Commentary on Exodus 12:1-4 [5-10] 11-14

Today in the United States and elsewhere, fear, cruelty, and violence are breaking forcefully into public awareness, as in the brutal treatment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of those perceived as non-citizens. God’s instructions establishing the Passover festival in Exodus 12:1–14 interrupt a narrative about an ancient society built on exploitation and tyranny that similarly was spinning into chaos and death. 

Before the tragic 10th plague resulting from Pharaoh’s hardened heart, our attention abruptly turns to the institution of an annual memorial. Passover connects every succeeding generation to the central exodus story of deliverance and liberation. God intervenes to protect the Israelites’ firstborn sons and to free this beloved people from Egyptian bondage. This pivotal moment of redemption remains so central for Jewish identity that more than 3,000 years later, it continues to be celebrated each spring at the beginning of the liturgical year. 

The Passover sacrifice in Exodus 12:1–14 draws all members of the covenant community together in an egalitarian remembrance, as families of all sizes are included and meat is shared. The lamb or kid is slaughtered for feasting on this special occasion with none left over, and the blood of the animal serves as a protective sign on the lintels of the Israelites’ homes to ward off the destroyer (verse 23). The death of the Passover sacrifice means life for all inside, particularly for firstborn sons. 

The status of firstborn males as belonging to God is treated again in chapter 13, with provisions to redeem firstborn sons through sacrificing an animal. These theological concepts of life-giving blood and redemption through substitutionary death offer models for understanding the significance of Jesus’s death on the cross and the New Covenant in his blood (1 Corinthians 11:26).

Throughout the rest of Egypt, a “cry” reverberates from every home lamenting the deaths of firstborn males. This excruciating moment widens the suffering evident from the beginning of Exodus, where a new Pharaoh who did not know Joseph afflicted the Israelites with harsh labor and ordered the killing of all newborn males—not limited to firstborns. 

If the widespread violence shadowing the exodus story is not immediately evident, it is because the Bible focuses on heroic resistance to state-sponsored terror. Ordinary women—the midwives Shiphrah and Puah, Moses’s mother Jochebed and sister Miriam, and Pharaoh’s own daughter—refuse to accommodate Pharaoh’s genocidal edicts. 

The text also warns against resistance to cruelty that incites further violence, as when Moses intervenes to stop a beating and then must flee into exile after killing an Egyptian. 

Each plague intensifies the pressure on Pharaoh to act justly, but only the final plague breaks through his hardened heart when he himself feels the anguish of grief. At that point, Pharaoh not only lets the Hebrews go but expels them in haste and even asks for a blessing from their God (verse 32). This departure begins the Israelites’ perilous journey from Egypt to Sinai for the covenant gift of God’s revelation through Moses.

Significantly, the Egyptians and even Pharaoh himself are not demonized as pure evil in this narrative. Their humanity shows in their expressing deep pain at the loss of their sons, felt at all levels of society. Egyptian neighbors are viewed as sympathetic to the Israelites, speeding them on their way and giving them silver, gold, and clothing requested for their journey (verses 35–36). A mixed multitude (verse 38) of other ethnic groups expresses solidarity by joining the Israelites on their way toward freedom. Ultimately, the conflict is not between ethnic groups but expresses God’s judgment on the gods of Egypt (verse 12), who undergird the status quo of oppression and violence rather than love and compassion.

Reading about Passover in Exodus 12:1–14 on Maundy Thursday may be disorienting, since Passover is not the setting of the disciples’ last gathering in the Gospel of John. According to John’s chronology, Jesus is crucified on the day of preparation immediately before Passover, when the Passover lambs were sacrificed (John 19:14). John’s gospel presents Jesus as “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29; see also 1 Corinthians 5:7). For John, the detail that Jesus’s bones were not broken on the cross (John 19:33) confirms this association, since the Passover lamb was to have no broken bones (John 19:36; see also Exodus 12:46).

The powerful christological symbolism within the church during Holy Week of Jesus as the Passover lamb stands alongside the faithful Passover observance in Jewish communities all over the world at around the same time each spring. Practices associated with Passover have continued to evolve over the centuries. Even within the Bible the family context described in Exodus 12 shifts to a pilgrimage festival in Jerusalem, where Passover lambs were sacrificed in the Temple. This was the practice still in Jesus’s day. The Roman army’s destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. put an end to sacrifice in the Temple and brought a return to home observances. 

Today the holiday memorializing the exodus from Egypt involves a Seder or ritual order of symbolic foods, including unleavened bread and bitter herbs, and of a recounting of the Passover story as set forth in the liturgical book, the Haggadah (literally meaning the “retelling”). With the Temple no longer standing, lamb is generally not served in Jewish communities living within Christian lands. Out of empathy for the Egyptians’ grief, participants diminish their joy by removing drops of sanctified wine from their cups. 

Jews and Christians draw upon our common scriptural heritage in distinctive and life-giving ways, as the passage about the Passover celebration in Exodus 12 shows. Brought by God’s steadfast love into enduring covenantal communities, Christians and Jews learn about God’s character from the story of the exodus. We know that our God is responsive to suffering, passionate for liberation, and committed to bringing life and joy out of pain and humiliation. Today more than ever, as fear, cruelty, and violence surround us, we are called to believe and to act in the assurance that the God who led the exodus of Israel from Egypt has the final word.