Why does God need to be shown where not to send destruction?

[Polak]

This passage from Exodus was read in the service today.

The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

If God is all powerful, why does he ask people to put blood on their door so he can make sure the plague doesn’t touch them?

 

[jburns513]

He gave the people the opportunity to participate in their own redemption.

As we do when we participate in the Paschal Sacrifice of the New Covenant, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Most Holy Eucharist. We were saved by His Sacrifice; we can make it present.

 

[Elias]

The blood is more for the people than it is for God. God wants to know who is with Him and who isn’t. Don’t forget, man still has free will to accept or reject God at any time.

 

[Thom18]

If God can “know” which houses have blood and which don’t, then I’m confident that He already knows which houses His people live in (as I’m sure a person’s Jewish neighbors would also know where they live). The people could either choose to shelter under His wing and celebrate the Passover, or to align themselves with Pharaoh, and this was how a Jew would express his alignment.

 

[porthos11]

This passage from Exodus was read in the service today.

The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

Participation and obedience. He was not going to just pass over them without them following his orders. Their redemption was going to be costly, not free.

For death to pass over the Israelites, two things were required: the blood on the doorposts, and the partaking of the lamb. Even if they had the blood on their doorports, if they did not eat the lamb, they would have had a dead first-born in the morning.

This lamb finds its fulfillment in Jesus and the Eucharist.

 

[Polak]

Folks, those are some interesting answers. Thank you.

 

[TK421]

People are made active participators in God’s graces. The Passover is the symbolic precursor of the sacrifice of Jesus and the Holy Eucharist.

 

[TheLittleLady]

God did not “need to be shown”, the people needed to do this work in faith.

 

[Todd_Easton]

Some understand that it was not God himself but an angel from God who did the actual killing of the Egyptian’s first-born in Exodus 12:23 and so the marking of the doors was to prevent the destroying angel from entering their houses:

23 During that night the Lord will go through the country of Egypt and kill the first-born son in every Egyptian family. He will see where you have put the blood, and he will not come into your house. His angel that brings death will pass over and not kill your first-born sons. (Contemporary English Version)

23 When the Lord goes through Egypt to kill the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the beams and the doorposts and will not let the Angel of Death enter your houses and kill you. (Good News Translation)

23 The Lord will go through the land to strike down the Egyptians. He’ll see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe. He will pass over that house. He won’t let the destroying angel enter your homes to strike you down. (New International Readers’ Version)

23 For the Lord will pass through the land to strike down the Egyptians. But when he sees the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe, the Lord will pass over your home. He will not permit his death angel to enter your house and strike you down. (New Living Translation)

The marking of the lintels and doorposts sort of reminds me of the angelic sealing of the 144,000 with the seal of the living God (Rev 7:1, 4) , i.e., with the names of the Lamb and his Father (Rev 14:1), to, among other things, preserve them from being tortured by the locusts with scorpion-like tails. (Rev 9:4-5, 10)

 

[jburns513]

Also…the blood of the sacrificed lamb was a sign of the Lord’s Precious Blood, to be shed years later on Calvary. Thanks St. John Crysostom.

 

[Gorgias]

If God is all powerful, why does he ask people to put blood on their door so he can make sure the plague doesn’t touch them?

Keep in mind that it was lamb’s blood, and the pantheon of Egypt included a ram as a god. In a very real and literal way, the Israelites’ redemption was predicated on the act of physically repudiating the beliefs of the culture in which they lived and instead accepting God!

It’s not “do I know who you are?” so much as it is “do you know who I AM?”

 

[EndTimes]

The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

God has reasons. No need for Believers to make a case over it - is there?

It connects w/Jesus’ Sacrificial Blood Atonement on the Cross

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