Exodus — Chapter 12

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month shall be to you the beginning of months. Lapide notes the institution of the liturgical year: God here creates sacred time by making Nisan (Abib) the first month. The Pasch as institution of worship organizes all time around redemptive memory—typifying the Christian liturgical year organized around Easter. He cites Augustine: just as creation began the year of the natural order, the Exodus begins the year of grace.

Speak ye to all the congregation of Israel, and let them take every man a lamb according to their families. Lapide gives an extended typological treatment of the Paschal lamb as type of Christ. The lamb must be (1) without blemish—Christ was without sin; (2) male—Christ is the head of His Body; (3) of the first year—Christ offered Himself in the prime of His life; (4) chosen on the 10th and slain on the 14th—between election and sacrifice is a space of examination, as Christ was examined by Pilate and found blameless. He cites Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, and Augustine on this parallel.

They shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side-posts and on the upper door-post of the houses. Lapide identifies the sign of the blood on the doorposts as a figure of the Cross: the two side-posts are the two arms of the Cross, the lintel is the top; the blood of the lamb on the wood prefigures the Blood of Christ on the wood of the Cross. He cites Origen (Hom. in Ex.) and Chrysostom (Hom. in Jo.): wherever the sign of the Blood is, the destroyer passes over. The doorpost is the Christian forehead signed with Baptism and Confirmation.

The lamb must be eaten roasted with fire, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Lapide explains each element eucharistically and morally: (1) roasted, not raw nor boiled—Christ is not received cold in unformed faith, nor dissolved in water as by heretics who deny His true Body, but taken whole in burning charity; (2) unleavened bread—the sincerity and truth of the new life (1 Cor. 5:8), the purity required for worthy Communion; (3) bitter herbs—the penitential life, the memory of sins, the sorrows of compunction that must accompany reception of the Sacrament. So Origen, Chrysostom, and Ambrose (De Sacramentis).

You shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord's Passover. Lapide explains that Phase (Pascha) in Hebrew means passing over (transitus), and interprets it in three senses: (1) literally, God's passing over the houses marked with blood; (2) figuratively, Israel's passing from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan; (3) mystically and supremely, Christ's passing from this world to the Father (Jn. 13:1) and the Christian's passing from sin to grace, from death to life in Baptism and the Eucharist. He cites 1 Cor. 5:7: \"Christ our Pasch is sacrificed; therefore let us feast.\"

The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. The blood is the sign (signum) that protects—not merely a memorial or symbol but an efficacious sign. Lapide insists with Chrysostom that the blood on the doorposts truly and efficaciously protected Israel, just as the Blood of Christ truly and efficaciously protects the souls signed with it in Baptism. The sign of the Blood on wood is always a sign of the Cross; wherever the Cross is truly honored and the Blood of Christ truly received, the destroyer has no power.

This day shall be for a memorial to you, and you shall keep it a feast to the Lord in your generations: you shall keep it a feast by an everlasting ordinance. Lapide notes that God here institutes a perpetual memorial sacrifice—the Passover—as the Old Testament's supreme act of divine worship, to be commemorated annually. He argues that this very institution prefigures and demands the New Testament Eucharist: as God commanded an annual memorial of the Exodus, so Christ at the Last Supper commanded the daily memorial of the Redemption. The Passover was never abrogated but fulfilled and elevated.

Seven days shall you eat unleavened bread. The seven days of unleavened bread (Feast of Unleavened Bread) represent, says Lapide, the entire duration of the Christian's earthly life: just as Israel ate unleavened bread for seven days as part of the Passover observance, so the Christian must spend the whole of his mortal life in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. 5:8), purged of the old leaven of malice and wickedness. The number seven is the number of time (seven days of the week, seven ages of the world).

The Israelites were to take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood in the basin, and strike the lintel and doorposts. Lapide notes the hyssop: a humble plant used for purification (Ps. 50:9). The humble plant dipped in saving blood is a type of the humility of Christ's human nature bearing His divinity. He cites Bede: the hyssop applied to wood to sprinkle blood signifies Christ's sacred humanity fixed to the Cross and sprinkling believers with His Precious Blood.

And when your children shall say to you: What is the meaning of this service? You shall say to them: It is the victim of the passage of the Lord. The Passover rite is designed to generate catechetical questions from children. Lapide praises this divine pedagogy: the liturgy teaches through enacted mystery more deeply than abstract explanation. He notes that the Church's liturgy operates on the same principle—the rites of the sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist, speak more profoundly to the soul than any lecture, precisely because they engage the senses, memory, and imagination in the service of divine truth.

Neither shall you break a bone thereof. This precept of the Passover lamb was literally fulfilled in Our Lord when, He being already dead, the soldiers did not break His legs (Jn. 19:33-36). Lapide notes this as one of the most precise Messianic typologies in all Scripture—the legal ordinance of the Passover was structured by divine providence to prophesy the very physical details of the Crucifixion. He cites Justin Martyr (Dial. cum Tryph.) and Origen.