This post was supposed to be last Tuesday. However, the second of these two questions needed further research (it stumped me), so the post was delayed.
Q: Why do the soldiers draw back and fall to the ground when Jesus says, “I am he”?
A: What Jesus says in Greek is simply I AM. It is the divine name of the LORD—who was and is and always shall be. It is the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is nothing here to indicate that these men comprehended that. If they had, they would not have then proceeded to arrest and bind him. It seems rather that Jesus is displaying his divine authority and flexing his almighty muscle, so to speak. We are told in Paul’s letters to the Philippians that “at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow… and every tongue confess that Jesus is LORD to the glory of God the Father.” (2:11).
Whether every knee wants to be subjected or not, they will be. This seems to be a small display of that ultimate subjugation.
Q:Why are the Jewish leaders worried about not being able to eat the Passover since Jesus and his disciples already ate the Passover. Hadn’t they eaten it yet? Were they supposed to eat it on Thursday night? Was it already too late?
A: According to the command of God given to Moses, on the 10th of the first month of the Jewish calendar (Abib), every household selected a passover lamb for the household. On the 14th day, the community was to slaughter their lambs at twilight. Now, bear in mind that the Jewish day ended and began at sundown. So as the sun is setting on the 14th day it becomes the 15th day. It was to be eaten during that night and in the morning, the leftovers were to be burned.
At Sinai, the Lord reinforced this concept by telling his people, “You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leaven, nor shall the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover be left until morning.” (Exodus 34:25)
But the second time the Israelites celebrated the Passover, a problem arose. There were some people who were ceremonially unclean because they had come into contact with a corpse. Moses asks the Lord what to do and the Lord tells him, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘If anyone of you or your posterity is unclean because of a corpse, or is far away on a journey, he may still keep the Lord’s Passover. On the fourteenth day of the second month, at twilight, they may keep it.”
[By the way, in Deuteronomy 16, the Lord specifies that the Passover lamb can only be sacrificed and eaten at the place the Lord choses, which would be Jerusalem.]
So it seems from the words of the text that, by the time the Jewish leaders went to the Praetorium, it was already after dawn and too late to eat the Passover. So perhaps they were worried about being able to eat the other Passover one month later.
I turned to a commentary called The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, which is written by a Jewish convert named Alfred Edersheim. He notes that, though the traditional Passover meal was already eaten and done by sunrise, there were other festival meals to be had during the longer celebration of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. These other offerings and meals were called Chagigah, and were supposed to be offered on the first day of any Jewish high feast.
A Life in the Word 