It is no surprise that sacrifice became the basis of the Jewish feast of Pesach (the Old Testament Passover) (vv. 3-7), since in ancient times every nation and tribe without exception perceived it as a form of communion with higher powers, with gods and spirits. And in Yahwism, whose history begins with the calling of Abram and ends in A.D. 70 with the destruction of the Second Temple, sacrifice also became the basis of worship, since here too it was the chief means of communion with God. The sacrificial meal was seen as a shared meal of God and human beings, one that nothing could replace. What God sanctified above all was the sacrificial blood, because in antiquity blood was considered the vessel of the life-principle that the Bible often calls the "soul" (Gen 9:4, 10, 12, 15). Thus the beginning of life sanctified by God united a person with God.

But Moses speaks to the people about something else: he speaks of sanctified blood that delivers them from destruction otherwise inevitable (vv. 12-13). At first glance, this may seem somewhat strange. But if we think more deeply, what stands before us is essentially a concrete case reflecting the general state of things. And that state consists in this: life in general, and human life in particular, is not some inalienable right, but a gift of God, which a person does not and cannot have apart from relationship with God.

In the animal world, where God creates not individual specimens but whole species, so that each animal is created according to the pattern characteristic of its species ("according to their kinds," as the Old Testament language expresses this idea, Gen 1:24-25), the life of an individual animal counts for nothing before God; only the species is valuable, because its existence is part of God's plan for the world. With the human being, created not in the image of his biological species but in the image and likeness of God, the situation is different. Yet it can be different only if the person's relationship with God has not been destroyed. If there is no such relationship, the person before God is in the position of an animal, being merely a representative of his biological species. Of course, even in this case God sees the person as His image and likeness; but without relationship with God, this image in the person is distorted, and nothing can be done about it without the person's will, since if a person does not want to let God into his life, He will not break in by force. And then the person is doomed to death. He is doomed to it as a representative of his species, because according to the laws of nature the strongest survives, and the life of each concrete representative of any biological species is in no way guaranteed by God. And he is doomed as a phenomenon of living nature, which is mortal as such: in God's plan, as we can see, there were no immortal animals.

Only in the context of relationship with God does a person receive hope for life. For now, on the night of the Old Testament Passover, hope for temporary life. The time will come when, on another night, the night of the New Testament Pascha, he will receive hope for eternal life.

The death of the firstborn was the last straw: Pharaoh lets the people go. More than that, he hurries the Hebrews to leave. Why? Did Pharaoh think the Hebrews would want to leave Egypt? Later events will show clearly: no, he did not. The expectation was that the people would go to Beersheba, where there was an old Yahwist sanctuary that had existed since the time of Abraham, to Beersheba, which was then under Egyptian control. From the delta region it was about a three-day journey one way.

Pharaoh hoped that the Hebrews would go to Beersheba, offer the required sacrifices to their God, celebrate their feast, and return. Pharaoh now understood: otherwise he would not be rid of the wrath of Moses' God. Ordinary Egyptians thought the same. The story mentions that the Hebrews "plundered" the Egyptians. They certainly could not have done any such thing by force. Something else was quite possible: the Egyptians brought them offerings for their God.

That was an old Egyptian custom, and not only Egyptian: in order to be healed from illness or to avoid death, one had to bring an offering to the god who was probably or clearly the cause of the misfortune. As a rule, it was an amulet that directly or symbolically depicted what one wanted to get rid of. Amulets were made of gold, silver, or copper; and if a person could not afford anything of the sort, then of clay. Something else could also be donated if the cause of the misfortune was not exactly known: why, for example, the firstborn had died was rather hard for the Egyptians to determine. Often people donated the same gold or silver items so that the god's wrath would not touch the donor.

The Egyptians, as we see, had already become convinced: whoever Moses' God was, He was not to be trifled with. Simple people, untrained in theological subtleties, might consider Him some stern spirit of the desert, one of those whom, according to their ideas, nomads worshiped. In any case, this unknown god or spirit had to be appeased, for death had entered every house, and no one knew what to expect next. Both the authorities and ordinary people now looked at Moses as a savior, the only one who could save the country from otherwise inevitable destruction.

The blood on the doorposts, stopping death at the entrance to the house, testifies that the inhabitants of this house have shared a meal with God, have become participants in His life, and therefore are under His protection.

The Exodus is not only the legendary flight of one people from enslavement by another. In the eyes of the biblical author, it is the beginning of the creation of a community of believers in the one God. Here for the first time he uses this word: "society," "community." If earlier the core of sacred history consisted of stories about the faith of individual people, now an entire people appears in the role of interlocutor and participant in God's works.

This is a good definition of the concept of "Church": not only a worshiping community, a charitable organization, or a "spiritual department," but a community united by shared participation in the history of the relationship between God and humanity.