Blood in the Biblical Narrative
As Christians, it’s natural for us to associate bloodshed with redemption. In light of the Gospel, the idea seems intuitive.
That bloodshed can bring about redemption, however, is an unusual idea, which is revealed to us gradually as the Biblical narrative unfolds.
Blood is first mentioned in Scripture in the story of Cain and Abel, where (as we’d expect) it’s connected with judgment.
The story is an instructive one. Cain has a lot to say: he speaks to Abel (Gen. 4.8); he speaks to God (Gen. 4.9); and he later complains to his Judge about the nature of his judgment (Gen. 4.13–14). By contrast, Abel is silent before his shearer. His voice is silenced in the same way people would seek to silence Jesus’ voice, i.e., by murder.
Yet Abel’s blood has a voice which can’t be silenced. It cries out to God from the ground (4.10). Which is what blood does. It demands recompense, and brings guilt on those who shed it.
Consequently, the next time we read about blood in Scripture, it is in the context of Noah’s covenant, where God says he will require recompense from the hand of anyone who sheds innocent blood (Gen. 9). And so things continue. When things go wrong for Joseph’s brothers in Egypt, Reuben instinctively recognises it is because of the blood they shed (Gen. 42.22). And when Moses turns the water of the Nile to blood, it is a revelation of Pharaoh’s guilt. Pharaoh has drowned Israelites in the Nile, and their blood rises up to its surface to demand payment (Exod. 7.17).
The Passovers, however, bring about a sea change. Blood becomes redemptive.
Somewhere on the outskirts of Egypt, in the dead of night, God comes to take Moses’s life (Exod. 4.24). Yet blood is shed on Moses’s behalf. God thus passes on, and Moses becomes a ‘bridegroom of blood’ to his wife.
In the next Passover, God becomes a bridegroom of blood to Israel. God sees the blood on the doorposts, but rather than punish those who have shed it, he passes on. Blood has a new voice. And that voice speaks most loudly through the blood of Jesus.
Like that of Abel, Jesus’ blood cries out. And heaven hears. Yet, in answer to the twofold function of bloodshed in the Biblical narrative, Jesus’ blood cries out in two ways. It both demands vengeance and offers forgiveness.
Consider, by way of illustration, the flow of events in Matthew 21–28. Jesus is the culmination of the prophets (per the parable of the vineyard)—the one whose blood will be shed after the manner of Abel’s (Matt. 23.34ff.)—, and his accusers, in their ignorance,1 seem ready to bear its guilt. (‘Let his blood be upon us and our children!’)
Amidst these tumultuous events, however, Jesus establishes a covenant in his blood ‘for the forgiveness of sins’ (26.28). And mankind can be divided into two camps simply on the basis of their relationship to Jesus’ blood. Some align themselves with those who shed it and thus become guilty, while others align themselves with the covenant it establishes and thus receive forgiveness.
Only in God’s marvellous plan could such a thing come to pass—could man’s sin become part of its solution, and could what brought wrath bring redemption. Not only bloodguilt but the very act of bloodshed has been redeemed.
Cp. Acts 3.17 with Isaiah 53.
I appreciate your observation about the "passovers" (plural). I posted my seminary days paper on Academia.edu just touching on his subject. There I proposed a chiastic structure covering Exodus 1-15 and how the life of Moses is typical of Israel (and later Christ). One of the parallels in that structure is between the bridegroom of blood episode (which is otherwise oddly placed in the narrative) and that of the first Passover.