Passover

The First Passover in Egypt

The Passover was instituted on the night of Israel's final, decisive plague in Egypt. God instructed Moses and Aaron that each household was to take a year-old male lamb without defect, keep it until the fourteenth day of the month, then kill it at twilight and put some of its blood on the two doorposts and lintel of the house (Exodus 12:1-7). The meat was to be roasted with fire and eaten that same night with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, the household dressed and ready to travel — 'in haste,' since deliverance was coming immediately (Exodus 12:8-11).

That night the LORD passed through Egypt and struck down every firstborn, from Pharaoh's own son to the firstborn of livestock — judgment on 'all the gods of Egypt' (Exodus 12:12). But wherever he saw the blood on the doorframe, he passed over that house and no plague touched it (Exodus 12:13). This is the origin of the feast's name: God himself, not the Israelites' own merit, made the distinction between judgment and deliverance, and the sign of that deliverance was the blood of a substitute already shed.

God commanded that the day be kept as a permanent memorial, 'a feast to the LORD... throughout your generations... by an ordinance forever' (Exodus 12:14, 17), and it became the first of Israel's great annual pilgrimage feasts, still combined in Jewish practice with the week-long Feast of Unleavened Bread that followed immediately after it.

Observance Through the Old Testament

Passover recurs across Israel's history as a marker of covenant faithfulness (or its absence). Israel kept it at Sinai a year after the Exodus (Numbers 9:1-5), and again upon first entering the Promised Land at Gilgal, where the manna stopped the very next day (Joshua 5:10-12) — the wilderness provision ending exactly as the land's own produce began. Centuries later, King Hezekiah's Passover (2 Chronicles 30) and King Josiah's Passover (2 Kings 23:21-23; 2 Chronicles 35:1-19) both mark major religious reforms, each explicitly noted as unlike anything kept 'since the days of Samuel' or 'since the days of the judges' — a sign of how far Israel's worship had drifted, and how central Passover was meant to remain to national identity.

Fulfillment in Jesus Christ

The Gospels place Jesus's death at Passover deliberately. His final meal with his disciples was itself a Passover meal (Luke 22:7-15), during which he took the bread and cup and reinterpreted them around his own body and blood, given 'for you' — instituting what the church now keeps as the Lord's Supper directly out of the Passover meal's own elements (Luke 22:19-20). John's Gospel underscores the connection further: Jesus is crucified on the very day the Passover lambs were being slaughtered for that evening's meal, and John notes that none of his bones were broken (John 19:31-36) — fulfilling the instruction that the Passover lamb's bones must not be broken (Exodus 12:46). John the Baptist had already pointed toward this at the very start of Jesus's ministry, calling him 'the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world' (John 1:29).

Paul makes the identification explicit: 'Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place' (1 Corinthians 5:7). Just as the blood of the Passover lamb turned aside God's judgment from Israel's households, the New Testament presents Christ's shed blood as turning aside God's judgment from all who trust him — the true and final Passover Lamb, of whom every Passover lamb since Egypt was a foreshadowing.

Scripture references

• Exodus 12:1-14 — The first Passover instituted in Egypt
• Exodus 12:21-27 — Moses instructs the elders; the meaning explained to future generations
• Joshua 5:10-12 — First Passover kept in the Promised Land
• 2 Chronicles 30 — Hezekiah's Passover reform
• Luke 22:7-20 — The Last Supper as a Passover meal; the Lord's Supper instituted
• John 19:31-36 — Jesus's bones unbroken, fulfilling the Passover lamb's pattern
• 1 Corinthians 5:7 — "Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place"

Further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Passover
• Got Questions: What is the meaning of Passover?