Passover in the Bible

The Origin in Exodus 12

The Passover (Hebrew Pesach, פֶּסַח, Strong's H6453) originates in Exodus 12, during the final plague on Egypt. God instructs Moses that each Israelite household is to select a male lamb without blemish (Exodus 12:5), kill it at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month (Exodus 12:6), and apply its blood to the doorposts and lintel of their houses (Exodus 12:7).

Exodus 12:13 — "And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye [are]: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy [you], when I smite the land of Egypt."

That same night the tenth plague strikes: the death of every firstborn in Egypt. Pharaoh releases Israel. Passover commemorates this deliverance.

The Meaning of the Name

The verb pasach (פָּסַח, H6452) means "to pass over, to skip, to spare." It appears in Exodus 12:13, 23, 27. The derived noun pesach refers both to the act of passing over and to the sacrificial lamb itself.

The Septuagint transliterates the Hebrew as Pascha (Πάσχα, G3957). This is the word that entered Greek, Latin, and ultimately most European languages — French Pâques, Italian Pasqua, Spanish Pascua. English "Paschal" and "Paschal lamb" preserve the Greek form.

The Instructions

Exodus 12 gives detailed instructions that become the framework of every subsequent Passover observance:

• Selection (v. 3–6) — a year-old male lamb, without blemish, selected on the 10th of the month, kept until the 14th.
• Slaughter (v. 6) — killed "between the two evenings" (twilight) on the 14th.
• Blood on the doorposts (v. 7).
• Roasted whole with fire (v. 8–9) — not boiled, not raw.
• Eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (v. 8).
• Eaten in haste (v. 11) — "with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand."
• None left until morning (v. 10).

The Feast of Unleavened Bread

Passover is linked to a seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread (Chag HaMatzot) that immediately follows. For seven days no leaven (chametz) is to be found in Israelite households (Exodus 12:15–20). The combination — one-day Passover + seven-day Unleavened Bread — is treated as a single festival complex in later biblical and post-biblical usage.

The absence of leaven recalls the haste of the Exodus: Israel left Egypt before the dough had time to rise (Exodus 12:34).

The Date

Passover falls on the 14th of Nisan (also called Abib, Exodus 13:4) — the first month of the Hebrew religious calendar, corresponding to March/April. The month's position in the calendar was fixed by God himself in Exodus 12:2: "This month [shall be] unto you the beginning of months: it [shall be] the first month of the year to you." The date on the modern Western calendar shifts each year because the Hebrew calendar is lunisolar.

Passover in the Rest of the Old Testament

Several significant Passover observances are recorded:

• The first Passover after the Exodus — at Sinai, one year later (Numbers 9:1–5).
• The first Passover in Canaan — at Gilgal after crossing the Jordan (Joshua 5:10).
• Hezekiah's Passover — after religious reform (2 Chronicles 30), attended by Judeans and a remnant from the northern tribes.
• Josiah's Passover — described as the greatest since the days of the judges (2 Chronicles 35, 2 Kings 23:21–23).
• The post-exile Passover — after the rebuilding of the temple under Ezra (Ezra 6:19–22).

Passover and the Crucifixion

The Gospels explicitly place Jesus's death during Passover. 1 Corinthians 5:7 makes the connection directly:

"For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us."

The Greek is to pascha hēmōn etythē Christos — "Our pascha, Christ, has been sacrificed." John 19:36 cites the Passover-lamb regulation — "a bone of him shall not be broken" (Exodus 12:46) — as fulfilled in the crucifixion. John 1:29 has John the Baptist identify Jesus as "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."

The Last Supper

The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 26:17–29, Mark 14:12–25, Luke 22:7–20) present the Last Supper as a Passover meal. Jesus explicitly names it as such: "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer" (Luke 22:15). John's Gospel (John 13:1, John 19:14) appears to place the crucifixion itself on the day of Passover preparation — at the hour the lambs were being slaughtered in the temple. The exact chronological harmonization is debated; the theological connection between Passover and the crucifixion is explicit in all four Gospels.