The common understanding of the term “passover,” in connection with the
Hebrew exodus from Egypt, is that it was, on the Lord’s part, a passing
by those homes where the doorways were blood-stained, without entering
them. Yet this meaning is not justified by the term itself, nor by the
significance of the primitive rite. Jehovah did not merely spare his
people when he visited judgment on the Egyptians. He covenanted anew
with them by passing over, or crossing over, the blood-stained threshold
into their homes, while his messenger of death went into the houses of
the Lord’s enemies and claimed the first-born as belonging to
Jehovah.[558]
This word _pesakh_, translated “passover,” is a peculiar one. Its
etymology and root meaning have been much in discussion. It is derived
from the root _pāsăkh_ “to cross over,” a meaning which is still
preserved in the Hebrew word _Tiphsakh_, the name of a city on the banks
of the Euphrates,[559] the Hebrew equivalent of the classical
Thapsacus.[560] _Tiphsakh_ means “crossing,” apparently so called from
the ford of the Euphrates at that place.
Later Jewish traditions and customs point to the meaning of the original
passover rite as a crossing over the threshold of the Hebrew homes by
Jehovah, and not of his passing by his people in order to their sparing.
A custom by which a Hebrew slave became one of the family in a Hebrew
household, through having his ear bored with an awl at the door-post of
the house, and thereby blood staining the doorway,[561] is connected
with the passover rite by the rabbis. “The Deity said: The door and the
side-posts were my witnesses in Egypt, in the hour when I passed-over
the lintel and the two side-posts, and I said that to Me the children of
Israel shall be slaves, and not slaves to slaves; I brought them out
from bondage to freedom; and this man who goeth and taketh a lord to
himself shall be bored through before these witnesses.”[562]
According to Jewish traditions, it was on a passover night when Jehovah
entered into a cross-over covenant with Abraham on the boundary of his
new possessions in Canaan.[563] It was on a passover night that Lot
welcomed the angel visitors to his home in Sodom.[564] It was at the
passover season that the Israelites crossed the threshold of their new
home in Canaan, when the walls of Jericho fell down, and the
blood-colored thread on the house of Rahab was a symbol of the covenant
of the Hebrew spies with her and her household.[565] The protection of
the Israelites against the Midianites,[566] and the Assyrians,[567] and
the Medes and the Persians,[568] and again the final overthrow of
Babylon,[569] all these events were said to have been at the passover
season.[570] These traditions would seem to show that the pass-over
covenant was deemed a cross-over covenant, and a covenant of welcome at
the family and the national threshold.
In the passover rite as observed by modern Jews, at a certain stage of
the feast the outer door is opened, and an extra cup and chair are
arranged at the table, in the hope that God’s messenger will cross the
threshold, and enter the home as a welcome guest.[571] All this points
to the meaning of “cross-over,” and not of “pass-by.”
In some parts of northern and eastern Europe there is a custom still
preserved among the Jews of jumping over a tub of water on passover
night, which is said to be symbolic of crossing the Red Sea, but which
shows that the passover feast was a feast of crossing over.[572]