Passover

Passover (Hebrew Pesach) is the foundational festival of Israel, instituted on the night before the Exodus from Egypt. According to Exodus 12, every household took a year-old male lamb without blemish on the tenth day of the first month (Nisan/Abib) and kept it until the fourteenth, when the whole assembly slaughtered it at twilight. The blood was painted on the lintel and the two doorposts; the Lord, passing through Egypt to strike down the firstborn, would see the blood and pass over that house. The lamb was roasted whole and eaten that night with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, with the household belt fastened and sandals on, ready to leave. Passover marks the start of the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev 23:5–8). By the first century, pilgrim families converged on Jerusalem; the lamb was slain in the Temple court and eaten in homes around the city after sundown. Jesus celebrated this meal with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion (Luke 22), reframing the bread and the cup around his own body and blood. The New Testament repeatedly identifies him as the Passover lamb (1 Cor 5:7; 1 Pet 1:19; John 1:29).