NOTES for Exo 12:1-28
Traditionally the feast of Pesach, often called the Jewish Passover, is connected with the theme of the Exodus and with making it present. This is the main theme of the Passover seder, the Jewish ritual Passover meal, and the spiritual meaning of the feast implies that each person must experience the Exodus anew, as his own liberation, as a departure from Egypt without which meeting God is impossible. Yet in the Book of Exodus, as Moses presents it, Pesach becomes not so much a feast of liberation from the power of Egypt as a feast of deliverance from death.
The angel of death is to pass through the houses of the Egyptians at night, striking the firstborn, and he will do this while passing over only the houses of the Hebrews, the houses whose doorposts are marked with sacrificial blood. Pesach becomes the feast of deliverance from death. One could, of course, say that one thing is connected with the other, that the Hebrews absolutely had to leave Egypt in order to avoid destruction, but in the story the emphases are clearly placed somewhat differently, and the perspective itself becomes far broader and deeper than one that includes only earthly events.
This is understandable: the situation is one in which Pharaoh said a final "no" to God by saying that "no" to Moses, God's man. Now anything at all could happen in Egypt. The issue was not privileges for the Hebrews and not the punishment of enemies, but the salvation of those who otherwise would have been doomed together with everyone else. By saying "no" to God, Pharaoh directed Egypt toward the abyss from which the angel of death emerged, and now all that remained for God was to preserve those who in no way should have fallen into that abyss.
Today we are used to seeing disasters and cataclysms as extraordinary events. If we are also religious people, every time we ask ourselves or others the question: why is God punishing us like this? Yet disasters and cataclysms, like death itself, are not anomalies and not punishment. For the fallen world, everything listed here is normal. If nothing of that kind is present in our life, it is the mercy of God; it means that God is constantly keeping the situation under His direct control.
After the coming of Christ, when, in His own words, the Kingdom of God "came near," all that has been said may be less visible than it was in the days of Moses and the Exodus. Yet in essence nothing in the world has changed and nothing will change until Christ returns in glory and the Kingdom triumphs completely. People did not always understand this then, and often do not understand it now, living as if they really had a complete, natural, and inalienable right to peace and security.