I was in my bedroom reading through Exodus 12. I don’t recall if I was preparing to lead the Lord’s Supper or just reading that passage for some other reason. In any case, I came to verse 23: “For Yahweh will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, Yahweh will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.” It was particularly the words “Yahweh will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you” that caught my attention.
Up to that moment, I had pictured two aspects of that deadly evening in specific ways. However, as I read verse 23 this time, considering it more slowly and carefully, the scene in my mind changed in relationship to these two particulars.
Yahweh’s judgment through angels
The first aspect relates to how Yahweh was going to “strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:12; cf. 11:4, 12:13, 23, 29; 13:15). Previously, I thought that God was the immediate agent of the death of firstborns in Egypt. He was somehow going to travel throughout the land and directly kill them himself without the use of any secondary causes.
But this time I noticed that the Lord was going to do so indirectly, through a mediating agent — a personal being referred to as “the destroyer.” In Psalm 78, Asaph recounts how Yahweh redeemed Israel through powerful acts against the Egyptians. When he gets to the last judgments, including the killing of the firstborn, he says God “let loose on them his burning anger, wrath, indignation, and distress, a company of destroying angels” (Psalm 78:49-51; emphasis mine).
There are a few other times, recorded in the Old Testament, where the Lord employed angels to execute his judgment: the entire cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19); 70,000 Israelite men (2 Samuel 24); and 185,000 Assyrian soldiers (2 Kings 19). Likewise, in Exodus 12, Yahweh utilized an angelic being as the instrument of destruction to bring death to the firstborns in Egypt.
Yahweh guards the doorways
The second aspect concerns exactly what God was going to do regarding the doorways of certain Hebrew homes. Initially, I understood the Lord passing through Goshen and, if he saw a Hebrew household with blood on the doorframe, he would skip over that house and not enter to kill the firstborn. Alternatively, if he came to a Hebrew home without blood on the doorway, he would enter to destroy it. In no way desiring to be irreverent, I envisioned it somewhat like the child’s game, “Duck, duck, goose.” Yahweh would travel down the streets of Goshen, passing by the homes with blood but stopping to enter into the homes without it.
However, this time I pictured God’s activity differently. Rather than skipping over Hebrew homes with blood on the lintels and doorposts, he would station himself like a sentinel at the doorframes to actively guard the household in order to keep the destroying angel from entering to kill the firstborn. What led me to this was the way Moses said, “Yahweh will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.” The Lord was not going to merely avoid the Hebrew homes marked with the blood of the lamb. Nor was he going to direct the destroying angel to pass by or skip over such households. Instead, he was going to actively stand guard at the entranceway and not permit the deadly messenger to go into the Hebrew homes, like a shield protecting the family from the destructive threat.
Testing the idea
This was a new way of thinking about God’s actions here. I didn’t recall ever hearing it explained this way. So I dug deeper to test its validity. The first step was to see if the Hebrew verb pasach (translated as “pass over” in Exodus 12:13) could legitimately mean something like guarding, shielding, or protecting.
It turns out this word is used in this very way in Isaiah 31:5, which is interesting given the historical and literary context in which it occurs. In Isaiah 31:1-3, Yahweh is rebuking the Israelites for trusting in Egyptian military strength to protect and deliver them from the coming destruction through the Assyrians. A chapter earlier, he accused them of “[taking] refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and [seeking] shelter in the shadow of Egypt” (Isaiah 30:2) rather than looking to God to guard them from the impending catastrophe.
Despite this, the Lord mercifully promised that he himself would “come down to fight” for his people in Jerusalem (Isaiah 31:4). And then in verse 5 he gave a beautiful metaphor comparing his activity to a mother bird brooding over its young: “Like birds hovering, so Yahweh of armies will protect Jerusalem; he will protect and deliver it; he will spare and rescue it.” The word translated “spare” is pasach. It is part of a group of synonyms that Isaiah piled up in a parallel way to describe how God would protect Jerusalem and keep the Assyrians from destroying his people.
The Israelites were seeking shelter in the shadow of the Egyptians, but it would be the Lord’s wings that would guard them from death. I believe Isaiah intentionally used the word pasach to prompt the people of Yahweh to recall the first Passover of Exodus 12, when God similarly stationed himself at the entrances of the Hebrew homes as an impenetrable barrier, hovering over their doors and shielding them from the angel of death.
In light of this, we should think and talk about the Lord’s activity in Exodus 12 more as a “cover-over” rather than a “pass-over.”1 It may even be appropriate and helpful to refer to it as “the Feast of Protection” instead of “the Feast of Passover.” Considering what Moses says in verse 23 and its usage in Isaiah 31, covering and protection are not only legitimate ways to translate pasach but superior ways to render it. They better capture how God was actively standing guard at the doorways of the Israelites to shelter them from the coming destruction.
Christ our Cover-over lamb
Earlier in Exodus 12, Yahweh instructed the people of Israel to take a male unblemished lamb, kill it, and then apply some of its blood on the doorframe of their houses (12:3-7). He then promised, “When I see the blood, I will [cover-over] you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt” (12:13). The only doors that the Lord covered that night were the ones that had already been covered with the blood of a lamb. God was providing a substitute to die in place of the Israelite firstborns and to redeem their lives. All the Hebrews needed to do was exercise faith that obeyed his voice, trusted his promise, and applied his means of protection from the coming judgment.
When we come to the New Testament, the prophetic and apostolic voices speak with unity concerning Jesus’ connection with the Exodus event and feast. When pointing to Jesus, John the Baptizer told his disciples to “Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Paul refers to Christ as “our Passover [cover-over] lamb” who “has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). And Peter says that believers have been “ransomed . . . with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19).
Believers are those who by faith apply the blood of Jesus, as it were, to their personal doorposts. Christ offered his own body to God as the final and perfect substitutionary sacrifice to take away sins. His death covers over believers and protects us from the coming judgment of God upon the whole earth. Jesus is the one who “rescues us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10).
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36).
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1Meredith Kline uses this phrase in his article “The Feast of Cover-Over.” JETS 37/4 (December 1994) 497-510.