Deuteronomy 16:1-8 and Ezekiel 45:21-24 legislate the same feast from opposite ends. Deuteronomy addresses the worshiper directly and will not let him forget why: "Observe the month of אָבִיב (Abib) and celebrate the פֶּסַח (pesach, "Passover") to the LORD your God, because in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out (יָצָא, yatsa') of Egypt (מִצְרַיִם, Mitsrayim) by night" (16:1). The unleavened bread is "the bread of affliction, because you left the land of Egypt in haste — so that you may remember for the rest of your life the day you left the land of Egypt" (16:3). Egypt is named repeatedly across eight verses; the pilgrim must travel to the chosen place, sacrifice at sunset, and hold a solemn assembly on the seventh day. Ezekiel 45:21-24 keeps the date, the seven days, and the unleavened bread, and drops every one of those elements. There is no Egypt in Ezekiel's calendar, no exodus verb, no affliction, no journey, no assembly. The pilgrim does not act at all: the נָשִׂיא (nasi', "prince") provides the sin offering, the burnt offerings, the grain and the oil, "for himself and for all the people of the land" (45:22). This is not forgetfulness. Deuteronomy's memory had been tried and had failed — the people who recited "the LORD brought us out" were the people the LORD had now sent back out of the land. Ezekiel therefore refounds the feast not on the remembered rescue but on a fresh atonement, and not on the people's obedience but on a ruler's provision. He has already named that ruler: "My servant David will be their prince forever" (37:25). The pattern holds when the true Prince keeps the feast. He supplies the meal, He is the offering, and the only thing His people bring to the table is their need of it — which is exactly how the memory that condemned them becomes the meal that feeds them (Luke 22:19).
