Exodus 12:25, commentary and pictures

The service to be kept after coming into the land the Lord promised to give is the Passover, to be continued there as a lasting memorial made up of sprinkling blood on the doorway, the passing of the destroying angel over the buildings, eating the Passover supper together, and the slaying of the firstborn in Egypt. It was instituted as a solemn ordinance on the night of the last and most severe plague, a night terrible to the Egyptians and glorious to God's people, after the plagues of locusts and darkness. Moses made known beforehand to Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and the Israelites the nature and effect of that final plague.

It was given after the king chose to receive the plagues rather than submit to God, and after he and his idolatrous priests opposed Moses' request to the last, even though the Egyptian people wanted the Hebrews to be allowed to leave. God by mighty power delivered His people despite Pharaoh's opposition. Each family, alone or joined with others, was to slay a lamb or kid without blemish, sprinkle its blood with hyssop on the two side-posts and the upper door-post, and that night eat the roasted flesh in haste with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, with loins girded, shoes on feet, and staff in hand, because it is the Lord's passover.

The blood was a token on the houses where they were, so that when God passed through Egypt at midnight to smite all the firstborn of man and beast and execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt, the destroying angel would not enter and the plague would not destroy those marked by the blood. Keeping it was a work required to prove faith by works in the deliverance God was bringing, requiring separation from the Egyptians and gathering into their own blood-marked houses. Obedience identified them as God's people and protected them from the destroyer, while any Israelite found in an Egyptian house would fall and those who did not obey would suffer with the Egyptians, since receiving the provision required acting in faith.

It was to be a remarkable memorial preserving for children the remembrance of God's care, so that when children inquired what the service meant parents would relate their wonderful preservation when the angel went forth by night to slay the firstborn and passed over their houses, with not one Hebrew slain who had the blood on the doorposts. This called forth bowed worship in gratitude, keeping the memory of deliverance alive and turning thoughts to God's works and mercy while impressing the story of deliverance on heart and memory. God delivered His people from Egypt to bring them to Sinai to hear and keep the law given in Eden, namely the ten commandments proclaimed by God Himself with His own voice.

The power and glory with which it was given reveal its importance and make known in awful grandeur His majesty and authority as Ruler of the world, to impress the sacredness of His law and the importance of obeying it, and it is the faith once delivered to the saints by Christ the Redeemer speaking from Sinai. After coming into the promised land its keeping meant a continuing yearly memorial kept at Jerusalem as a means of education, recalling the lamb, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, sprinkled blood, death-dealing angel, and departure from bondage. The whole household from men of white hairs to little children journeyed with offerings of gratitude to meet with God in His holy habitation, recounting past experiences and singing the songs of the wilderness wandering along the way.

Then in a night assembly with girded loins, shoes, and staff eating the hasty meal and in solemn silence rehearsing the sprinkled blood, the death-dealing angel, and the grand march from bondage, and bound up with the blessed influences of nature and kindly human association and the chanting of God's commandments, these ceremonies stirred the imagination, impressed the heart, and fixed truth forever in the memory of children and youth. The slain lamb taught about Christ's death and pointed to Christ, the Lamb of God slain for the sins of the world, while its blood foreshadowed the blood that cleanses and shelters the believing sinner. Christ kept this service with His disciples for the last time, and once He was slain there was no longer need to sacrifice a lamb to represent His death, so by rejecting and killing Christ the Jews rejected what gave the feast its value and keeping it afterward was only an empty form.

Given as an object-lesson at the birth of the nation, it shows the importance of guarding the associations of children, with the arrangements of civil, religious, and social life made to preserve them from harmful companionship and to make them familiar from their earliest years with the precepts and principles of the law of God. Before the last terrible judgment in the death of the firstborn God commanded His people to gather their children into their own homes behind blood-marked doorposts and abide within that assured protection. This means today that parents who love and fear God are to keep their children under the bond of the covenant within the protection of those sacred influences made possible through Christ's redeeming blood.