The Christian Story of Passover from Exodus

I presume that if you are a Christian, you probably don’t know the story. But you should probably know what the Christian scripture says about this monumental day in your religion. So, I’m paraphrasing from the book of Exodus in the Old Testament. I have not exaggerated this story one bit. The following is the story of Passover from the Bible:

You see, the Egyptians had enslaved many of the Israelites in Egypt and this was cause for concern for Moses and his brother, Aaron. The Lord God gave god-like powers to Moses and told Aaron to act as Moses’ prophet. God told the brothers that they were to go to the Egyptian Pharaoh and ask for the release of the Israelites, and God said that he would harden the Pharaoh’s heart so that he would not listen to Moses and Aaron.

When the brothers confronted the Pharaoh and were asked to perform a miracle to prove their divinity, Aaron threw his staff down on the ground and it turned into a snake. But, what’s this? The Egyptians had magical powers too, as the Pharaoh summoned his sorcerers to the scene, and they too threw their staffs down and they became snakes. We don’t normally see magic of this magnitude even from Penn and Teller, but apparently, some 4000 years ago, it was totally possible for ordinary men to turn wooden staffs into live snakes. Moving on…

Here’s where it gets really interesting. The Pharaoh would not release the slaves, just as God had predicted, because God had hardened the Pharaoh’s heart. Often, when Christians are presented with the problem of Evil as an argument against God, they recite this free will defense--God doesn’t create or allow the evil, but it is the people who abuse their free will to cause the evil unto themselves. Why didn’t God prevent the school shooting or the serial rapist? Because free will. God would never obstruct a rapist’s or murder’s free will, but here, God had no problem obstructing into the free will of the Pharaoh.

What tricks did God have up his sleeves when he hardened the Pharaoh’s heart? He sent plagues on Egypt. First, he turned the Nile River into a river of blood so that the Egyptians had no water to drink. Perhaps if he had his own volition Pharaoh would have been scared into releasing the slaves, but he didn’t. So God then delivered a plague of frogs upon the Egyptian people. The Pharaoh asked Moses to pray to the Lord to get rid of the frogs and he did, the Pharaoh promised to release the slaves the next day, but he had his heart hardened by the Lord, so he kept the slaves instead.

As punishment to the Egyptians because their Pharaoh’s free will was being fucked with, God, the perpetrator of this free will fuckery, sent more plagues. Next came the plague of gnats, then flies. Then livestock (thousands of innocent animals were killed, and the people suffered without sources of meat), boils, hail (destroyed the crops), locusts, and darkness (three days of total darkness--because evidently the Lord God has the magic ability to hide a giant burning ball of gas some 93 million miles away from Earth). With each plague Pharaoh prayed for relief and agreed to free the Israelites, but when relief came his heart was hardened, and he wouldn’t free the slaves. It is important to note that some Christians will not acknowledge God’s role in obstructing the Pharaoh’s free will, but Ex 10:20 very clearly says “but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.”  So this isn’t a case where the Pharaoh is just being a jerk and renigging the deal because he’s a bad person. No. God actually forces this will upon him, and for what? Due to these plagues, thousands upon thousands of innocent animals were slaughtered, peasants starved, and people suffered. An all-powerful deity could have twerked his ass and freed those slaves, but instead, he is alleged to have concocted a cockamanie plan to plague the land. Put this in perspective. When a young child is beaten senseless by a drunken parent, God doesn’t intervene to prevent that beating, because, so we are told by Christian apologetics, free will is so important to God, and he won’t take that away even if it means bad things happen. But in Exodus, God does intervene with free will, and it isn’t to prevent evil; God causes it!

This is where shit hits the fan. In Exodus 11, God tells Moses that he will bring one more plague to Egypt and then the Pharaoh will free the slaves. Moses spreads the word to the Jewish people in Egypt that they should butcher a lamb and paint their doorways with the blood. God is to then go door to door and kill the firstborn of every Egyptian and even the firstborn of every Egyptian cattle, but if he sees blood on the door, he’ll know to “passover” that household, because an Israelite lives there. Sure enough, the Jews kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent lambs and paint their doors with blood. And the Lord kills the first born child of every Egyptian, even the Pharaoh’s and the children of female slaves and prisoners. Exodus 12:30 says “Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.” Only then did Pharaoh free the Israelites.

Wait. What just happened here? God is purported to be all-knowing, so why did he need to see blood on the door to discern the difference between a Jew’s house and an Egyptian’s? Why kill the cattle? And why, oh why, did thousands of innocent children need to die when all that needed to happen here was God using his magic to free the slaves? He’ll turn a staff into a snake, but he won’t teleport the Israelites out of Egypt? What the serious fuck?!

So how did God command Moses and Aaron to celebrate Passover? He explained that every household in Israel is to slaughter a lamb, sheep, or goat at twilight. They are to spread the blood on their doorways of their homes. They are to eat the meat over a roasted fire, while wearing sandals and with their cloaks tucked in, and they must not save any meat for leftovers the next day. They are to eat bread without yeast. Notice here how specific God’s instructions for how to eat are; but never once, in the entire fucking Bible, does God ever utter the words “Thou must never own slaves as property.” God even says, in Ex. 12:43-45 “No foreigner may eat it. Any slave you have bought may eat it after you have circumcised him, but a temporary resident or a hired worker may not eat it.”

In Exodus 13, God is heard bragging to the people of Israel how powerful he is for freeing them. Well, yeah, I guess he freed them, but couldn’t an all-powerful being think of a better way of doing it, with no bloodshed, suffering, or ridiculous rules?

In Exodus 14, God again hardens the Pharaoh’s heart so that he again changes his mind about freeing the slaves, so he sends 600 chariots and all of his soldiers to pursue and re-capture them. It’s like God is playing The Sims and no matter how badly his people want to just move on with their lives, he must intervene to make them do naughty things. This is the famous part of the Bible where Moses parts the sea to escape. The Israelites cross the sea on dry land, but they are followed by the Egyptians. So what do you think happens next? Let's play multiple choice:

A) God finally realizes what a complete ass hat he has been to the Egyptians so far, apologizes profusely, and gives them free beer for life.
B) God feels guilty for killing tens of thousands of innocent Egyptian men, women, children, and animals, so he brings them all back to life and gives them back their free will.
C) He allows the Isrealites to cross safely then drowns all the Egyptians.

If you answered C, then congratulations; you are really starting to see what a sadistic, evil, bastard the Christian God is. He fucking drowned them all. When Moses and his followers were safely across, God instructed Moses to let the waters back to where the were, and so Moses obeyed God and did this. Exodus 14:28 says that “Not one of them survived.”

So there you have it; the great story of Passover. It is common that Christians probably don’t know why they celebrate Passover.  How many Christians celebrate by eating meat while wearing sandals and tucked in cloaks? And do they disobey the Lord by eating leftovers? Are they aware that they cannot eat bread with yeast on this holy day? I’ve never heard a Christian, or quite frankly anybody, ever talk about this, and I’ve never seen or heard of a feast celebrated in Biblical context. And I’m quite certain that there are a select few Christians who would read this blog post and, having never read the story of Exodus, agree that it is some combination of totally absurd and well beyond immoral. Christianity celebrates blood sacrifice, murdering innocent children, plagues causing suffering beyond our imagination, and God tricking world leaders into doing something against their will thereby knowingly causing countless deaths to men, women, children, and animals. Christianity is a wicked concept.

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