you should drag the god of the Egyptian and slaughter it before him, and [the Egyptian] could only mutter about it. Rabbi Chelbo said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: here you say "on the tenth of this month" (Exodus 12:3), and there it says "and the people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth" (Joshua 4:19). Rabbi Chiyya said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: its taking up stood by them at the Jordan, and its eating stood by them in the days of the manna. "And they shall eat the flesh on that night" (Exodus 12:8) — "on that night the king's sleep fled" (Esther 6:1). Rabbi Berekhiah said in the name of Rabbi Abahu: Nachum of the academy expounded in Tarsus, "and they shall take for themselves, each man" (Exodus 12:3), this is the Holy One, blessed be He, of whom it is written "the LORD is a man of war" (Exodus 15:3). By what do you take Him? By the two daily offerings, "a lamb for a father's house, a lamb for a house" (Exodus 12:3). Rabbi Yudan said in the name of Rabbi Simon: never did a person spend the night in Jerusalem with sin in his hand. How so? The morning daily offering would atone for sins done in the night, and the daily offering of twilight would atone for sins done in the day, so that no person ever spent the night in Jerusalem with sin in his hand. And what is the reason? "Righteousness lodged in her" (Isaiah 1:21).