Bible Commentaries
Exodus 12

Verse 2

Exodus 12:2

We have here a new event, a new starting-point a new epoch, and therefore a new era. That event was an emancipation, a redemption, an exodus. There were centuries behind of exile and servitude; of that experience which has been so characteristic of Israel, a sojourning which was no naturalisation, a dwelling amongst, without becoming of, another nation; estrangement therefore, isolation, solitude, even in populous cities, and amidst teeming multitudes. Now, all this is behind them. They are to quit the homeless home. Egypt behind, Sinai before, Canaan beyond; this is the exact account of the position of Israel when the words of the text were spoken. Redemption was the starting-point of the new; from it all that follows shall take a new character, a new life.

I. The idea of a new start is naturally attractive to all of us. We are fatigued, we are wearied, we are dissatisfied, and justly so, with the time past of our lives. We long for a gift of amnesty and oblivion.

II. There are senses in which this is impossible. The continuity of life cannot be broken. There is a continuity, a unity, an identity, which annihilation only could destroy.

III. "The beginning of months" is made so by an exodus. Redemption is the groundwork of the new life. If there is in any of us a real desire for change, we must plant our feet firmly on redemption.

IV. When we get out of Egypt, we must remember that there is still Sinai in front, with its thunderings and voices. We have to be schooled and disciplined by processes not joyous but grievous. These processes cannot be hurried, they must take time. Here we must expect everything that is changeful, and unresting, and unreposeful, within as without. But He who has promised will perform. He who has redeemed will save. He who took charge will also bring through.

C. J. Vaughan, Words of Hope, p. 65.

References: Exodus 12:1-20 . Parker, vol. ii., p. 66. Exodus 12:2 . Parker, vol. ii., p. 313; A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 88. Exodus 12:3 , Exodus 12:4 . Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes, p. 30. Exodus 12:5 , Exodus 12:6 . G. Calthrop, Church Sermons, vol. i., p. 347. Exodus 12:7 , Exodus 12:8 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xxii., p. 204.Exodus 12:11 . M. Nicholson, Redeeming the Time, p. 305.Exodus 12:11-14 . J. R. Macduff, Communion Memories, p. 125.

Verse 13

Exodus 12:13

Our interest in the Passover, as in most of the other institutions of the Levitical economy, consists in its relationship to higher institutions, and to a more hallowed provision; it consists in the prefiguration by them of our Surety and Saviour, who is at once the Surety and Saviour of universal man. There are three points in the analogy to be considered.

I. We, like the children of Israel aforetime, are in circumstances of sorrow. (1) They were in bondage. We also have been brought under bondage to sin, and our yoke is harder than theirs, for ours is heart-slavery, the iron has entered into our soul. (2) The Israelites were in circumstances of peril.

The Lord was about to execute in their sight His strange work of judgment. The transgressions of our race, the sins which we commit, expose us to consequences far more imminent, and far more terrible.

II. For us, as for the children of Israel of old, there is a remedy provided. The great doctrine of Atonement is here brought before us. As by the blood of the victim sprinkled upon the door-posts, seen by the destroying angel, wrath was averted from them and deliverance secured, so by the blood of Jesus, seen by Divine justice sprinkled upon our hearts, wrath is warded off from us, and everlasting salvation is secured. The cross is the meeting-place of God's mercy for the sinner.

III. As there is such a remedy there can be no other. For us as for them there is but one way of escape. "There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved."

W. Morley Punshon, Penny Pulpit, No. 312.

References: Exodus 12:13 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 228, also vol. xxi., No. 1251; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 22.

Verses 22-23

Exodus 12:22-23

The night of the Passover was "a night much to be remembered." Wherever a Jew exists it is to this night he points, as the proudest epoch in his people's history. The feast of the Passover is full of typical meaning. Notice, first, that this was a little judgment day. The children of Israel were to be delivered by a direct visitation of God. There are three great truths brought out in this narrative.

I. The universality of condemnation. God was going to save the Israelites, but before He saved them He must condemn them. He sent Moses with a message couched in the language of symbol, which clearly showed that the Israelites were guilty no less than the Egyptians. The lamb was to be the representative of the firstborn son, who must die for the sins of his family. The Israelite and the Egyptian are brought under one common charge of guilt, and there they all stand, "condemned already."

II. The great truth of substitution. God sends Moses to His people and bids them choose "for every family a lamb." The lamb was instead of the firstborn. Christ is the "Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world."

III. The third truth taught is appropriation. The Israelite would not have been safe if he had merely killed the lamb; he had to sprinkle its blood on the lintel and on the two sideposts. When we repose our confidence in the Person of Christ, we have taken the bunch of hyssop and dipped it in the blood, and from that moment we are safe.

W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons, 1st series, p. 100.

References: Exodus 12:23 H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf, p. 330. Exodus 12:26 . C.Wordsworth. Occasional Sermons, 7th series, p. 25; H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. i., p. 17; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines of Sermons, p. 281.Exodus 12:26 , Exodus 12:27 . R.D.B. Rawnsley, Sermons in Country Churches, 3rd series, p. 250. Exodus 12:29-31 . W. Landels, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 164.Exodus 12:31 . Parker, vol. ii., p. 314.Exodus 12:38 . Ibid.

Verses 30-41

Exodus 12:30-41

(with Matthew 2:15 )

I. We cannot treat the Exodus as an isolated fact in history. Egypt is the type of the cunning, careless, wanton world, out of which in all ages God is calling His sons. The Exodus remained a living fact in history. The infant Jesus went down into Egypt, as the infant Israel went down, not to repeat the Exodus, but to illume afresh its fading lines. (1) The children of Israel were an elect race, because they were of the seed of Abraham: that constituted their distinctity. You are of the race of the second Adam, of the same flesh and blood as Jesus; and all who wear a human form and understand a human voice, God calls forth from Egypt; His voice calls to His sons, "Come forth to freedom, life, and heaven." (2) You, like the Israelites, are called forth to the desert, the fiery pillar, the manna, the spiritual rock; and while you aim at Canaan, His will, His heart, are on your side.

II. Note the moral features of the Exodus. (1) There was a life in Egypt which had become insupportable to a man. That bondage is the picture of a soul round which the devil's toils are closing. (2) The Israelites saw the stroke of heaven fall on all that adorns, enriches, and nourishes a worldly life. (3) They had a Divine leader, a man commissioned and inspired by God. We have the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, who in the house and the work in which Moses wrought as a servant, represents God as the Son. (4) We discern a condition of utter dependence on the strength and faithfulness of God. They and we were delivered by a Divine work. (5) Notice, lastly, the freedom of the delivered Israelites; a broad, deep sea flowing between them and the land of bondage, and the tyrants dead upon the shore. Such is the glorious sense of liberty, of wealth, of life, when the deep sea of Divine forgiving love sweeps over the past and obliterates its shame.

J. Baldwin Brown, The Soul's Exodus and Pilgrimage, p. 28.

Verse 42

Exodus 12:42

I. Scholars have said that the old Greeks were the fathers of freedom; and there have been other people in the world's history who have made glorious and successful struggles to throw off their tyrants and be free.

But liberty is of a far older and nobler house. Liberty was born on the first Easter night, when God Himself stooped from heaven to set the oppressed free. Then was freedom born. Not in the counsels, of men, however wise, or in the battles of men, however brave, but in the counsels of God and the battle of God. Freedom was born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of God, from whom all good things come, and of Christ, who is the life and the light of men and of nations, and of all worlds, past, present, and to come.

II. The history of the Jews is the history of the whole Church and of every nation in Christendom. The Jews had to wander forty years in the wilderness, and Christendom has had to wander too, in strange and blood-stained paths, for eighteen hundred years and more. For as the Israelites were not worthy to enter at once into rest, no more have the nation of Christ's Church been worthy. As the new generation sprang up in the wilderness, trained under Moses' stern law, to the fear of God, so for eighteen hundred years have the generations of Christendom, by the training of the Church and the light of the Gospel, been growing in wisdom and knowledge, growing in morality and humanity, in that true discipline and loyalty which are the yokefellows of freedom and independence.

C. Kingsley, The Gospel of the Pentateuch, p. 149.

References: Exodus 12:42 . C. Kingsley, National Sermons, p. 337. 12-14. J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 47. Exodus 13:1-7 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 37. Exodus 13:10 . Parker, vol. ii., p. 315; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1092; H. Grey, A Parting Memorial, p. 54.Exodus 13:13 . S. Cox, Expositions, 2nd series, p. 381; Parker, vol. ii., p. 74.