Commentary on Exodus 12:1-14

Dennis Olson
The Past Becomes Present: The Ritual of Passover
In preparation for preaching on this Sunday's text, it would be helpful to read the larger
context of chapters 11-13 in Exodus. Notice how the chapters bounce back and forth
between recounting the story of a past event, on the one hand, and providing a set of
instructions for an ongoing annual ritual, on the other. Narrative and ritual interpret one
another; you cannot understand one without the other.

The central purpose of the Passover ritual meal is in many ways the central purpose of all
ritual and worship in the biblical tradition. The Passover involves the ritualized
proclamation and passing on of the past core stories and traditions to a new set of eyes, ears
and mouths, whether a new generation of children (Exodus 12:26), or the alien or stranger
in your midst (Exodus 12:48). The ritualized meal and the words surrounding it witness to
the living God in such a way that a new generation comes to "own" those central stories
and traditions as their own, thereby coming to know God more truly and love God more
deeply. In the rich context of a community of faith and all its practices, "their" story
becomes "our" story. "Their" God becomes "our" God. Who are we? Tell a story and eat a
meal!

This past story of being freed from slavery to a powerful empire becomes an enduring
paradigm, a template that Israel can lay alongside its experience in any generation and find
parallels, analogues and meanings. Through the Passover ritual, liberation from
contemporary Pharaohs and Egypt become actualized over and over again each year in a
new "present" through a ritual meal. Passover becomes "a day of remembrance...throughout
your generations" (Exodus 12:14). In traditional Jewish celebrations, the Passover meal
features children asking questions of their parents about the meaning of the meal and its
many foods, each with their own significance and relationship to the biblical story of the
tenth plague and Israel's deliverance. The primary audience is children.

Passover and the Lord's Supper

The Passover meal in Exodus 12:1-14 continues to this day as a central festival for the
Jewish tradition. The meal, however, also has meaning for Christians as background and

resource for the Christian ritual meal of Holy Communion. Many of Passover's elements
and themes clearly carry over into the Lord's Supper. The Synoptic Gospels all testify that
Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper as part of his Jewish celebration of the Passover meal "on
the night in which he was betrayed" (Matthew 26:17-29; Mark 14:12-25; Luke 22:7-23)
with his Jewish disciples. Jesus provided guidance and instruction to "do" this ritual "in
remembrance of me." All of the Gospels place a narrative or story immediately after the
account of Jesus instructing his followers in ritual practice which is intended for ongoing
future observance. That narrative is the defining Christian story of the death and
resurrection of Jesus. Just as the Passover story defined the core meanings of the ritual meal
of Passover, so the story of Jesus' death and resurrection defines the core meanings of the
Lord's Supper. Ritual and narrative work together as mutually interpretive.

Many other elements in the complex set of images and themes attached to Passover spill
over and inform the complex meanings and images of Holy Communion. They include:

Remembrance and actualization

Past becoming present
Deliverance from bondage and death
Association with the death of the firstborn son
The lamb that was sacrificed
Darkness and night
The blood that protects from death
The wine of the Passover meal
The unleavened bread

All of these elements bind Passover with the Lord's Supper in a rich matrix of ritual and
meaning.

A Moral Challenge: The Death of the Firstborn of Egypt

In preaching this Passover text, one issue must be faced squarely. The death of all the
firstborn of Egypt, both animal and human (Exodus 12:29), is a dreadful and troubling
event. What kind of God is this that allows the death of innocent life? We should not
minimize its horror, but a few comments are in order to help understand this event within
its ancient biblical context. First, although God has employed the arms, hands and staffs of
Moses and Aaron throughout the other plagues, it is God alone who carries out the slaying

of the Egyptian firstborn (11:4; 12:23). The tenth plague is not a model for human imitation
or a pretext for humans to take up arms in the name of God.

Secondly, the narrative insists that much of the moral responsibility leading up to this tragic
point lies with Pharaoh and the Egyptians. The previous nine plagues (Exodus 7-10) were
warnings and glimpses of the great tragedies that would unfold. The story reminds us of the
particular responsibility of human leaders and politicians who lead a nation or group down
paths that bring such tragic consequences. Just as Pharaoh had tried to take away God's
firstborn son, Israel, poetic justice led to Pharaoh and Egypt losing their firstborn sons
(4:22-23).

Thirdly, the narrative affirms that all firstborn among the Israelites belong to God (13:2,
13). And if God is the God of all the earth (19:5-6), then God may also have the right to
claim back for Godself any firstborn among any nation, as God does with Egypt in the tenth
plague. In the Israelite understanding, God's claim on the firstborn served as a sign that the
whole of humanity (indeed the whole earth) belongs to God.

Finally, the book of Exodus proclaims that God is ultimately and primarily "gracious and
merciful" and "forgiving" (Exodus 34:6-7). Even so, God also can reach the point of
"visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children" (Exodus 34:7). There are
consequences to sustained rebellion and disobedience against God and God's purposes for
the world, consequences that inevitably spill over to future generations. Egypt's centurieslong oppression of Israelite slaves (Genesis 15:13; Exodus 12:40) and Pharaoh's stubborn
refusal to heed God's repeated warnings through the many plagues and ecological disasters
that Egypt endured taxed even the patience of God. In the end, God reclaimed Egypt's
firstborn back to Godself in a final blow that broke the will of Pharaoh and allowed the
Israelites to be set free. Israel's history testifies often that God's people were not immune
from similar judgments from God. God's judgment on Egypt remains an object lesson for
those who claim to be God's people as much as for the Pharaohs of the world.