Passover

Passover is the annual Israelite festival commemorating the night Yahweh struck the firstborn of Egypt and "passed over" the houses of Israel marked with blood, and it is the name Christians also apply to the slaughtered lamb of that meal and, by extension, to Christ.

The text says the observance was instituted on the night of the exodus. Yahweh declares, "I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 12:12), and the sign of protection is blood: "when he sees the blood on the lintel, and on the two door posts, Yahweh will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you" (Exodus 12:23). Linguistically, the Hebrew name pesach is traditionally connected with the verb pasach, "to pass over," though the precise nuance of that verb is debated among scholars. In established history and in the calendar the passages reflect, Passover was joined to the Feast of Unleavened Bread and ranked among the three pilgrimage feasts at which "all your males shall appear before Yahweh your God in the place which he chooses" (Deuteronomy 16:16; compare Exodus 23:17) — a communal, altar-centred, Jerusalem-facing observance rather than a private household rite alone. The term "Passover offering" reflects the sacrificial character of the meal; Paul's argument assumes it when he writes, "Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place" (1 Corinthians 5:7).

In the Gospels, Jesus keeps the festival and gives it new meaning. He sends the disciples with the words, "I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples" (Matthew 26:18), and during the meal he takes bread — "Take, eat; this is my body" (Matthew 26:26) — and the cup, "this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins" (Matthew 26:28; compare Mark 14:24 and Luke 22:20). John frames the same season as the hour of departure: "before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his time had come that he would depart from this world to the Father…" (John 13:1). Paul then draws the ethical consequence: "Purge out the old yeast… For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place," so "let's keep the feast… with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:7–8).

Christian traditions differ over how to read these connections. One long-standing reading, found in Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Reformed teaching, treats the Passover as a divinely given pattern (a "type") fulfilled in Christ's death and made present in the Eucharist, so that the words over bread and cup are taken as conveying what they signify. Others, prominent in Baptist and evangelical churches, read the meal as a memorial ordinance of obedience and the Passover as a fulfilled shadow, not a sacrament. The Gospels themselves leave a well-known chronological question: the Synoptics present the supper as a Passover meal (Matthew 26:18–19), while John's "before the feast of the Passover" (John 13:1) has led many to place the crucifixion on the day of preparation; scholars and confessions differ, and no single harmonisation commands consent. Jewish observance, for its part, reads the same Exodus narrative as a perpetual memorial of deliverance rather than as a prophecy of Christ.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.