Exodus 12:7, “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
Why blood? Of all the bodily fluids, not to mention non-bodily fluids, why smear blood on a perfectly good door?
The word for blood in Hebrew is dam (Strongs 1818) which is the root of Adam, the name of all humanity (regardless of gender) not just the first man. Adding the letter A (in Hebrew, aleph) implies “first”–so “first blood” is not at all a stretch of the meaning of the name Adam. Adamah (Strongs H127) is the female form of adam, and means “soil”. Soil is the only tangible ingredient in the recipe for humanity. Once you add YHWH’s breath, suddenly you have a living human soul. As much as I hate the term “mother earth”, it’s a fairly accurate idea of the life-giving femininity of the soil. When YHWH’s breath leaves a human for good, it’s only a matter of time before we’re plain old adamah again. The word “adam” also means “red” which even more proves that at our core we are just really walking and breathing blood bags. Open us up and out comes the blood, and out goes our life.
Genesis 9:4, makes that clear, “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” Blood defines life, even the lives of non-Adams. Genesis 9:5-6, “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” How weird is that last line? God made man in his own image, which implies to some degree that YHWH himself has blood. I don’t pretend to know how that works, other than to say that Yeshua’s blood is precious indeed.
John doesn’t explain the mystery, just confirms it’s truth. Revelation 1:4-6, “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Yeshua Messiah the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.”
The first letter in dam is dalet which is also the word for “door” (Strongs H1817). In the ancient letter pictures, the letter dalet was actually a picture of a door (or a tent flap). But here’s the thing, the word used in the Pesach instructions is not dalet. (If I wrote the Torah, I surely would have used dalet.)
If I was the author, my next choice would have been the word first used in Genesis 4, “sin is crouching at the door…” which is petach (Strongs H6605). Petach implies the opening, the doorway, the means for entry and exit. Petach is actually spelled the same as Pesach, but with the S (the letter samech, the thorny barrier) replaced with T (the letter tav, a picture of a cross, the mark, or the sign.) How perfect! Except that that’s also not the word YHWH chose to use in the Pesach instructions.
What is used in the Pesach instructions is the word mezuzah (Strongs H4201), the root of which (zuz) implies “conspicuous”. This entryway is the most visible and public part of your home. It’s the reason people spend so much money on fancy doors and unique thresholds. The first impressions about the residence and the residents are made at the very place where the “welcome mat” is laid. The idea of applying Messiah’s blood onto the doorposts of our hearts sounds nice, but a mezuzah is not a secret private place. A mezuzah is the place of public declarations regarding the allegiances of the homeowner.
The blood on the mezuzah both declares our allegiance to YHWH, but we can’t be allied YHWH and our flesh at the same time. This is the trade we are making and publicly declaring. I am no longer my own. I am not my own Pharaoh, I am not my own god, I am not my own at all. I deny myself, and am henceforth under new ownership. This blood is both a sign of publicly emptying out my life, and exchanging that life with Messiah’s.
Deut 6:4-13, “Hear, O Israel: YHWH is our God. YHWH is the only one. You shall love YHWH your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And when YHWH your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget YHWH, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is YHWH your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.”
Matthew 10:32-33, “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
Matthew 16:24, “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
2 Timothy 1:11-13, “The saying is trustworthy: If we have died with him, we will also live with him, if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful.”
So, back to Adam. Adam, soil man, red man, blood man, first man, is also the name of an entire kingdom of Israel’s enemies. Edom, the nation founded by Esau is spelled the same way as Adam, and has many of the same spiritual implications. Esau was red, and hairy, and thought so little about the promises of YHWH that he traded his birthright for a bowl of red stew. The similarity to Adam making that same trade but with fruit should be obvious. The outdoorsy nature of Esau and the indoorsy nature of Jacob are meant to be Pesach parallels. Instead of going inside and receiving a blessing from the father (in this case Isaac), Esau remains outside and gets a curse instead. Edom (the red nation, the nation of blood, the nation of secular humanism) is set up as a type of eternal opposition to Israel. The worst descendants of Edom, the Amalekites, are the enemies of Israel who are destined for destruction at the White Throne Judgement!
Pesach remains the night where we leave the redness outside as a public display of our denial of Edom and all it stands for. We claim the birthright and the inheritance only offered to those on the inside. We join centuries of others who boldly declare themselves as allied only to the Kingdom of God and to the Messiah who was willing to make that same pledge, even unto death.
Amen