We’ll begin our study by going all the way back to the days when the children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, to find out the origination of Passover. God’s servant Moses was sent to Egypt to lead God’s chosen people out of Egypt, but Pharaoh, the king of Egypt refused to let them go. God sent ten plagues upon the people of Egypt, but Pharaoh remained hard hearted despite the disasters that God brought upon them. We’ll begin with the story of the last plague upon Egypt.

The Lord talked to Moses and Aaron in Egypt saying, This month will be the beginning of the year to you. Tell all the children of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, every man will take a lamb for his house, and if one lamb is too much for your family to eat, you will share with your neighbor. The lamb should be without spot, a male of the first year and you will separate it from the sheep and the goats and keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole congregation of Israel will kill it in the evening.

Take the blood of the lamb and put it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses where you will eat it. Eat it that same night, roasted with fire, and unleavened bread and with bitter herbs. Don’t eat it raw or boiled at all with water, but roasted with fire, with his head and his legs and organs included. Don’t leave any for the morning, and whatever is left over in the morning, burn it with fire. Eat it fully dressed, with shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand and you will eat it quickly, it is the Lord’s Passover. I will pass through the land of Egypt that night and will kill all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast and against all the gods of Egypt, I will perform justice, I am the Lord.

The blood will be a sign on the houses where you are and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague will not destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day will be a memorial for you and you will keep it a holy day to the Lord throughout all your generations for ever.

In the first month on the fourteenth day of the month, at evening, you will eat unleavened bread until the twenty first day of the month at evening. For seven days, no leaven will be in your houses because whoever eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or born in the land. You will eat nothing leavened, in all your homes you will eat unleavened bread.