In the hurry and agitation of that eventful day, it must have seemed
strange to the excited people that they should be called upon to
observe such a service. But its institution at that crisis is in
accordance with the whole tone of the story of the Exodus, in which man
is nothing and God all. Surely, never was national deliverance effected
so absolutely without effort or blow struck. If we try to realise the
state of mind of the Israelites on that night, we shall feel how
significant of the true nature of their deliverance this summons to an
act of worship, in the midst of their hurry, must have been.
The domestic character of the rite is its first marked feature. Of
course, there were neither temple nor priests then; but that does not
wholly account for the provision that every household, unless too few
in number to consume a whole lamb, should have its own sacrifice, slain
by its head. The first purpose of the rite, to provide for the safety
of each house by the sprinkled blood, partly explains it; but the
deepest reason is, no doubt, the witness which was thereby borne to the
universal priesthood of the nation. The patriarchal order made each man
the priest of his house. This rite, which lay at the foundation of
Israel's nationality, proclaimed that a restricted priestly class was a
later expedient. The primitive formation crops out here, as witness
that, even where hid beneath later deposits, it underlies them all.
We have called the Passover a sacrifice. That has been disputed, but
unreasonably. No doubt, it was a peculiar kind of sacrifice, unlike
those of the later ritual in many respects, and scarcely capable of
being classified among them. But it is important to keep its strictly
sacrificial character in view; for it is essential to its meaning and
to its typical aspect. The proofs of its sacrificial nature are
abundant. The instructions as to the selection of the lamb; the method
of disposing of the blood, which was sprinkled with hyssop--a
peculiarly sacrificial usage; the treatment of the remainder after the
feast; the very feast itself,--all testify that it was a sacrifice in
the most accurate use of the word. The designation of it as 'a passover
to the Lord,' and in set terms as a 'sacrifice,' in verse 27 and
elsewhere, to say nothing of its later form when it became a regular
Temple sacrifice, or of Paul's distinct language in 1 Corinthians v. 7,
or of Peter's quotation of the very words of verse 5, applied to
Christ, 'a lamb without blemish,' all point in the same direction.
But if a sacrifice, what kind of sacrifice was it? Clearly, the first
purpose was that the blood might be sprinkled on the door-posts and
lintels, and so the house be safe when the destroying angel passed
through the land. Such is the explanation given in verse 13, which is
the divine declaration of its meaning. This is the centre of the rite;
from it the name was derived. Whether readers accept the doctrines of
substitution and expiation or not, it ought to be impossible for an
honest reader of these verses to deny that these doctrines or thoughts
are there. They may be only the barbarous notions of a half-savage age
and people. But, whatever they are, there they are. The lamb without
blemish carefully chosen and kept for four days, till it had become as
it were part of the household, and then solemnly slain by the head of
the family, was their representative. When they sprinkled its blood on
the posts, they confessed that they stood in peril of the destroying
angel by reason of their impurity, and they presented the blood as
their expiation. In so far, their act was an act of confession,
deprecation, and faith. It accepted the divinely appointed means of
safety. The consequence was exemption from the fatal stroke, which fell
on all homes from the palace to the slaves' hovel, where that red
streak was not found. If any son of Abraham had despised the provision
for safety, he would have been partaker of the plague.
All this refers only to exemption from outward punishment, and we are
not obliged to attribute to these terrified bondmen any higher
thoughts. But clearly their obedience to the command implied a measure
of belief in the divine voice; and the command embodied, though in
application to a transient judgment, the broad principles of
sacrificial substitution, of expiation by blood, and of safety by the
individual application of that shed blood.
In other words, the Passover is a Gospel before the Gospel. We are
sometimes told that in its sacrificial ideas Christianity is still
dressing itself in 'Hebrew old clothes.' We believe, on the contrary,
that the whole sacrificial system of Judaism had for its highest
purpose to shadow forth the coming redemption. Christ is not spoken of
as 'our Passover,' because the Mosaic ritual had happened to have that
ceremonial; but the Mosaic ritual had that ceremonial mainly because
Christ is our Passover, and, by His blood shed on the Cross and
sprinkled on our consciences, does in spiritual reality that which the
Jewish Passover only did in outward form. All other questions about the
Old Testament, however interesting and hotly contested, are of
secondary importance compared with this. Is its chief purpose to
prophesy of Christ, His atoning death, His kingdom and church, or is it
not? The New Testament has no doubt of the answer. The Evangelist John
finds in the singular swiftness of our Lord's death, which secured the
exemption of His sacred body from the violence inflicted on His
fellow-sufferers, a fulfilment of the paschal injunction that not a
bone should be broken; and so, by one passing allusion, shows that he
recognised Christ as the true Passover. John the Baptist's rapturous
exclamation, 'Behold the Lamb of God!' blends allusions to the
Passover, the daily sacrifice, and Isaiah's great prophecy. The day of
the Crucifixion, regarded as fixed by divine Providence, may be taken
as God's own finger pointing to the Lamb whom He has provided. Paul's
language already referred to attests the same truth. And even the last
lofty visions of the Apocalypse, where the old man in Patmos so
touchingly recurs to the earliest words which brought him to Jesus,
echo the same conviction, and disclose, amidst the glories of the
throne, 'a Lamb as it had been slain.'