But the third picture I wish to point to in more detail: 'Passing over,
He will deliver.' Now, the word that is there rendered 'passing over,'
is almost a technical word in the Old Testament, because it is that
employed in reference to the Passover. And so you see the swiftness of
genius with which the prophet changes his whole scene. We had the nest
and the mother-bird, we had the battlefield and the shield; now we are
swept away back to that night when the Destroying Angel stalked through
the land, and 'passed over' the doors on which the blood had been
sprinkled. And thus this God, who in one aspect may be likened to the
mother-bird hovering with her little breast full of tenderness, and made
brave by maternal love conquering natural timidity, and in another
aspect may be likened to the broad shield behind which a man stands
safe, may also be likened to that Destroying Angel that went through
Egypt, and smote wherever there were not the tokens of the blood on the
lintels, and 'passed over' wherever there were. Of course, the original
fulfilment of this third picture is the historical case of the army of
Sennacherib; outside the walls, widespread desolation; inside the walls,
an untroubled night of peace. That night in Egypt is paralleled, in the
old Jewish hymn that is still sung at the Passover, with the other night
when Sennacherib's men were slain; and the parallel is based on our
text. So, then, here is another illustration of what I started with
saying, that the past events of Scripture are transient expressions of
perennial principles and tendencies. For the Passover night was not to
be to the contemporaries of the prophet an event receding ever further
into the dim distance, but it was a present event, and to be reproduced
in that catastrophe when 'in the morning when they arose, they were all
dead corpses.' And the event is being repeated to-day, and will be for
each of us, if we will.