This day shall be a memorial feast for you which your generations shall celebrate as a perpetual institution. As the above set of words make it clear, the Passover is a very important feast for the Jewish people. It is a feast that commemorates the liberation of their ancestors from the hands of the Egyptians. And as God did instruct Moses, it is a feast that must be celebrated in perpetuity. But the Passover is also an important feast for Christians. For inasmuch as it celebrates the deliverance of Israelites from slavery in Egypt, it is above all a celebration of God’s salvific act towards God’s people. The deliverance of Israelites becomes an archetype of God’s salvific acts towards humanity. Christianity as a religion is itself focused on celebrating God’s intervention in human affairs and has as its ultimate goal the salvation of the world (cf. Romans 8:18-22).
Among the events associated with the Passover is the angel ‘passing-over’ the Hebrew houses while killing Egypt’s firstborns of both man and beast. It was a heartbreaking strike that led to Pharaoh ultimately letting the Israelites leave his land. But it was also a symbolic gesture from the Lord to the Egyptians. The first-born child is considered in many cultures as a blessing to a man and his wife in their pursuit to establish a family. The first born makes or breaks the family. If the birth is successful, the family considers it a blessing from the Lord, and when it is not successful, the mother dies and with that the end of that pursuit. Moreover, the first-born was proof that the father had attained his man-hood and the mother’s womb was fertile. There was no greater blessing from the gods to a man and his wife than a first-born child. As such, when God struck the first born of both man and beast, it was as if the Lord was revoking the blessings he had bestowed on the land of Egypt.