Passover (pesach or חַג הַפֶּסַח) begins this Monday, April 22 and runs until Tuesday, April 30th. The word “pesach” means literrally to “skip,” “pass over” or “omit.” Passover lasts for seven days (eight in certain circumstances.) The length of Passover also has a certain significance. The children of Israel left their ghetto in Goshen the first day of the Passover, and arrived at the Red Sea on the seventh day, when the sea parted for Moses and Egypt was just a bad memory in the rear view mirror for the Jewish nation.

Recap

Centuries BCE, Joseph, one of the patriachs of Israel, was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. He wound up in Egypt where he had the precise abilities that Pharaoh needed to help the people of Egypt survive a world-wide famine. As a reward, Joseph was permitted to invite his family to move to Egypt and escape the famine which they did. However, generations later as more and more Egyptians were born who never heard of Joseph and Pharaoh’s gratitude, the Jews became slaves and forced to build the pyramids and/or other public works. After four centuries of mistreatment, the Jews wanted to leave and return to their home in the Holy Land. God raised up a leader (two leaders actually): Moses and Aaron. They were instructed to report to the incumbent Pharaoh and demand that the Jews be set free. However, Pharaoh, traditionally thought to be Ramesses II refused to do so, likely because the Jews were a source of free labor and he may have resented the chutzpah of Moses.

We know that as parents of disobedient children, we want to apply the minimum amount of correction needed to change a wayward child’s behavior. So it was with God. The Egyptians were following a narcissistic leader who would not admit he might be ever be wrong and who would not listen to reason. You could not believe a word that came out of his mouth. So, even given ample chances to let the children of Israel go, he refused and Egypt and its livestock were visited in turn by the water in the country turning to blood, infestations of frogs, lice, flies, pestilence, boils, storms of hail mixed with fire, locusts, three days of darkness, and then, as a last resort, the death of the first born in Egypt, man or mouse.

There is an ancient Egyptian papyrus that exists from that period called the Ipuwer Papyrus which describes many of the same calamities that the seventh and eighth chapters of Exodus (ff.) describe, namely:

“There is blood everywhere. . .Lo, the river is blood” (p. 151.)  Near this passage the papyrus is an entry which says: “Lo, trees are felled, branches stripped” (p. 151.). Elsewhere, “Groaning is throughout the land, mingled with laments.” (p. 152.); “Lo, many dead are buried in the river, the stream is the grave, the tomb because stream” (p.151) and “He who puts his brother in the ground is everywhere” (p. 152.) There are robust discussions between archeologists who believe these comments might reference the plagues of Egypt and those archeologists who don’t even believe the Jews were ever in Egypt.  Indeed, even today we have people who discount the moon landings and others who deny the Holocaust.  The Egyptians, themselves, back then were notorious to omit information from the historical record that reflected badly on them, so they don’t make things particularly easy to confirm today.

When Moses and Aaron reported to Pharaoh that God’s patience had run out and the next plague would be the death of the firstborn, they warned that this curse ran

from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. (Exodus 11:6.)

As Moses audience with Ramesses concluded, Moses passed the instructions of God to his people:

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt,  “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.  If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs.  Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.

“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 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. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.“

Exodus 12:1-13

Note that there is nothing in this passage that specifically condemns the Egyptians to death or promises life to every Jew. The criteria for whether one family would be spared or not depended on whether they followed the instructions of God. If the door frame of a house was marked, then the Angel of Death was instructed to not molest the people within. Were any Egyptians spared at all? Presumably, though Scripture is silent here as far as I recall. Some ordinary Egyptians who may have forged close relations with spcific Jews may have been persuaded to mark their doors as God commanded and they lived and prospered. And, some unbelieving Jews may have dismissed this whole affair as superstition or a nonsense and thus perished.

Interestingly, as the Jews painted the top (lintel) of their door frame and the side posts as well, they were describing three points of the cross (head and left and right sides.) Catholic readers will easily recognize this, because they cross themselves touching their forehead, their sternum and left and right breast.

We don’t need the Bible to tell us that the world is spinning out of control. Iran is going nuclear, even as it threatens American forces in the Gulf. North Korea already is way beyond this. The clock on the last hours of Taiwanese independence is winding down. Europe is slowly but steadily preparing for another war, this time with Russia. We may in the next few years face death and destruction across our country and elsewhere as well on a scale we never thought possible or at least more than we thought we’d ever see.

Or, perhaps not! Who knows?

Yet, we will all die sooner or later, and our future in the next life may well depend on what we do today. The Egyptians believed that they needed certain goods or provisions to tide them over, and the Pharaohs were entombed with royal barges, chariots, weapons and so forth. Pharaoh’s trust in these trappings was misplaced. Our fate in the world to come depends not on trusting whatever material goods that we’ve accrued in this life, but on Whom we place our trust in, and in whether we, ourselves, appropriate the marks of the Cross on the door to our heart even as the children of Israel availed themselves of the blood of a lamb in their circumstances. The blessings that God promised Abraham and his children can be yours as well if you heed the promises that God has made to all who believe in His Son.