NOTES for Exo 12:29-51

The Law requires of us the same attitude toward every person, regardless of whether he is "one of ours" or a "stranger." This does not mean that God makes no distinctions between people, between His people and other nations. The same Torah describes quite clearly the requirements for those who would like to enter the people of God, become an integral part of it, and receive the right to participate in the religious life of the community: such a person had not only to accept Yahwism as his faith and the God of Israel as his God, but also to follow fully all religious norms and rules, including not only the commandments and moral norms, but also the rules of ritual purity, to which in pre-Christian times everywhere, including Yahwism, great attention was paid.

But another state of affairs was also possible: a sojourner, an outsider who decided to settle among the Jews, had the right to live among them without taking part in Yahwistic religious life, while enjoying all rights except the right to such participation. Naturally, all laws connected with the prohibition of blasphemy and sacrilege applied to him just as they did to the Jews themselves, but in other respects he was free.

It was precisely this norm of the Torah that allowed whole pagan tribes to live on the territory of the Jewish state without accepting Yahwism and while continuing to worship their gods, as happened in the time of David and Solomon. What was this: religious tolerance? Religious indifference toward everyone except one's own people? Probably neither one nor the other.

The Torah never equated paganism with Yahwism, just as it never equated pagans with the people of God. Rather, here there is respect for a person's freedom of choice in the main thing, in what concerns his spiritual life and therefore his religion. It is impossible, and meaningless, to "convert" a person by using the fact that he may simply have nowhere to go.

Besides, the very fact that a pagan is staying on God's land does not yet make him a Yahwist. Faith does not come by itself, and it is better not to mislead anyone in this regard: the one who wants to accept Yahwism must accept it not "automatically" by settling among believing Yahwists, but by making his own choice and joining the community.

In this way the Torah protects human freedom and preserves the purity of the community, freeing it from imaginary "believers" whose faith, when tested, turns out to be nothing but a formality and a desire to be "like everyone else."

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.

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.