Sarah,
Where did you get the number 230,000 lambs were sacrificed? What was the population of Jerusalem during Pesach? Josephus claimed 256,500 lambs and 3 million people but I don’t know which year. This number is probably highly exaggerated.
This website talks about this subject.
http://www.keithhunt.com/Lambmany.htmlOne year old lambs in the USA weight about 100 pounds live weight. There is about 35 pounds of meat on a 100 pound lamb. 230,000 x 35 pounds = 8,050,000 pounds. This means that each person (of the 3 million) would have had 2.68 pounds of meat to eat. So either everyone, including women and children, was a glutton or the number is highly exaggerated.
http://www.okesfamilyfarms.com/Services.htmlhttp://www.sheep101.info/201/lambmarketing.htmlA more realistic and accurate estimate of the population of Jerusalem might be 40,000 full time swelling to 250,000 for Pesach.
Let’s say that people weren’t total gluttons and ate 1/2 pound of lamb per person. Then the number of lambs required for 250,000 people is 3,571. According to the first articles estimate of 600 lambs per hour processing rate would mean that 3,571 lambs could be processed in 6 hours.
Of course on the first Pesach the lambs weren’t slaughtered in the Temple because they didn’t have one. So I don’t think that it is a requirement for the lamb to be slaughtered in the Temple. They didn’t have a Tabernacle yet either.
Exo 12:1 And יהוה spoke to Mosheh and to Aharon in the land of Mitsrayim, saying,
Exo 12:2 “This month is the beginning of months for you, it is the first month of the year for you.
Exo 12:3 “Speak to all the congregation of Yisra’ĕl, saying, ‘On the tenth day of this month each one of them is to take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.
Exo 12:4 ‘And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next to his house take it according to the number of the beings, according to each man’s need you make your count for the lamb.
Exo 12:5 ‘Let the lamb be a perfect one, a year old male. Take it from the sheep or from the goats.
Exo 12:6 ‘And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then all the assembly of the congregation of Yisra’ĕl shall kill it between the evenings.
Exo 12:7 ‘And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.
Exo 12:8 ‘And they shall eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire – with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
Exo 12:9 ‘Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire, its head with its legs and its inward parts.
Exo 12:10 ‘And do not leave of it until morning, and what remains of it until morning you are to burn with fire.
Exo 12:11 ‘And this is how you eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Passover of יהוה.
Shalom