Jack & Marcy SImon

Perhaps no other event is as significant in the Jewish calendar as Passover.  It is the first holiday ever created for them, and it celebrates the provision that God made for them so that their firstborn would not be slain when the 10th and final plague was unleashed on the Egyptians to cause Pharaoh to set them free from slavery.  It has been observed in essentially the same way for almost 3,500 years.

The Passover was decreed by God in Exodus Chapter 12.  In Ex. 11:4-10, God said that He would cause every firstborn of every person in Egypt to die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the firstborn of slaves, and everyone in between, including even cattle.  However, in Exodus 12: 1-13, God said that to provide a way of escape from death for His own people, He wanted each family to kill an unblemished lamb, and then to dip a bunch of hyssop, which was a large parsley like plant, into the blood of the lamb, and paint some of it on the doorposts and on the lintel (which was the cross-beam or header) of the door that was the entrance way to their home. 

God promised that when He passed through Egypt on the night of this plague, that if He saw the blood painted there, He would pass over that home and spare its occupants from death.

God also decreed that the Jewish people were to have a special meal on the night of Passover, and that it was to consist of the flesh of the Passover Lamb (Vs. 8), whose bones were not to be broken (Vs. 47), and that beginning on the Passover and for (7) days thereafter, they were to eat unleavened bread (Vs. 18) and no leaven was to be found in their houses (Vs. 19). 

In fact, on the 1st night of the Passover, all leaven was to be removed from their houses, or else they would be cut off from the assembly of Israel (also Vs. 19).

This particular plague was different from all of the previous (9) plagues that God had brought upon the Egyptians.  In those plagues, no response was required by the people of Israel.  But with the 10th plague, they had to respond in faith to what God had said, and put their trust in Him to spare them.