house. Then the Lord would pass over and not smite that
house. The Hebrew word is pasach, to pass.[1] The lamb
slain was called the Paschal Lamb. But what was that
lamb? Evidently not an earthly lamb--(though certainly
the earthly lambs on the hillsides WERE just then ready
to be killed and eaten)--but the heavenly Lamb, which
was slain or sacrificed when the Lord "passed over" the
equator and obliterated the constellation Aries. This was
the Lamb of God which was slain each year, and "Slain
since the foundation of the world." This period of the
Passover (about the 25th March) was to be[2] the beginning
of a new year. The sacrifice of the Lamb, and its blood,
were to be the promise of redemption. The door-frames of the
houses--symbols of the entrance into a new life--were
to be sprinkled with blood.[3] Later, the imagery of the
saving power of the blood of the Lamb became more
popular, more highly colored. (See St. Paul's epistles, and
the early Fathers.) And we have the expression "washed
in the blood of the Lamb" adopted into the Christian
Church.

[1] It is said that pasach sometimes means not so much to pass
over, as to hover over and so protect. Possibly both meanings
enter in here. See Isaiah xxxi. 5.

[2] See Exodus xii. i.

[3] It is even said (see The Golden Bough, vol. iii, 185) that
the doorways of houses and temples in Peru were at the Spring
festival daubed with blood of the first-born children--commuted