The first Passover EXO 12:21

Each household in Goshen took a lamb without blemish, killed it, and marked its doorposts and lintel with its blood. The meat was roasted and eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, by people already dressed and ready to leave Egypt. Moses and Aaron had instructed the people to do this so that the destroyer sent for the final plague would pass over any house marked with blood.

The blood on the doorposts and lintel served as a visible sign marking which houses belonged to the people the destroyer was to spare. The passage is clear that the sign worked by being seen, not by any inward belief alone; wherever it was displayed, death passed over that home. It made obedience to Moses and Aaron's instructions something every household had to act on, not merely agree with.

The haste reflects the fact that departure from Egypt was imminent and could not wait. People ate standing, dressed for travel, because they expected to leave that very night rather than settle in for a long meal. The bread had no time to rise, so it was baked flat and unleavened, a detail Israel later kept as part of how the night is remembered.

Jewish tradition continues to observe this night at Passover as the direct memory of the moment Israel became a people and was spared from the destroyer, centered on the Seder meal. Many Christians read the same event typologically, seeing the unblemished lamb and its blood as foreshadowing Christ, without this reading replacing the historical meaning for Israel. Both readings sit alongside the plain account in the passage itself, and the text does not force a choice between them.