Passover

Oversimplified

• The feast commemorating Israel's deliverance from Egypt, when the blood of a lamb on the doorposts turned aside the angel of death.
• The Fathers read the Passover lamb as the great type of Christ, "our Passover, sacrificed for us" — which is why Pascha bears its name.

Summary

The Passover (Hebrew Pesach) recalls the night the LORD "passed over" the houses of Israel marked with lamb's blood, striking the firstborn of Egypt and so breaking Pharaoh's grip (Exodus 12). Israel ate the lamb roasted, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, girded for departure — the founding act of the Exodus.

Christ our Passover

The New Testament reads the lamb as Christ: "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5.7); "not one of his bones will be broken" (John 19.36, cf. Exodus 12.46). The Last Supper is a Passover meal transfigured into the Eucharist, and the Christian Pascha is the true Passover — deliverance from death itself.[^1] See Typology in Scripture, Eucharist, Moses, The Bronze Serpent.

[^1]: The paschal typology of the Fathers reads the Passover lamb as the great type of Christ, "our Passover, sacrificed for us."