Passover: The Night of the Firstborn
Feasts of Israel Series: Part 7
Throughout Egypt that Passover evening, the only firstborn males who survived were those who sheltered behind a blood-spattered door. Because they were spared from death, so were their families.
What was it about firstborns that made them so important? How could saving them save everyone in the household?
The Importance of the Firstborn
In Old Testament times, the firstborn traditionally inherited the birthright. This meant he’d become the head of the family and would have authority over the family estate.[1] In essence, the firstborn represented the future of the entire family. If he were brought low, so would the whole household.
Now, here’s a funny thing. God told Pharaoh, “Israel is My son, My firstborn” (Exodus 4:22). How can an entire nation be considered a single son except that God sees Israel as a nation as only the first of the human souls he plans on harvesting from the earth. “The earth is the LORD’s, and all its fullness,
The world and those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1). As the “owner” of the field or the vineyard in Jesus’s parables, God was calling his accounts due.
On the 14th day of the 1st month of Israel’s year, he would gather in something of a “tithe” of his harvest–the firstborn of Egypt and Israel. Those who recognized him as King of the Universe could redeem their sons with the life of a blemish-free lamb.
The lamb’s blood on their doorposts proved a firstborn’s life was already paid for, so the Destroyer (the “Debt Collector”) would pass over their house and move on to the next. The firstborn had been taken, though it was a lamb instead of a man.[2]
The Role of the Firstborn Expands
The process was personal in the first Passover. Each family had to choose whether they’d painted their doorposts with blood. In later celebrations, when they took their lambs to the tabernacle (and later the temple) to slay them, priests collected the blood to splash it in front of the holy place. The personal became national, as God’s doorposts were decked in crimson. The lamb’s blood went from saving individual families to sheltering the household of a nation.
With Jesus as God’s ultimate Lamb, the promise of Passover expanded. The bronze altar eventually disappeared, and with it a legitimate place to slay a four-legged lamb and pour out its blood. What doorposts could be painted now?
The temple may be gone, but Hebrews 9 speaks of a greater and more permanent dwelling place in the heavenlies. It was to this house that Jesus came to sprinkle his own blood in its doorway. Now anyone who calls on his name can take shelter behind the blood–redeemed by the life of a Lamb, yet brought into the family of God.
In truth, the first Passover was only the prequel to God’s harvest of souls. Israel would be saved as God’s firstborn son, but the rest of humanity was yet to come in. It was because God so loved the world, not just Israel, that He sent Jesus to save us. (John 3:16–17)
[1] https://www.gotquestions.org/blessing-birthright.html
[2] Exodus 12:15 and Kevin J. Conner, The Feasts of Israel (Portland: City Christian Publishing, 1980), 17.
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You did it again. Such a rich teaching and deeper understanding of the purpose of Passover. Thanks.
So glad this blessed you (and I sure appreciated your input beforehand). Thanks, JoAnne.