And the LORD said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof:
This is the ordinance of the Passover that no unnaturalized foreigner was to eat of it, making it a commanded observance with specified participants and limits on participation. The restriction was lifted only when the foreigner was circumcised and joined the Hebrew community, so that circumcision and initiation were required before eating. It was ordained as a fitting yearly memorial of deliverance from Egyptian bondage on the night God passed over blood-marked houses when He struck Egypt's firstborn. The lamb slain on the fourteenth day of the first month was a type that met its antitype when Jesus as the Lamb of God, the true Passover, was slain on that same day. Its blood on the doorposts points to the blood of Christ through which transgressions are passed over and pardoned, picturing pardon and the blotting out of sin.
Exodus Setting and History
The ordinance stands within the Exodus 7–12 account of God’s religious system in conflict with Egypt’s, where miracles supported the Hebrew God against Egypt’s gods. The great power manifested through God’s servants in those chapters was not in and of the man but in the Word, in the message God simply spoke. That Word in Moses turned the rivers of Egypt into blood and smote the land with plague. The plagues showed that Jehovah alone is all-powerful and all-wise, while Egypt’s gods were powerless. In the midst of the ten plagues proud Egypt was humbled to the dust and the supposed power of its many gods was annihilated.
The ordinance was given in close connection with the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, at the same time the firstborn were claimed as the Lord’s, and with the hurried departure of Israel from Egypt. It stands within Exodus 6–12, which records the ten plagues upon Egypt and God’s merciful deliverance to His children, and presents the Passover in the account of Israel’s deliverance and the events leading to the crossing of the Red Sea. The very first Passover was kept at Rameses, Egypt, on the night the children of Israel were led out of bondage to go to the land of Canaan, with the fuller account found in Exodus 11 and 12. Passover means that when the angel saw the blood on the doorposts he passed over that house and did not slay the oldest child, and the feast continued as a yearly observance at Jerusalem. Israel left Egypt 1491 years before Christ.
That exodus from Egypt came one month before Israel marched from Elim to Sin on the fifteenth day of the second month and one month before the Sabbath connected with the fall of manna in Exodus 16, with the weekday of the later arrival fixed by numbering fifty days from the second day of unleavened bread. The events would not be expected to appear directly in Egypt’s historical records, which chiefly recorded royal successes and triumphs. Yet those plagues were literal events that Egypt knew by experience and Philistia did not doubt, and the going out of Egypt into Canaan is a type of the deliverance of God’s people from earth while the plagues visited upon Egypt are a type of the last plagues. The exodus account under Moses’ direct supervision is no less credible than the account of creation, and its reliability as historical narrative is bound up with the credibility of Moses’ writings.
The verse belongs to the closing part of the Exodus 5 to 12 record of the controversy in Egypt over the right to worship the true God as Creator and to keep His commandments, particularly the Sabbath. There Pharaoh’s refusal to let Israel rest from their works and hold a feast to God in the wilderness was broken by terrible plagues and God’s direct miraculous intervention, delivering Israel from physical bondage. At that time the Israelites had been reduced to a servile condition as serfs of the Egyptians. God allowed them to remain in that condition for a time but did not sanction even that modified form of slavery, demanded their instant release, and on refusal brought terrible judgments on their oppressors, led Israel out as an army of fugitive slaves, and drowned their pursuers in the Red Sea.
That wonderful deliverance demonstrated God’s wisdom, love, and power, His ability and right to rule, and Israel’s obligation to obey, after which Israel still had to be tested and tried to prove whether they would walk in His law or not. In the deliverance of the firstborn of those who believed God, while not one firstborn escaped the destroyer in the homes of those who rejected His mercy, each Israelite was given abundant opportunity to gain a personal knowledge of and acquaintance with the King of kings and Lord of lords. So the living God could then preface His holy law not merely as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob heard of, but as the God known by experience, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. After redeeming them with a mighty hand from Egyptian bondage, because hundreds of years of slavery had unfitted them to comprehend God’s great salvation and the character He required, God gave them a great, multiple object-lesson by various forms and rites comprehending the great plan of salvation, commanding them to bring free-will offerings for building and to make Him a sanctuary that He might dwell among them.
Stranger Exclusion Rule
The ordinance forbids any stranger to eat the Passover, establishing it as a divinely commanded observance with defined timing, participants, purpose, and limits on participation. It belongs to the memorial of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, recalling how judgment fell on Egypt's firstborn while Israel was spared. The excluded stranger is the unnaturalized foreigner, who unlike a stranger naturalized as an Israelite was not bound by the obligations that applied to Jews. This makes the Passover a particularly Jewish ordinance, in contrast with the Sabbath command which required even strangers in the land to rest.
The restriction was lifted only when the foreigner became a member of the Hebrew community through circumcision and joined the Passover company. No stranger could eat without first being circumcised and thereby initiated into Judaism. That requirement makes the Passover a national institution, commanded to Abraham and obligatory only upon his descendants. By contrast the Sabbath was commanded to Adam the father of all mankind and bound even uncircumcised strangers to keep it.
The same law given to Israel was for every other person of whatever race or nationality. Israel was the chosen people through whom knowledge of God was to extend throughout the earth, as a light to the surrounding nations. The course they pursued was to reveal to all other people what it meant to be a member of God's government and of God's people.
The ordinance is the first mention of servitude in the Jewish system, speaking of servants bought with money who are circumcised and of hired servants in connection with eating the Passover. It does not create, institute, provide for, sanction, censure, or justify slavery. It only takes for granted that bought servants and hired servants already existed, without treating servitude as something established by the new system. The requirement that even a purchased servant be circumcised before eating treats circumcision as already known, showing that the Hebrews were not ignorant of an existing sacred ordinance. By analogy, their knowledge of the Sabbath did not begin when it was specially entrusted to Israel.
Time and Form Observed
The lamb was to be roasted by each family and eaten with bitter herbs on the night following the fourteenth day of the first month, which was the first month of the sacred year. That work of preparing the lamb explains the term preparation of the passover. The feast began with the lamb on the fourteenth and continued seven days during which unleavened bread was eaten. Because the fourteenth could at times fall on the Sabbath, its preparation with roasting would have conflicted with a prohibition on kindling fires if that prohibition applied in Canaan.
After its institution it was observed once in the wilderness in the year after the departure from Egypt, then omitted until Israel entered Canaan. That omission is connected with lack of circumcision, since uncircumcised children were excluded from eating the Passover. The original ordinance as instituted in Egypt and observed on the wilderness journey to Palestine and for some time afterward is distinct from the later temple form. The later form was materially changed with added injunctions hardly possible to carry out in the wilderness.
Wine used in later observances was not enjoined in the Pentateuch, and the closing Hallel song was not required by the original instructions. Preparing and keeping the festival required that nothing leavened or fermented be permitted, under the heaviest penalty known for using anything leavened at that sacred memorial feast. The word eat implies both to eat and to drink, so drink was a necessity in a seven-day festival, with its kind left to circumstances and common sense except for the absolute requirement that it could not be leavened.
Memorial of Deliverance
God ordained the Passover as a fitting memorial of deliverance from Egyptian bondage, recalling that He passed over Israelite houses when He struck the Egyptians. It commemorated both the angel passing over their dwellings and their departure from Egypt, with the lamb slain on the fourteenth day of the first month and unleavened bread eaten through seven days following. The annual observance remained a legitimate type only until Christ its Antitype was slain as the true Passover sacrificed for believers.
The ordinance was suited to keep that deliverance fresh in thought, preserving in strong remembrance how deliverance came near through judgment. As often as Israel observed it they recalled how Egypt's firstborn were doomed to die while the destroying angel passed over their own dwellings and spared them. The chapter gives the appointed time of this memorial of deliverance from Egyptian bondage, and its rule that no stranger might eat marks it as an ordinance with defined limits on participation.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread stood as its companion memorial, declaring how the Egyptians hurried Israel away in haste. The appointed answer to sons inquiring of its meaning was that with a mighty hand Jehovah brought them up from Egypt's land. Together these annual memorials fully commemorated the exodus.
That yearly Passover memorial is distinct from the weekly Sabbath, which recurs weekly and rests on creation. The night to be observed when Israel came out of Egypt memorializes that deliverance, while the weekly Sabbath is not a memorial of coming out of Egypt. Deliverance from Egypt was an added motive for Sabbath obedience, not the event the Sabbath was instituted to commemorate. A weekly rest cannot fitly memorialize by weekly observance what happened only once a year, and Moses does not speak of keeping the Sabbath as a memorial of that deliverance. It was the Passover, rather than a change of the weekly Sabbath, that commemorated it.
Israel in Egypt kept the ordinance of circumcision necessary to eat the Passover and were ready to eat it. This proves they had not forgotten God's past dealings and His ordinances. The Sabbath afterward made known at Sinai was therefore given for the first time and was not a forgotten institution brought back to memory.
Type of Christ
The Passover was a type of Christ and a memorial of deliverance from Egyptian bondage, with its appointed time given for the slaying of the paschal lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month. That slaying met its antitype in the death of Jesus as the Lamb of God on that same day. The ordinance to which the exclusion belongs is therefore the ordinance whose paschal slaying pointed forward to Christ's death.
Christ is the great antitype of the Passover sacrificed for believers, the true Passover. The feast began with the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month and continued seven days when unleavened bread was eaten, commemorating the angel passing over Israelite houses in Egypt and the departure from Egypt. The annual observance remained a legitimate type only until Christ its Antitype was slain.
The blood on the doorposts points to the blood of Christ, "our Passover," through which God passes over transgressions and His people are pardoned and not cut off, presenting Israel's Passover deliverance as a picture of pardon and the blotting out of sin. That deliverance also points to the final pardon of God's remnant living at the close of probation. Preparing and keeping the festival required that nothing leavened or fermented be permitted, under the heaviest penalty known for using anything leavened at that sacred memorial feast. The word eat implies both to eat and to drink, so drink was a necessity in a seven-day festival, with its kind left to force of circumstances and common sense except for the absolute requirement that it could not be leavened. Christ and His disciples as consistent Israelites obeyed these Mosaic requirements at the Passover where He instituted His Supper, so the cup called fruit of the vine was not fermented or leavened.
The blood of the paschal lamb marked on Israelite houses spared them when the destroying angel passed over to slay the firstborn of the Egyptians. That marking is the pattern for the sealing of the servants of God while the four winds of war and trouble are restrained. The seal of God is a distinguishing mark or religious characteristic, found in the fourth commandment and the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, through which God's servants will be exempted from the judgments of God that fall on the wicked around them.
Last Plagues and Obedience
The plagues on Egypt just before Israel's deliverance foreshadow the seven last plagues just before the final deliverance of the saints, providing the likeness for the seven terrible plagues that will fall on the world before Christ's coming. The going out of Egypt into Canaan is a type of the deliverance of God's people from earth, and the plagues visited upon Egypt are a type of the last plagues. Those plagues were literal events that Egypt knew by experience and that Philistia did not doubt.
As Israel lived through the plagues on Egypt, so God's people will witness the coming calamities while under divine protection. The deliverance of the firstborn of those who believed God shows that not one firstborn escaped the destroyer in the homes of those who rejected His mercy. This occurred in the midst of the ten plagues that humbled proud Egypt to the dust and annihilated the supposed power of its many gods. It gave each Israelite abundant opportunity to gain a personal knowledge of and acquaintance with the King of kings and Lord of lords, so that the living God could then preface His holy law not merely as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob heard of, but as the God known by experience in the words, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
The wonderful deliverance of Israel from Egypt demonstrated God's wisdom, love, and power, His ability and right to rule, and Israel's obligation to obey. After that deliverance Israel still had to be tested and tried to prove whether they would walk in His law or not. Because hundreds of years of slavery had unfitted them to comprehend God's great salvation and the character He required, God after redeeming them with a mighty hand gave them a great, multiple object-lesson by various forms and rites comprehending the great plan of salvation. He commanded them to bring free-will offerings for building and to make Him a sanctuary that He might dwell among them.
The fact that a Passover ordinance is described as perpetual or everlasting does not by itself mean the ordinance must still be in force. The Passover ordinance is the first mention of servitude in the Jewish system, speaking of servants bought with money who are circumcised and of hired servants in connection with eating the Passover. It does not create, institute, provide for, sanction, censure, or justify slavery, but only takes for granted that bought servants and hired servants already exist, without treating servitude as something established by the new system. It stands at the time when the Israelites had been reduced to a servile condition as serfs of the Egyptians. God allowed them to remain in that condition for a time but did not sanction even that modified form of slavery, demanded their instant release, and on refusal brought terrible judgments on their oppressors, led Israel out as an army of fugitive slaves, and drowned their pursuers in the Red Sea.
This is the ordinance of the Passover that no unnaturalized foreigner was to eat of it, making it a commanded observance with specified participants and limits on participation. The restriction was lifted only when the foreigner was circumcised and joined the Hebrew community, so that circumcision and initiation were required before eating. It was ordained as a fitting yearly memorial of deliverance from Egyptian bondage on the night God passed over blood-marked houses when He struck Egypt's firstborn. The lamb slain on the fourteenth day of the first month was a type that met its antitype when Jesus as the Lamb of God, the true Passover, was slain on that same day. Its blood on the doorposts points to the blood of Christ through which transgressions are passed over and pardoned, picturing pardon and the blotting out of sin.
Exodus Setting and History
The ordinance stands within the Exodus 7–12 account of God’s religious system in conflict with Egypt’s, where miracles supported the Hebrew God against Egypt’s gods. The great power manifested through God’s servants in those chapters was not in and of the man but in the Word, in the message God simply spoke. That Word in Moses turned the rivers of Egypt into blood and smote the land with plague. The plagues showed that Jehovah alone is all-powerful and all-wise, while Egypt’s gods were powerless. In the midst of the ten plagues proud Egypt was humbled to the dust and the supposed power of its many gods was annihilated.
The ordinance was given in close connection with the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, at the same time the firstborn were claimed as the Lord’s, and with the hurried departure of Israel from Egypt. It stands within Exodus 6–12, which records the ten plagues upon Egypt and God’s merciful deliverance to His children, and presents the Passover in the account of Israel’s deliverance and the events leading to the crossing of the Red Sea. The very first Passover was kept at Rameses, Egypt, on the night the children of Israel were led out of bondage to go to the land of Canaan, with the fuller account found in Exodus 11 and 12. Passover means that when the angel saw the blood on the doorposts he passed over that house and did not slay the oldest child, and the feast continued as a yearly observance at Jerusalem. Israel left Egypt 1491 years before Christ.
That exodus from Egypt came one month before Israel marched from Elim to Sin on the fifteenth day of the second month and one month before the Sabbath connected with the fall of manna in Exodus 16, with the weekday of the later arrival fixed by numbering fifty days from the second day of unleavened bread. The events would not be expected to appear directly in Egypt’s historical records, which chiefly recorded royal successes and triumphs. Yet those plagues were literal events that Egypt knew by experience and Philistia did not doubt, and the going out of Egypt into Canaan is a type of the deliverance of God’s people from earth while the plagues visited upon Egypt are a type of the last plagues. The exodus account under Moses’ direct supervision is no less credible than the account of creation, and its reliability as historical narrative is bound up with the credibility of Moses’ writings.
The verse belongs to the closing part of the Exodus 5 to 12 record of the controversy in Egypt over the right to worship the true God as Creator and to keep His commandments, particularly the Sabbath. There Pharaoh’s refusal to let Israel rest from their works and hold a feast to God in the wilderness was broken by terrible plagues and God’s direct miraculous intervention, delivering Israel from physical bondage. At that time the Israelites had been reduced to a servile condition as serfs of the Egyptians. God allowed them to remain in that condition for a time but did not sanction even that modified form of slavery, demanded their instant release, and on refusal brought terrible judgments on their oppressors, led Israel out as an army of fugitive slaves, and drowned their pursuers in the Red Sea.
That wonderful deliverance demonstrated God’s wisdom, love, and power, His ability and right to rule, and Israel’s obligation to obey, after which Israel still had to be tested and tried to prove whether they would walk in His law or not. In the deliverance of the firstborn of those who believed God, while not one firstborn escaped the destroyer in the homes of those who rejected His mercy, each Israelite was given abundant opportunity to gain a personal knowledge of and acquaintance with the King of kings and Lord of lords. So the living God could then preface His holy law not merely as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob heard of, but as the God known by experience, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. After redeeming them with a mighty hand from Egyptian bondage, because hundreds of years of slavery had unfitted them to comprehend God’s great salvation and the character He required, God gave them a great, multiple object-lesson by various forms and rites comprehending the great plan of salvation, commanding them to bring free-will offerings for building and to make Him a sanctuary that He might dwell among them.
Stranger Exclusion Rule
The ordinance forbids any stranger to eat the Passover, establishing it as a divinely commanded observance with defined timing, participants, purpose, and limits on participation. It belongs to the memorial of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, recalling how judgment fell on Egypt's firstborn while Israel was spared. The excluded stranger is the unnaturalized foreigner, who unlike a stranger naturalized as an Israelite was not bound by the obligations that applied to Jews. This makes the Passover a particularly Jewish ordinance, in contrast with the Sabbath command which required even strangers in the land to rest.
The restriction was lifted only when the foreigner became a member of the Hebrew community through circumcision and joined the Passover company. No stranger could eat without first being circumcised and thereby initiated into Judaism. That requirement makes the Passover a national institution, commanded to Abraham and obligatory only upon his descendants. By contrast the Sabbath was commanded to Adam the father of all mankind and bound even uncircumcised strangers to keep it.
The same law given to Israel was for every other person of whatever race or nationality. Israel was the chosen people through whom knowledge of God was to extend throughout the earth, as a light to the surrounding nations. The course they pursued was to reveal to all other people what it meant to be a member of God's government and of God's people.
The ordinance is the first mention of servitude in the Jewish system, speaking of servants bought with money who are circumcised and of hired servants in connection with eating the Passover. It does not create, institute, provide for, sanction, censure, or justify slavery. It only takes for granted that bought servants and hired servants already existed, without treating servitude as something established by the new system. The requirement that even a purchased servant be circumcised before eating treats circumcision as already known, showing that the Hebrews were not ignorant of an existing sacred ordinance. By analogy, their knowledge of the Sabbath did not begin when it was specially entrusted to Israel.
Time and Form Observed
The lamb was to be roasted by each family and eaten with bitter herbs on the night following the fourteenth day of the first month, which was the first month of the sacred year. That work of preparing the lamb explains the term preparation of the passover. The feast began with the lamb on the fourteenth and continued seven days during which unleavened bread was eaten. Because the fourteenth could at times fall on the Sabbath, its preparation with roasting would have conflicted with a prohibition on kindling fires if that prohibition applied in Canaan.
After its institution it was observed once in the wilderness in the year after the departure from Egypt, then omitted until Israel entered Canaan. That omission is connected with lack of circumcision, since uncircumcised children were excluded from eating the Passover. The original ordinance as instituted in Egypt and observed on the wilderness journey to Palestine and for some time afterward is distinct from the later temple form. The later form was materially changed with added injunctions hardly possible to carry out in the wilderness.
Wine used in later observances was not enjoined in the Pentateuch, and the closing Hallel song was not required by the original instructions. Preparing and keeping the festival required that nothing leavened or fermented be permitted, under the heaviest penalty known for using anything leavened at that sacred memorial feast. The word eat implies both to eat and to drink, so drink was a necessity in a seven-day festival, with its kind left to circumstances and common sense except for the absolute requirement that it could not be leavened.
Memorial of Deliverance
God ordained the Passover as a fitting memorial of deliverance from Egyptian bondage, recalling that He passed over Israelite houses when He struck the Egyptians. It commemorated both the angel passing over their dwellings and their departure from Egypt, with the lamb slain on the fourteenth day of the first month and unleavened bread eaten through seven days following. The annual observance remained a legitimate type only until Christ its Antitype was slain as the true Passover sacrificed for believers.
The ordinance was suited to keep that deliverance fresh in thought, preserving in strong remembrance how deliverance came near through judgment. As often as Israel observed it they recalled how Egypt's firstborn were doomed to die while the destroying angel passed over their own dwellings and spared them. The chapter gives the appointed time of this memorial of deliverance from Egyptian bondage, and its rule that no stranger might eat marks it as an ordinance with defined limits on participation.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread stood as its companion memorial, declaring how the Egyptians hurried Israel away in haste. The appointed answer to sons inquiring of its meaning was that with a mighty hand Jehovah brought them up from Egypt's land. Together these annual memorials fully commemorated the exodus.
That yearly Passover memorial is distinct from the weekly Sabbath, which recurs weekly and rests on creation. The night to be observed when Israel came out of Egypt memorializes that deliverance, while the weekly Sabbath is not a memorial of coming out of Egypt. Deliverance from Egypt was an added motive for Sabbath obedience, not the event the Sabbath was instituted to commemorate. A weekly rest cannot fitly memorialize by weekly observance what happened only once a year, and Moses does not speak of keeping the Sabbath as a memorial of that deliverance. It was the Passover, rather than a change of the weekly Sabbath, that commemorated it.
Israel in Egypt kept the ordinance of circumcision necessary to eat the Passover and were ready to eat it. This proves they had not forgotten God's past dealings and His ordinances. The Sabbath afterward made known at Sinai was therefore given for the first time and was not a forgotten institution brought back to memory.
Type of Christ
The Passover was a type of Christ and a memorial of deliverance from Egyptian bondage, with its appointed time given for the slaying of the paschal lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month. That slaying met its antitype in the death of Jesus as the Lamb of God on that same day. The ordinance to which the exclusion belongs is therefore the ordinance whose paschal slaying pointed forward to Christ's death.
Christ is the great antitype of the Passover sacrificed for believers, the true Passover. The feast began with the Passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month and continued seven days when unleavened bread was eaten, commemorating the angel passing over Israelite houses in Egypt and the departure from Egypt. The annual observance remained a legitimate type only until Christ its Antitype was slain.
The blood on the doorposts points to the blood of Christ, "our Passover," through which God passes over transgressions and His people are pardoned and not cut off, presenting Israel's Passover deliverance as a picture of pardon and the blotting out of sin. That deliverance also points to the final pardon of God's remnant living at the close of probation. Preparing and keeping the festival required that nothing leavened or fermented be permitted, under the heaviest penalty known for using anything leavened at that sacred memorial feast. The word eat implies both to eat and to drink, so drink was a necessity in a seven-day festival, with its kind left to force of circumstances and common sense except for the absolute requirement that it could not be leavened. Christ and His disciples as consistent Israelites obeyed these Mosaic requirements at the Passover where He instituted His Supper, so the cup called fruit of the vine was not fermented or leavened.
The blood of the paschal lamb marked on Israelite houses spared them when the destroying angel passed over to slay the firstborn of the Egyptians. That marking is the pattern for the sealing of the servants of God while the four winds of war and trouble are restrained. The seal of God is a distinguishing mark or religious characteristic, found in the fourth commandment and the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, through which God's servants will be exempted from the judgments of God that fall on the wicked around them.
Last Plagues and Obedience
The plagues on Egypt just before Israel's deliverance foreshadow the seven last plagues just before the final deliverance of the saints, providing the likeness for the seven terrible plagues that will fall on the world before Christ's coming. The going out of Egypt into Canaan is a type of the deliverance of God's people from earth, and the plagues visited upon Egypt are a type of the last plagues. Those plagues were literal events that Egypt knew by experience and that Philistia did not doubt.
As Israel lived through the plagues on Egypt, so God's people will witness the coming calamities while under divine protection. The deliverance of the firstborn of those who believed God shows that not one firstborn escaped the destroyer in the homes of those who rejected His mercy. This occurred in the midst of the ten plagues that humbled proud Egypt to the dust and annihilated the supposed power of its many gods. It gave each Israelite abundant opportunity to gain a personal knowledge of and acquaintance with the King of kings and Lord of lords, so that the living God could then preface His holy law not merely as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob heard of, but as the God known by experience in the words, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
The wonderful deliverance of Israel from Egypt demonstrated God's wisdom, love, and power, His ability and right to rule, and Israel's obligation to obey. After that deliverance Israel still had to be tested and tried to prove whether they would walk in His law or not. Because hundreds of years of slavery had unfitted them to comprehend God's great salvation and the character He required, God after redeeming them with a mighty hand gave them a great, multiple object-lesson by various forms and rites comprehending the great plan of salvation. He commanded them to bring free-will offerings for building and to make Him a sanctuary that He might dwell among them.
The fact that a Passover ordinance is described as perpetual or everlasting does not by itself mean the ordinance must still be in force. The Passover ordinance is the first mention of servitude in the Jewish system, speaking of servants bought with money who are circumcised and of hired servants in connection with eating the Passover. It does not create, institute, provide for, sanction, censure, or justify slavery, but only takes for granted that bought servants and hired servants already exist, without treating servitude as something established by the new system. It stands at the time when the Israelites had been reduced to a servile condition as serfs of the Egyptians. God allowed them to remain in that condition for a time but did not sanction even that modified form of slavery, demanded their instant release, and on refusal brought terrible judgments on their oppressors, led Israel out as an army of fugitive slaves, and drowned their pursuers in the Red Sea.