When I See the Blood

One night, in a slave quarter in Egypt, every family killed a lamb at dusk, painted its blood on the doorframe with a bunch of hyssop, went inside, and did not come out until morning. Outside, at midnight, something went through the country. Every year since, at a table, a child has asked what it means, and the oldest answer in the Bible has been given. This is the night the church's whole vocabulary comes from: lamb, blood, door, passed over. It is worth knowing what happened in it.

A lamb for an house

Nine plagues had come and gone, and Pharaoh's heart was still hard. Then Moses told him the last one: "About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt: And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill" (Exodus 11:4-5). Throne to millstone. Nobody's house exempt by rank. And then the line that is the whole point: "that ye may know how that the LORD doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel" (11:7). A difference. But not the difference you would think. Israel's firstborn were not spared because they were Israel. Read what they had to do.

"In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house… Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year… and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening" (12:3-6). Four days they kept it in the house. A lamb in the house, with the children, from the tenth to the fourteenth, and then every family killed its own. Nobody killed it for you. And then: "they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it" (12:7).

When I see the blood

When I see the blood. Not when I see you. Not when I see how well you have kept the other nine plagues, or how Hebrew you are, or how frightened. The blood on the doorframe was the only thing that put a difference between one house and the next that night, and it was on the outside of the door, where the people inside could not see it and the One passing through could. They were told to eat "with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD's passover" (12:11). Dressed to leave. Eating a meal on your feet, inside a door marked with blood, waiting for midnight. And one more instruction, which is the one the whole story turns on: "none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning" (12:22). The blood was on the door. Stay behind the door.

Midnight

"And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon… And Pharaoh rose 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" (12:29-30). Not a house where there was not one dead. Read it slowly, because the Bible does not soften it and neither should we. Egypt had drowned Israel's sons in the river for eighty years, and this was the night the account came due, and it went to the throne and the dungeon alike. And in the slave quarter, behind the marked doors, every house had one dead too: a lamb. The difference was not that death had not come to those houses. It had come four hours earlier, at dusk, and been taken by a substitute.

Pharaoh, who had said "who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice," calls for Moses in the dark: "Rise up, and get you forth from among my people… and go, serve the LORD, as ye have said" (12:31). And they went, that night, with their shoes already on. "It is a night to be much observed unto the LORD" (12:42).

What mean ye by this service?

Before it even happened, God told them how to keep it. "This day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations" (12:14). And He wrote the child's question into the law: "when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses" (12:26-27). A meal, a lamb, and a question, every year, so that no generation would ever be more than one dinner away from the night it happened. Hebrews counts the first one as faith: "Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them" (Hebrews 11:28). Faith looked like a man with a bunch of hyssop, painting a doorframe, and going inside.

Where this lands

Fifteen hundred years of Passovers later, on the fourteenth day of the month, Jesus sat down with twelve men and said, "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer" (Luke 22:15). And in the middle of the meal, where the story of the lamb was supposed to be told, He took the bread and said, "This is my body which is given for you" (22:19), and the cup: "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (22:20). The next afternoon, while the lambs were being killed in the temple, He died; John notes the hour, "the preparation of the passover" (John 19:14), and the detail the soldiers did not know they were fulfilling: "A bone of him shall not be broken" (19:36), which was the rule for the Passover lamb.

Paul says it in five words: "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Corinthians 5:7). Peter: redeemed "with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:19). And in the last book, at the centre of heaven, John looks and sees "a Lamb as it had been slain" (Revelation 5:6). Justin, in the second century, said the doorposts were us: with His blood "they anoint their houses, i.e., themselves, who believe on Him." That is the whole of it. A lamb kept four days in the house until you knew it. A death that came to your door and was met by a substitute. Blood where the Judge could see it and you could not. And one instruction: stay inside, until the morning. The morning is coming. He passed through once at midnight. Behind the blood, He passes over.

Related: The Passover (the fathers, verbatim), The Lord's Table, The Atonement, and God Will Provide Himself a Lamb. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.