The Passover
12
And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, 2 📚“This month is to be for you the beginning of months; it is to be the first month of the year for you. 3 📚Speak to the whole congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month each man among them is to take for himself a lamb for a father’s house, a lamb for each household. 4 And if the household is too small for a lamb, let him and his neighbour nearest to his house take it according to the number of persons there are. Make your estimate for the lamb in accordance with what each person eats. 5 📚Your lamb is to be without blemish, a male of the first year. You are to take it from the sheep, or from the goats,6 📚and you are to keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill them in the evening.
7 📚And they are to take some of the blood, and put it on both side posts and on the upper beam of the door of the houses where they are going to eat it.
12:7 Verses 22,23. The blood had to be applied to each house. Otherwise it accomplished nothing. Christ’s atoning blood saves all those for whom He died, namely, all those who believe and personally trust Him for salvation. (See John 10:11).⚜
8 📚And that very night they are to eat the meat roasted with fire, and they are to eat it with bread made without yeast 📖 and with bitter herbs.
12:8 Matt 26:26; John 6:51-58, 63; 1 Cor 5:7. Eating here signifies a spiritual reality. The people of Israel literally ate the lamb. Believers in Christ spiritually partake of Christ. That is, they believe His flesh and blood were sacrificed for them on the cross, they receive Him into their hearts by faith, they meditate on His person and work for them. In this way He becomes their food. ⚜
9 📚Do not eat any of it raw, or even boiled in water, but roasted with fire, its head with its legs, and with its inner parts.
12:9 The lamb was not to be divided (v 46; John 19:33, 36). Fire signifies the holiness of God which consumes the offering. The offering was accepted in the place of sinners. Water could not be used, for, it would have lessened the power of the fire. At Calvary the Lord Jesus experienced the full power of God’s fiery wrath against sin.⚜
10 📚And you are to let none of it remain until morning, and you are to burn in the fire what does remain of it until morning.
11 📚And this is how you are to eat it: with your waist bound, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you are to eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover.
12:11 They were to be ready for travel to the land of Canaan. The believer now, having partaken of the Lamb of God, should always be ready for his pilgrim journey here, and ready to move on to the next world (Luke 12:35-40).⚜
12 📚“For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and animal. And I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.
12:12 God was judging not only the Egyptians but their gods as well. God is against the gods. Egypt had gods representing the air, the land, various animals, the Nile river, the sun, etc. God had already showed He was the absolute master of the Nile (Ex 7:20-21), the land (Ex 8:16-17), the animal kingdom (Ex 9:2, 6), the air (Ex 9:8-9, 22-24), and the sun (Ex 10:21-22). Now He shows that life and death are in His hands, and that no “god” has anything to do with it. Practically every Egyptian god was represented by some beast or other. The true God shows their powerlessness by slaying the firstborn of every beast as well as that of every man. Vain and foolish had been the worship of those gods, gods so powerless to help. Compare Ps 115:3-8.⚜
13 📚And the blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague will not be on you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.
12:13 The blood was their one and only protection from God’s wrath and judgment. So now the blood of Christ cleanses the believer from all sin and thus protects him from God’s coming judgment on sinners (Rom 3:23-26; Heb 9:14, 28; 1 Pet 1:19; 1 John 1:7; Rev 1:5). And this is the only way of protection. Note on the Passover at Lev 23:5.⚜
14 📚“So this day shall be to you a memorial, and you are to keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations. You are to keep it as a feast by ordinance for all time. 15 📚For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the very first day you are to put away yeast from your houses, for whoever eats bread made with yeast from the first day until the seventh day, that person is to be cut off from Israel.
16 📚And on the first day you are to have a holy convocation, and on the seventh day you are to have another holy convocation. On those days no kind of work is to be done, except what must be eaten by everyone; that alone may be prepared by you.
17 📚“And you are to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you are to observe this day throughout your generations by an ordinance forever.
12:17 Verse 41.⚜
18 📚On the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you are to eat bread made without yeast, until the evening of the twenty-first day of the month. 19 📚For seven days there is to be no yeast found in your houses, for whoever eats anything that is made with yeast, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a foreigner, or someone born in the land. 20 You must not eat anything made with yeast. You are to eat bread made without yeast in all your dwelling places”.
21 📚Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go out and take a lamb for yourselves on behalf of your families, and kill the Passover. 22 📚And you are to take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and put the blood that is in the basin on the upper beam of the door and the two side posts. And none of you is to go out the door of his house until morning. 23 📚For the LORD will go through the land to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the upper beam and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you.
12:23 The destroyer was the angel God sent to execute judgment (v 12).⚜
24 📚“And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for yourselves and for your sons forever. 25 📚And it is to come about that when you have come to the land which the LORD will give you as he has promised, you must keep this ceremony. 26 📚And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this ceremony?’
27 📚then you must say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Passover of the LORD, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians, and spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed their heads and worshipped.
12:27 Verses 11,12,23.⚜
28 And the children of Israel went and did so; they did just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron.
12:28 Their faith in God’s word caused them to apply the blood to the doorposts (Heb 11:28). So now faith will cause us to apply the truth of Christ’s sacrifice to ourselves.⚜
29 📚And it came about at midnight that the LORD struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 📚And Pharaoh got up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.
Israel leaves Egypt
31 📚And during the night he called for Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Get out from the midst of my people, both you and the children of Israel, and go, serve the LORD, as you have said. 32 📚Take your flocks and your herds also, as you have said, and be gone! And bless me also”.
12:31,32 Ex 11:1. This was the closest Pharaoh ever came to humbling himself and repenting, but it was short-lived and utterly self-centered.⚜
33 📚And the Egyptians urged the people, to get them out of the land in a hurry, for they said, “We are all dead men”. 34 📚And the people took their dough before yeast was put in it, and carried their kneading bowls on their shoulders, wrapped up in their clothes. 35 📚And the children of Israel did what Moses had said; they asked the Egyptians for silver ornaments and gold ornaments and clothing. 36 📚And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they requested. And in this way they plundered the Egyptians.
37 📚And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children. 38 📚And a mixed multitude also went up with them, and flocks, and herds, a great amount of livestock.
12:37,38 A total probably not less than 20 lakhs (2,000,000). Compare Gen 46:27.⚜
12:1-3 This is one of the key chapters of the Old Testament. In it God shows His people that their redemption comes only by blood sacrifice. So important was this time in Israel that they started dating their year from this month. This Hebrew month (based on the movement of the moon) had two names – Abib and Nisan – and fell sometime during our months of March and April. It was an entirely new beginning for the people of Israel. This whole chapter is highly symbolic. See also Lev 23:5. The sacrificial lamb pointed forward in time to the “Lamb of God” (John 1:29) whom the disciple and apostle John identifies as Jesus Christ who sacrificed Himself and shed His blood to redeem men - (John 1:29, 36; Matt 26:28; Eph 1:7; Heb 9:22; Rev 5:9, 12).⚜
40 📚Now the length of time the children of Israel stayed in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. 41 📚And it came about at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, on the very day it came about, that all the armies of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt. 42 📚It is a night to be much observed for the LORD for bringing them out of the land of Egypt. This is the LORD’s night, to be observed by all the children of Israel throughout their generations.
Passover instructions
43 📚And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover: No foreigner is to eat of it,
12:43 No foreigner, that is, no one who was not in covenant relationship with the Lord, no one who had not received the covenant sign of circumcision, was to partake (v 48).⚜
44 📚but every man’s slave who is bought with money is to eat of it, after you have circumcised him. 45 📚A foreigner or a hired servant is not to eat of it.
46 📚“It must be eaten in the same house; you are not to carry any of the meat out of the house. And you must not break a bone of it. 47 📚All the congregation of Israel shall celebrate it.
48 📚“And when a foreigner stays among you, and wants to keep the LORD’s Passover, all the males in his household must be circumcised, and then let him come near and celebrate it. Then he will be like one who is born in the land, but no uncircumcised person is to eat of it. 49 📚There is to be one law for him who is native born and for the foreigner who is staying among you”.
50 📚All the children of Israel did this; they did just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron. 51 📚And it came about on that very day that the LORD brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their armies.