Thus did all the children of Israel; as the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they.
Thus did all the children of Israel keep the Passover ordinance given in connection with the tenth plague and the hurried departure from Egypt. They marked their houses with the blood of the paschal lamb in full obedience, and that mark caused them to be spared when the destroying angel passed through to slay the firstborn of Egypt. The Passover so kept was ordained as the yearly memorial of that deliverance through judgment, and not the weekly Sabbath, which remains the memorial of the Creator's rest. The lamb slain on the fourteenth day of the first month foreshadowed Jesus the Lamb of God, whose death on that same day brings pardon and sparing through His blood. The going out of Egypt and its plagues are a type of the final deliverance of God's people from earth and of the last plagues, through which the obedient will likewise be protected.
Place in Exodus Narrative
Exodus belongs to the first, mainly historical division of the book, chapters 1-18, and this verse stands in the section chapters 11 to 13:16 that relates the tenth plague of the death of the firstborn, the hurried departure of Israel from Egypt, and the claiming of the firstborn as the Lord's. The obedience it reports is the keeping of the Passover ordinance given in close connection with that plague and departure, done as commanded at the moment of deliverance. It stands at the close of the controversy in Egypt over worship of the true God as Creator of heaven and earth and obedience to His commandments, especially observing the Sabbath. The oppression was not mere physical bondage but denial of the right to worship and rest, with Moses and Aaron teaching the people to rest from their burdens while Pharaoh accused them of hindering the people from their works, despised God and His law as vain words, and laid more work upon them. Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let Israel go to hold a feast to God in the wilderness until his land was laid waste by the plagues and the angel of death left not a house without one dead, so that the people were delivered only through those terrible plagues by the direct intervention and miraculous power of God in doing as commanded through Moses and Aaron.
The surrounding chapters record the ten plagues upon Egypt and God's merciful deliverance of His children, showing Jehovah, the one God of Israel, above the Egyptian gods with power over all nature. The account presents God's religious system confronting Egypt's system, with both claims supported by miracles. At first the plagues came not against human beings but against the gods the Egyptians worshiped, to show their unworthiness to be trusted, and the section shows also mercy to Pharaoh and the Egyptians in the reasonable request to let His people go that they might serve Him. The Lord predicted He would harden Pharaoh's heart, but the hardening did not come until Pharaoh utterly rejected every appeal God made to him, and then the Lord withdrew His Spirit and Pharaoh's heart remained hardened. Israel's taking jewels of gold and silver from the Egyptians was not borrowing but asking as their right for long service and labor, and the Egyptians were anxious to give. Israel went out as an army of fugitive slaves freed by God, whom He had allowed to remain for a time in a servile condition as serfs without sanctioning even that modified form of slavery, then demanded their instant release, and when release was refused struck their oppressors with terrible judgments, led them forth, and drowned their pursuers in the Red Sea.
The first Passover was kept at Rameses in Egypt on the night the children of Israel were led out of bondage to go into the land of Canaan, and that deliverance became the yearly feast kept at Jerusalem. The chapter expressly gives the time of the Passover. The departure is dated 1491 years before Christ. The record that all did as commanded confirms the Exodus as an event witnessed and supervised firsthand.
Abib is the first month of the sacred year and the seventh month when the civil year is reckoned from creation. The civil year begins with Abib, distinct from the sacred sanctuary year, so that the tenth day of the seventh month in civil reckoning is the last day of the sacred year summing up the sanctuary offerings. That calendar arrangement applied at most to that one year and does not prove the weekly cycle restarted with the year or that weeks ended with incomplete days. The chronology of Exodus 12-16 places Sabbath observance in the wilderness of Sin before Sinai and before the commandments were spoken there, but the dating of the first day of unleavened bread in the departure cannot establish with certainty the elapsed time from creation to that day.
Obedience in Keeping Passover
The name itself declares the act, for when the angel saw the blood upon the doorposts he passed over that house and did not slay the firstborn within it. That destroyer who passed through Egypt was an angel of the Lord acting as God's agent, and the blood on the doorposts kept him from entering Israelite homes. All the children of Israel obeyed what was commanded concerning the paschal lamb by marking their houses with its blood, and that mark caused them to be spared when the destroying angel passed through to slay the firstborn of the Egyptians. Such obedience became a distinguishing religious mark by which God's servants are exempted from judgments falling on the wicked around them.
The Egyptians were destroyed because they chose sin and stood with Israel's oppression, having been led into sin by Satan. In contrast the firstborn were rescued in believing households but died in homes that rejected God's mercy, an experience through which Israel could know God personally. The obedience rendered was full obedience in preparing and keeping the Passover, whose requirement is absolute that nothing leavened or fermented was permitted at the sacred feast under the heaviest penalty. Eating implied both eating and drinking, so drink was left to circumstances and common sense on a seven-day feast, with the one absolute condition that it could not be leavened.
The lamb was eaten with bitter herbs, roasted by each family, and circumcision was required in order to eat it. Those original instructions given in Egypt and observed in the wilderness journey were distinct from the materially changed temple form. They did not enjoin wine and did not require the closing Hallel of Psalms 113-118, which were later additions hardly possible in the wilderness. The regular observance was intended for the promised land, being kept only once in the wilderness in the year after leaving Egypt.
The chapter is the explicit record instituting the Passover, giving the command and explaining how, when, by whom, and for what purpose it was to be celebrated. Its convocation days were on particular days of the month with no reference to the weekly Sabbath. The night to be observed as the memorial of coming out of Egypt was that very night of deliverance. The power that turned the rivers into blood and smote the land was not in Moses himself but in the Word of God spoken through him.
Passover Memorial, Not Sabbath
The Passover was ordained as the memorial of God passing over Israel when He struck the Egyptians, preserving in remembrance how deliverance came through judgment when Egypt's firstborn were doomed and the destroying angel passed over Israel's dwellings on his fearful path. The Feast of Unleavened Bread commemorated eating unleavened bread in the hurried flight when the Egyptians, fearful of their stay, hastened Israel away with hastening hand. These were the answer Israel was to give when sons should ask what this service means and what it was designed to show. All the children of Israel did as commanded in keeping these observances.
The Passover and Unleavened Bread are two fit and plain yearly memorials God gave to keep fresh in thought the glad deliverance He wrought with a mighty hand in bringing Israel up from Egypt's land. The Passover is the sufficient, beautiful, and fitting memorial of that deliverance, plainly declared to be a memorial with its office described. Scripture does not allow two memorials of the same event, nor one memorial to commemorate two unlike events, so the Sabbath was not also made a memorial of that deliverance. There is no fitness in taking the Sabbath from its proper office as a memorial of creation and rest to connect it with the exodus.
The Sabbath is by contrast the memorial of the Creator's rest and was not instituted to commemorate the Exodus. The memorial of deliverance from bondage belongs to the Passover and not to the Sabbath. Yearly memorials of deliverance are distinct from the weekly Sabbath, for a weekly rest cannot fitly keep in memory a day that comes only once a year, and a rest cannot be a memorial of a rush.
Israel in Egypt still worshiped God and observed His ordinances, being ready and doing as commanded, including circumcision as required for eating the Passover. This proves they still remembered God's past dealings and had not forgotten His institutions. Therefore the Sabbath made known at Sinai was first given there and not merely recalled as a forgotten ordinance. Calling the Passover and its feast perpetual and everlasting, in words no stronger than to a thousand generations, does not mean unending obligation, for its period has expired just as have the Aaronic priesthood, circumcision, the shewbread, and other things called perpetual or everlasting.
Christ Foreshadowed by Passover
The slaying commanded and kept belonged to the ordinance of the paschal lamb slain on the fourteenth day of the first month, and the doing of all the children of Israel included that slaying. That slaying was a type that met its antitype in the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God, on that same day.
The blood marked on the doorposts shows how the people were spared, for the account of the plagues on Egypt and Israel's Passover deliverance teaches that God's people are spared through the blood of Christ, their Passover. Through that blood come pardon and the blotting out of sin.
The same directions for preparing and keeping the Passover were followed when Jesus and His disciples as consistent Israelites prepared and ate the Passover, including the slaying and eating of the paschal lamb at the Last Supper. The obedience required was full obedience, summed up as the absolute condition that nothing leavened or fermented was permitted at the sacred memorial feast, under the heaviest penalty known for using anything leavened. Eating implied both eating and drinking, so drink was optional in the wording, but on a seven-day feast drink was a necessity left to circumstances and common sense, with the one absolute condition that it could not be leavened. The Passover involved eating the paschal lamb with bitter herbs, and its instructions help explain why the day before the weekly Sabbath was called the preparation of the Passover, since preparations had to be made for eating the lamb. This supports placing the crucifixion before the Passover meal rather than on the fifteenth day after the meal had already been eaten.
After hundreds of years of slavery had unfitted Israel to comprehend God's great salvation and the character He required, He redeemed them from Egyptian bondage with a mighty hand and gave them the sanctuary with its various forms and rites as a great, multiple object-lesson comprehending the whole plan of salvation.
Type of Final Deliverance
The going out of Egypt toward Canaan is the type of the deliverance of God's people from the dark Egypt of this earth. The plagues visited upon Egypt were literal, and they are the type of the last plagues recorded in Revelation 16. The account of the plagues of Egypt in Exodus 7-12 shadows forth the seven last plagues and shows that those final plagues will be as real and literal as the Egyptian plagues were.
As the plagues of Egypt came just before the deliverance of Israel, so the seven last plagues will be poured out just before the final deliverance of the saints. The ten plagues that preceded Israel's deliverance provide the comparison for the seven final plagues. Those seven will fall on the world after the gospel work and the sealing are complete, during a time when forgiveness of sin will no longer be granted. As Israel remained in the land through the plagues on Egypt, so the righteous will remain on earth through the first six of the final plagues and be protected amid the calamities.
Lessons for God's People
The obedience reported in the verse belongs to the deliverance from Egypt that displayed divine wisdom, love, and power. That deliverance demonstrated the ability and right to rule, and with it the obligation of the delivered people to obey. After being brought out, they still had to be tested and tried to prove whether they would walk in the law.
Thus did all the children of Israel keep the Passover ordinance given in connection with the tenth plague and the hurried departure from Egypt. They marked their houses with the blood of the paschal lamb in full obedience, and that mark caused them to be spared when the destroying angel passed through to slay the firstborn of Egypt. The Passover so kept was ordained as the yearly memorial of that deliverance through judgment, and not the weekly Sabbath, which remains the memorial of the Creator's rest. The lamb slain on the fourteenth day of the first month foreshadowed Jesus the Lamb of God, whose death on that same day brings pardon and sparing through His blood. The going out of Egypt and its plagues are a type of the final deliverance of God's people from earth and of the last plagues, through which the obedient will likewise be protected.
Place in Exodus Narrative
Exodus belongs to the first, mainly historical division of the book, chapters 1-18, and this verse stands in the section chapters 11 to 13:16 that relates the tenth plague of the death of the firstborn, the hurried departure of Israel from Egypt, and the claiming of the firstborn as the Lord's. The obedience it reports is the keeping of the Passover ordinance given in close connection with that plague and departure, done as commanded at the moment of deliverance. It stands at the close of the controversy in Egypt over worship of the true God as Creator of heaven and earth and obedience to His commandments, especially observing the Sabbath. The oppression was not mere physical bondage but denial of the right to worship and rest, with Moses and Aaron teaching the people to rest from their burdens while Pharaoh accused them of hindering the people from their works, despised God and His law as vain words, and laid more work upon them. Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let Israel go to hold a feast to God in the wilderness until his land was laid waste by the plagues and the angel of death left not a house without one dead, so that the people were delivered only through those terrible plagues by the direct intervention and miraculous power of God in doing as commanded through Moses and Aaron.
The surrounding chapters record the ten plagues upon Egypt and God's merciful deliverance of His children, showing Jehovah, the one God of Israel, above the Egyptian gods with power over all nature. The account presents God's religious system confronting Egypt's system, with both claims supported by miracles. At first the plagues came not against human beings but against the gods the Egyptians worshiped, to show their unworthiness to be trusted, and the section shows also mercy to Pharaoh and the Egyptians in the reasonable request to let His people go that they might serve Him. The Lord predicted He would harden Pharaoh's heart, but the hardening did not come until Pharaoh utterly rejected every appeal God made to him, and then the Lord withdrew His Spirit and Pharaoh's heart remained hardened. Israel's taking jewels of gold and silver from the Egyptians was not borrowing but asking as their right for long service and labor, and the Egyptians were anxious to give. Israel went out as an army of fugitive slaves freed by God, whom He had allowed to remain for a time in a servile condition as serfs without sanctioning even that modified form of slavery, then demanded their instant release, and when release was refused struck their oppressors with terrible judgments, led them forth, and drowned their pursuers in the Red Sea.
The first Passover was kept at Rameses in Egypt on the night the children of Israel were led out of bondage to go into the land of Canaan, and that deliverance became the yearly feast kept at Jerusalem. The chapter expressly gives the time of the Passover. The departure is dated 1491 years before Christ. The record that all did as commanded confirms the Exodus as an event witnessed and supervised firsthand.
Abib is the first month of the sacred year and the seventh month when the civil year is reckoned from creation. The civil year begins with Abib, distinct from the sacred sanctuary year, so that the tenth day of the seventh month in civil reckoning is the last day of the sacred year summing up the sanctuary offerings. That calendar arrangement applied at most to that one year and does not prove the weekly cycle restarted with the year or that weeks ended with incomplete days. The chronology of Exodus 12-16 places Sabbath observance in the wilderness of Sin before Sinai and before the commandments were spoken there, but the dating of the first day of unleavened bread in the departure cannot establish with certainty the elapsed time from creation to that day.
Obedience in Keeping Passover
The name itself declares the act, for when the angel saw the blood upon the doorposts he passed over that house and did not slay the firstborn within it. That destroyer who passed through Egypt was an angel of the Lord acting as God's agent, and the blood on the doorposts kept him from entering Israelite homes. All the children of Israel obeyed what was commanded concerning the paschal lamb by marking their houses with its blood, and that mark caused them to be spared when the destroying angel passed through to slay the firstborn of the Egyptians. Such obedience became a distinguishing religious mark by which God's servants are exempted from judgments falling on the wicked around them.
The Egyptians were destroyed because they chose sin and stood with Israel's oppression, having been led into sin by Satan. In contrast the firstborn were rescued in believing households but died in homes that rejected God's mercy, an experience through which Israel could know God personally. The obedience rendered was full obedience in preparing and keeping the Passover, whose requirement is absolute that nothing leavened or fermented was permitted at the sacred feast under the heaviest penalty. Eating implied both eating and drinking, so drink was left to circumstances and common sense on a seven-day feast, with the one absolute condition that it could not be leavened.
The lamb was eaten with bitter herbs, roasted by each family, and circumcision was required in order to eat it. Those original instructions given in Egypt and observed in the wilderness journey were distinct from the materially changed temple form. They did not enjoin wine and did not require the closing Hallel of Psalms 113-118, which were later additions hardly possible in the wilderness. The regular observance was intended for the promised land, being kept only once in the wilderness in the year after leaving Egypt.
The chapter is the explicit record instituting the Passover, giving the command and explaining how, when, by whom, and for what purpose it was to be celebrated. Its convocation days were on particular days of the month with no reference to the weekly Sabbath. The night to be observed as the memorial of coming out of Egypt was that very night of deliverance. The power that turned the rivers into blood and smote the land was not in Moses himself but in the Word of God spoken through him.
Passover Memorial, Not Sabbath
The Passover was ordained as the memorial of God passing over Israel when He struck the Egyptians, preserving in remembrance how deliverance came through judgment when Egypt's firstborn were doomed and the destroying angel passed over Israel's dwellings on his fearful path. The Feast of Unleavened Bread commemorated eating unleavened bread in the hurried flight when the Egyptians, fearful of their stay, hastened Israel away with hastening hand. These were the answer Israel was to give when sons should ask what this service means and what it was designed to show. All the children of Israel did as commanded in keeping these observances.
The Passover and Unleavened Bread are two fit and plain yearly memorials God gave to keep fresh in thought the glad deliverance He wrought with a mighty hand in bringing Israel up from Egypt's land. The Passover is the sufficient, beautiful, and fitting memorial of that deliverance, plainly declared to be a memorial with its office described. Scripture does not allow two memorials of the same event, nor one memorial to commemorate two unlike events, so the Sabbath was not also made a memorial of that deliverance. There is no fitness in taking the Sabbath from its proper office as a memorial of creation and rest to connect it with the exodus.
The Sabbath is by contrast the memorial of the Creator's rest and was not instituted to commemorate the Exodus. The memorial of deliverance from bondage belongs to the Passover and not to the Sabbath. Yearly memorials of deliverance are distinct from the weekly Sabbath, for a weekly rest cannot fitly keep in memory a day that comes only once a year, and a rest cannot be a memorial of a rush.
Israel in Egypt still worshiped God and observed His ordinances, being ready and doing as commanded, including circumcision as required for eating the Passover. This proves they still remembered God's past dealings and had not forgotten His institutions. Therefore the Sabbath made known at Sinai was first given there and not merely recalled as a forgotten ordinance. Calling the Passover and its feast perpetual and everlasting, in words no stronger than to a thousand generations, does not mean unending obligation, for its period has expired just as have the Aaronic priesthood, circumcision, the shewbread, and other things called perpetual or everlasting.
Christ Foreshadowed by Passover
The slaying commanded and kept belonged to the ordinance of the paschal lamb slain on the fourteenth day of the first month, and the doing of all the children of Israel included that slaying. That slaying was a type that met its antitype in the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God, on that same day.
The blood marked on the doorposts shows how the people were spared, for the account of the plagues on Egypt and Israel's Passover deliverance teaches that God's people are spared through the blood of Christ, their Passover. Through that blood come pardon and the blotting out of sin.
The same directions for preparing and keeping the Passover were followed when Jesus and His disciples as consistent Israelites prepared and ate the Passover, including the slaying and eating of the paschal lamb at the Last Supper. The obedience required was full obedience, summed up as the absolute condition that nothing leavened or fermented was permitted at the sacred memorial feast, under the heaviest penalty known for using anything leavened. Eating implied both eating and drinking, so drink was optional in the wording, but on a seven-day feast drink was a necessity left to circumstances and common sense, with the one absolute condition that it could not be leavened. The Passover involved eating the paschal lamb with bitter herbs, and its instructions help explain why the day before the weekly Sabbath was called the preparation of the Passover, since preparations had to be made for eating the lamb. This supports placing the crucifixion before the Passover meal rather than on the fifteenth day after the meal had already been eaten.
After hundreds of years of slavery had unfitted Israel to comprehend God's great salvation and the character He required, He redeemed them from Egyptian bondage with a mighty hand and gave them the sanctuary with its various forms and rites as a great, multiple object-lesson comprehending the whole plan of salvation.
Type of Final Deliverance
The going out of Egypt toward Canaan is the type of the deliverance of God's people from the dark Egypt of this earth. The plagues visited upon Egypt were literal, and they are the type of the last plagues recorded in Revelation 16. The account of the plagues of Egypt in Exodus 7-12 shadows forth the seven last plagues and shows that those final plagues will be as real and literal as the Egyptian plagues were.
As the plagues of Egypt came just before the deliverance of Israel, so the seven last plagues will be poured out just before the final deliverance of the saints. The ten plagues that preceded Israel's deliverance provide the comparison for the seven final plagues. Those seven will fall on the world after the gospel work and the sealing are complete, during a time when forgiveness of sin will no longer be granted. As Israel remained in the land through the plagues on Egypt, so the righteous will remain on earth through the first six of the final plagues and be protected amid the calamities.
Lessons for God's People
The obedience reported in the verse belongs to the deliverance from Egypt that displayed divine wisdom, love, and power. That deliverance demonstrated the ability and right to rule, and with it the obligation of the delivered people to obey. After being brought out, they still had to be tested and tried to prove whether they would walk in the law.