Remember This Day!

In the past two studies, we have reviewed how God responded to the cries of His people by sending deliverers, Moses and his brother Aaron, and how God intervened in human history to deliver his people from affliction and oppression by sending a series of plagues on Pharaoh and the people of Egypt. This study concludes with the tenth and final plague and the institution of the Passover.

The last plague, in which the firstborn males of every family in Egypt would die, and which would finally compel Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt, is announced in two phases. The first announcement is to Pharaoh from Moses, who warns Pharaoh of the plague that was about to come on all Egypt (Exodus 11:410). The second is for the Israelites, and includes God’s instructions for them regarding the Passover, which outlines the means through which God will protect them from the devastation of this plague (Exodus 12:130).

These instructions—sacrificing a young lamb without blemish, smearing its blood on the lintels and doorposts of each Israelite household, baking bread without yeast so as to leave quickly, and eating this final meal while wearing traveling clothes—are the basis for the Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread. When the final plague struck, and the “angel of death” came upon Egypt, it would see the blood on the door frames and “pass over” those homes. As God promised the people of Israel, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you. The plague of death will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:13).

In the Jewish tradition, Passover is the first of the Pilgrim holidays, known as Pesach in Hebrew. It commemorates the seminal event in Jewish history—the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage. It was at this juncture that the national identity of the Jewish people was born.

Today, Jews recall the Exodus daily in their morning and evening prayers and in the grace after meals, thereby fulfilling the biblical command to “remember the day you went out of Egypt all the days of your life” (Deuteronomy 16:3).