Why Did God Choose Blood? Part 6 of 19

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From Joseph’s Bloody Coat to the Bridegroom of Blood

Synopsis

In Part 5, the investigation reached Mount Moriah, where God stopped Abraham from killing Isaac and provided a ram to be offered “instead of his son.” For the first time, the biblical story gave us an unmistakable picture of substitution: one life was given while another life was allowed to live. But the ram’s blood was not emphasized, collected, applied, or described as making atonement. So before moving directly to Passover, there is more evidence we need to examine.

Between Genesis 22 and Exodus 12, blood continues appearing in ways that may help us understand what it means. Joseph’s brothers kill a goat and cover his garment with its blood, knowing Jacob will interpret that blood as evidence that his son has died. Years later, those same brothers speak of Joseph’s “blood” being required of them even though Joseph is still alive. Blood has become more than a physical substance. It can represent a life believed to have been lost and accountability for what has happened to that life.

Then we encounter one of the strangest episodes in the Old Testament. Immediately after God identifies Israel as His “firstborn son” and warns Pharaoh that his own firstborn will die, the Lord encounters Moses on the journey to Egypt and threatens death. Zipporah circumcises her son, blood is shed through the covenant sign established with Abraham, she speaks the mysterious words “bridegroom of blood,” and the threat ends. Before the blood-covered doors of Passover, Exodus has already placed covenant, blood, a son, threatened death, and deliverance beside one another.

But another discovery is beginning to emerge from this investigation. The Old Testament may be doing more than explaining blood. Long before Jesus is identified by name, Scripture appears to be constructing the work He will eventually accomplish. The beloved son, the substitute, the sacrifice God provides, covenant, blood, accountability for life, judgment, and deliverance from death are appearing piece by piece.

This does not mean every bloody story in Genesis secretly predicts Jesus, nor will I force Jesus into passages that do not support that conclusion. I want to do the opposite. First, I will determine what each passage means in its own context. Then I will watch to see whether the New Testament eventually identifies Jesus as performing the same functions. If those independent Old Testament patterns continue converging upon Christ, that becomes far more significant than simply finding isolated verses that sound prophetic.

Part 6 therefore takes us right to the doorstep of Passover without crossing it. By the end, we will have followed blood from Moriah through Joseph and into the mysterious Bridegroom of Blood encounter. Only then will we be ready for the question waiting in Exodus 12: when God finally says, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you,” what exactly does He see in the blood?

And perhaps an even larger question is beginning to emerge. Is the Old Testament not only telling us that Jesus would someday come, but slowly showing us what He would come to do?

Investigation 1 – Why Did Joseph’s Brothers Use Blood as Evidence of Death?

We left Part 5 on Mount Moriah with something new in our investigation. Isaac was supposed to die, but God stopped Abraham and provided a ram that was offered “instead of his son.” We discovered substitution, yet Genesis 22 still did not explain why blood itself mattered. The ram certainly bled, but Abraham was never told to collect that blood, display it, or apply it to Isaac. So instead of jumping to Passover, I want to keep following the blood wherever Scripture takes us.

The next important appearance comes in Genesis 37. Joseph’s brothers hate him, seize him, remove his special garment, and eventually sell him to merchants traveling toward Egypt. Joseph is alive, but the brothers need Jacob to believe his beloved son is dead. Genesis 37:31 tells us what they do: they kill a young goat and dip Joseph’s coat in its blood. They deliberately choose blood as the evidence that will tell their father what supposedly happened.

When Jacob sees the garment, he immediately concludes that Joseph has been killed by a wild animal. But Joseph has not died. Joseph has not even bled. The blood Jacob sees belongs entirely to the goat. That makes this passage extremely useful to our investigation. Joseph’s brothers know that blood will communicate death. They do not need a body. They do not need Joseph’s actual blood. They know that a blood-covered garment will convince Jacob that a life has been taken.

This takes us back to Abel. After Cain murders his brother, God says Abel’s blood cries from the ground. Blood becomes a witness that a life has been violently taken. Genesis 9 then connects blood explicitly with life and with accountability for human life. Now Joseph’s brothers exploit that association. They use real blood from a real death to manufacture evidence of a death that never happened.

Notice what has happened since Genesis 22. On Moriah, an animal actually dies while a son lives. In Genesis 37, an animal again dies while a son lives, but its blood is displayed so that a father will believe the son died. These are not the same kind of event. Joseph’s goat is not a sacrifice, and Genesis never calls it a substitute. But the similarity is worth recording because we are investigating how Scripture develops the meaning of blood.

The contrast becomes even more interesting when we look ahead to Passover. In Genesis 37, an animal is killed, its blood is deliberately displayed, and a father concludes that his son is dead. At Passover, an animal will be killed, its blood will deliberately be displayed, and the firstborn son inside will remain alive. I would not claim Genesis 37 predicts Passover, because Scripture never explicitly makes that connection. But the reversal is remarkable: animal blood accompanies the supposed death of a son in one story and will later accompany the preservation of a son in another.

The fact that Joseph’s brothers use a goat is also worth documenting. Goats will eventually become important within Israel’s sacrificial system, especially on the Day of Atonement. But we cannot call this goat an atoning sacrifice. Nothing about Genesis 37 supports that conclusion. In fact, this blood is being used in a deception. It forgives nobody, cleanses nobody, and reconciles nobody to God.

That actually teaches us something important. Blood does not appear to function in Scripture as a magical substance that automatically produces a spiritual result. The blood on Joseph’s garment has meaning because of what it represents. Jacob sees blood and understands that life has apparently been lost. The physical blood points beyond itself to the life of the creature from which it came.

There is a strange irony here. The blood tells the truth and a lie at the same time. It truthfully declares that something died. A goat really was killed. But Jacob interprets the blood as evidence that Joseph died. The blood is real, the death is real, but the identity of the one who died is different from what Jacob believes.

That observation may become important later. Here we have the blood of one creature carrying significance concerning the presumed death of another. I do not want to call that substitution because the text does not. But it gives us another piece to carry forward: blood can visibly represent that death has occurred even when the person associated with that blood remains alive.

Joseph himself also deserves our attention. He is Jacob’s beloved son. His brothers reject him, strip him, remove him from his father, and sell him. Jacob believes him dead, yet Joseph remains alive. Eventually, the rejected son will become the very person through whom the brothers who harmed him are preserved during famine. That does not make every detail of Joseph’s story a prophecy of Jesus, but it does add another pattern worth watching.

This is the method I want to maintain throughout this investigation. I do not want to begin with Jesus and force Him backward into every Old Testament story. First, we determine what the passage actually tells us. Then we keep a record of the patterns that appear. If those patterns later converge in the New Testament description of Jesus, the cumulative evidence becomes much stronger.

So far, the pattern continues to grow. We have encountered a beloved son, rejection, apparent death, animal blood, and ultimately the preservation of the very people responsible for the son’s suffering. The Old Testament has not named Jesus here, but once again it contains categories that will later become familiar when we reach His story.

Most importantly for our central question, Genesis 37 has taught us something else about blood. Blood can function as visible testimony that life has been taken. Its significance is inseparable from life and death. That continues the trail we have been following since Abel and Noah.

But Joseph’s story is about to take us one step further. Years later, while Joseph is standing alive in front of his brothers without their recognizing him, they remember what they did and say that his “blood” is being required of them.

Joseph’s blood was never shed. Joseph is standing right there.

So how can his blood be required?

That question may reveal that biblical blood represents something even larger than death. It can represent accountability for what one human being has done to the life of another. That is where Investigation 2 takes us.

Investigation 2 – What Does “His Blood Is Required” Mean?

Genesis 37 showed us something important about blood without involving sacrifice or atonement. Joseph’s brothers killed a goat, dipped Joseph’s garment in its blood, and allowed Jacob to interpret that blood as evidence that his son had died. The blood belonged to an animal, but it communicated the apparent loss of a human life. Years later, Joseph’s story gives us an even stranger use of blood, because Joseph’s brothers begin talking about blood that was never actually shed.

By Genesis 42, famine has driven Joseph’s brothers into Egypt looking for food. They stand before Joseph without recognizing him. Joseph accuses them of being spies and places them under pressure. Suddenly, the brothers begin connecting their present trouble with what they did to Joseph years earlier. They say to one another that they are guilty concerning their brother because they saw the anguish of his soul when he begged them and they refused to listen.

Then Reuben responds in Genesis 42:22: “Spake I not unto you, saying, Do not sin against the child; and ye would not hear? therefore, behold, also his blood is required.”

That statement deserves our attention because Joseph is standing nearby listening to them.

Joseph is alive.

His brothers did not murder him. They sold him. The bloody garment shown to Jacob contained the blood of a goat, not Joseph. Yet Reuben describes their present situation by saying that Joseph’s “blood” is being required of them. That means “blood” can represent something larger than literal blood spilled from a body.

The language immediately takes us back to Genesis 9. After the Flood, God tells Noah that He will require an accounting for human lifeblood. Genesis 9:5 says, “And surely your blood of your lives will I require.” The passage then connects the shedding of human blood with accountability because humanity bears the image of God. Blood and responsibility for human life have already been joined together before Joseph is born.

Now Reuben uses remarkably similar language. Joseph’s brothers believe that what is happening to them is an accounting for what they did to their brother. They saw his distress, heard him pleading for mercy, and ignored him. Their guilt concerns the life they treated as disposable. Therefore Reuben can speak of Joseph’s “blood” being required even though Joseph survived.

This helps us understand something important about biblical blood language. Blood can become shorthand for responsibility for another person’s life. We still use similar language today when we say someone has “blood on their hands.” We do not necessarily mean their hands are physically covered with blood. We mean they bear responsibility for serious harm or death.

But Joseph’s case goes even further because his brothers did not actually kill him. They nevertheless recognize themselves as guilty concerning his life. They handed their brother over, ignored his cries, allowed their father to believe he was dead, and lived for years with the consequences of what they had done. In their minds, they had treated Joseph’s life in a way that placed them under judgment.

That gives us another development in our investigation. Abel’s blood cried from the ground after an actual murder. Genesis 9 established that God requires accountability for human blood. Genesis 37 showed blood being used as evidence of supposed death. Genesis 42 now uses “blood” to describe accountability for a life that was endangered and betrayed even though the person remained alive.

This strongly suggests that when Scripture speaks about blood, we should not automatically think only about the physical liquid. Blood represents life, and because it represents life, it can also represent responsibility for what has been done to that life.

That may eventually become extremely important when we reach atonement.

If blood represents life, then the later biblical emphasis upon sacrificial blood may not mean that God has some unexplained desire for blood itself. The question may instead concern the life represented by that blood. We cannot prove the full answer from Genesis 42, and we should not jump ahead to Leviticus. But the evidence is beginning to point consistently in one direction: the theological importance of blood appears inseparable from the importance of life.

There is also something remarkable happening within Joseph’s larger story. The brothers believe an accounting has finally arrived. They harmed Joseph, and now they believe they are experiencing judgment because of it. But the man who possesses the power to punish them is Joseph himself.

And Joseph eventually chooses mercy.

That matters when we are tracking the Old Testament patterns that will later appear in the work of Jesus. Joseph is the beloved son rejected by his own brothers. They hand him over and treat him as though his life does not matter. Yet through circumstances they could never have anticipated, Joseph is exalted to a position of authority. When famine arrives, the brothers who rejected him eventually depend upon him for their lives.

Most strikingly, Joseph knows exactly who they are while they do not know who he is. He hears them confess their guilt concerning what they did to him. He possesses the authority to condemn them, yet the story eventually moves toward reconciliation, provision, and preservation.

Again, I do not want to claim that Genesis 42 is secretly a direct prophecy of Jesus. Joseph is Joseph, and his story has its own historical and theological purpose. But the pattern we decided to track continues appearing: the rejected beloved son becomes the means by which the guilty people who rejected him are ultimately preserved.

That is worth writing down.

And notice where blood fits into that pattern. The brothers themselves believe Joseph’s “blood” demands an accounting. They recognize guilt and expect consequences. Yet the person whose blood they believe is being required is alive and will ultimately become the person through whom they survive.

That gives us an extraordinary tension between accountability and mercy. Their actions matter. Joseph does not pretend the betrayal never happened. Their consciences still accuse them years later. But their guilt does not become the end of their story.

This may eventually help us understand something about atonement that we are not yet ready to fully answer. Biblical forgiveness does not necessarily mean pretending that no wrong occurred. Joseph’s brothers are genuinely guilty. Their own words acknowledge it. Yet reconciliation eventually becomes possible without denying what they did.

For our investigation, however, the immediate discovery is simpler and very important. Blood has acquired another meaning.

Blood is life.

Shed blood testifies that life has been taken.

And “blood required” can represent accountability for what someone has done to another person’s life.

We still have not reached blood atonement. We still have not found God saying that blood removes sin. But the vocabulary is becoming clearer. Before Scripture explains what sacrificial blood does, it appears to be teaching us what blood means.

And before we leave Genesis for Exodus, Jacob will use blood language one more time in a completely different way. In his blessing over Judah, he speaks of garments washed in wine and clothing washed in the “blood of grapes.” That blood is not literal at all.

So why does Scripture call it blood, and why does that imagery appear in the blessing of Judah?

That is where Investigation 3 takes us.

Investigation 3 – Why Does Judah’s Blessing Speak of the “Blood of Grapes”?

Before leaving Genesis, there is one more appearance of the word “blood” that we cannot simply skip. It occurs in Genesis 49, when Jacob gathers his sons and speaks over them before his death. When he reaches Judah, the language suddenly becomes extraordinary. Jacob speaks about a ruler, a scepter, abundance of wine, garments washed in wine, and clothing washed in the “blood of grapes.” Unlike Joseph’s coat, this is not literal blood. But because our investigation is following the biblical meaning of blood carefully, we need to understand why the image appears here.

Genesis 49:10 says, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet.” Whatever questions surround the difficult Hebrew wording that follows, the passage clearly associates Judah with rule and authority. Then Jacob immediately moves into imagery of extraordinary agricultural abundance. Genesis 49:11 describes someone binding his donkey to the vine and washing his garments in wine, “and his clothes in the blood of grapes.”

The “blood of grapes” is wine or grape juice. Grapes obviously do not literally bleed. Their dark red juice provides the poetic comparison. We therefore have to distinguish this passage from everything we have previously examined. Abel’s blood was literal. The goat’s blood on Joseph’s coat was literal. Circumcision involved literal blood. The ram offered instead of Isaac literally died. But the “blood” in Genesis 49 is metaphorical.

That distinction actually helps our investigation. It demonstrates that by Genesis 49, “blood” is powerful enough as an image that it can be applied poetically to another liquid. The crushed grape releases something resembling blood, and the biblical writer can call that liquid the “blood of grapes.” The image works because blood already carries a recognizable association with the fluid of life.

But there is something unusual about the amount of wine described. Washing clothing in wine would ordinarily be absurdly wasteful. Wine is valuable. Yet Jacob describes such abundance that someone could figuratively wash garments in it. The picture appears to be one of overwhelming prosperity associated with Judah. The vines are abundant, the wine is abundant, and the land produces so richly that wine can be described almost as though it were water.

We need to resist an enormous temptation here. Christians reading Genesis 49 after the New Testament naturally notice Judah, kingship, wine, blood, and garments and immediately think of Jesus. Jesus comes from Judah. Jesus is presented as king. At the Last Supper, Jesus takes wine and identifies it with His blood. Revelation also contains striking imagery involving garments, blood, and the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Those connections are real parts of the later Christian biblical world, but Genesis 49 itself does not say that the “blood of grapes” is Jesus’ blood.

So our method matters. We first establish what Genesis says before asking what later Scripture does with the imagery.

In its immediate setting, Jacob is blessing Judah. Judah will possess a position of leadership among the tribes, and his future is described using imagery of prosperity and wine. The blood of grapes belongs first to that picture. We do not need to transform wine into literal sacrificial blood to make the passage important.

But once we establish that, something genuinely interesting remains. Judah has now become associated with three categories that will later become central to the New Testament description of Jesus: kingship, wine, and blood imagery. Genesis does not yet combine these things into Christian theology. It simply places them together within Judah’s blessing.

That is exactly the kind of evidence we decided to watch.

We are not searching the Old Testament merely for places where someone predicts a future individual by name. We are watching Scripture build categories. If those categories repeatedly appear independently and then eventually converge upon one person, that cumulative pattern becomes significant.

The Judah connection becomes especially important because the New Testament explicitly identifies Jesus with this tribe. Hebrews 7:14 says that “our Lord sprang out of Juda.” Revelation 5:5 calls Him “the Lion of the tribe of Juda.” So the connection between Jesus and Judah is not something Christians invented merely because Genesis 49 mentions wine. The New Testament explicitly places Jesus inside Judah’s line.

Then consider what Jesus eventually does with wine. At the Last Supper, He takes the cup and identifies it with His blood of the covenant. We should not claim that Genesis 49:11 was secretly describing the Last Supper unless the text gives us reason to do so. But from the perspective of the completed Christian canon, the imagery becomes difficult not to notice. Judah is associated with the ruler. Judah’s blessing contains wine described as the “blood of grapes.” Centuries later, the ruler Christians identify as coming from Judah takes the fruit of the vine and uses it to represent His blood.

That does not prove our case by itself.

But it belongs in the evidence file.

And this is exactly why our decision not to skip verses matters. Had we jumped directly from Genesis 22 to Passover, we would have missed something subtle. Genesis is not only teaching us about literal blood. It has now demonstrated that blood has become a conceptual image capable of representing something beyond itself.

There may also be a connection to what we discovered in Joseph’s story. Joseph’s brothers used literal animal blood to communicate something about a human life. Reuben then used “blood” as language for accountability even though Joseph’s blood was never actually shed. Now Jacob uses “blood” metaphorically for wine. The meaning of blood in biblical language is already expanding beyond simply identifying the substance flowing through veins.

Yet the underlying idea continues to return to life. Blood belongs to living creatures. When blood is shed, life is threatened or lost. When another red liquid is poetically called “blood,” the comparison works because everyone understands what blood looks like and what it represents.

That makes the next movement into Exodus even more important. We have now reached the end of Genesis without finding a verse saying that God requires blood because blood magically erases sin. Instead, we have discovered blood associated with life, murder, accountability, covenant, circumcision, substitution, evidence of death, responsibility for another person’s life, and finally poetic imagery.

Then Exodus begins.

And almost immediately, the investigation becomes much stranger.

God commissions Moses to confront Pharaoh. God identifies Israel as His “firstborn son.” God warns that 

Pharaoh’s firstborn will die if Pharaoh refuses to release His son. Then, before Moses even reaches Egypt, the Lord encounters him at a lodging place and apparently seeks to kill him.

Zipporah responds by taking a sharp stone and circumcising her son.

Blood enters the story.

And the threatened death stops.

That is where our investigation must slow down considerably, because for the first time before Passover, covenant blood appears directly beside a divine threat of death followed by release. If we are trying to understand why God eventually says, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you,” Exodus may have placed an important clue immediately before us.

That is where Investigation 4 begins.

Investigation 4 – Why Did God Try to Kill Moses?

Now we reach one of the strangest passages in the Old Testament. Moses has encountered God at the burning bush. God has commissioned him to return to Egypt, confront Pharaoh, and lead Israel out of slavery. Moses finally begins the journey, and then Exodus 4:24 suddenly says, “And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him.” The man God has just chosen to deliver Israel is apparently confronted by God Himself with death.

The passage becomes even stranger because the Hebrew does not explicitly identify the person God intends to kill. English translations commonly make us assume it is Moses because Moses has been the subject of the preceding narrative. But the Hebrew uses pronouns: the LORD encountered “him” and sought to kill “him.” Some interpreters understand Moses as the threatened person, while others have argued that one of Moses’ sons is intended. We cannot honestly claim certainty where the text does not give it.

What happens next, however, is much clearer. Zipporah takes a sharp stone, circumcises her son, touches the foreskin to someone’s “feet,” and declares, “Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.” Exodus then says, “So he let him go.” Something Zipporah does causes the deadly encounter to end. Whatever mysteries remain concerning the identities of the pronouns, the narrative sequence is unmistakable: threatened death, circumcision, blood, and release.

Why circumcision? To answer that, we have to return to Genesis 17. God commanded Abraham that every male belonging to the covenant community was to be circumcised. God called circumcision “a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.” More importantly, Genesis 17:14 warned that an uncircumcised male had broken God’s covenant and was to be “cut off from his people.” Circumcision was therefore not an optional family tradition. It was the bodily sign God had commanded for Abraham’s descendants.

That makes Moses’ situation serious. Moses is preparing to become the human representative through whom God will confront Pharaoh concerning God’s covenant people, yet apparently something involving the covenant sign remains unresolved within Moses’ own household. Traditional Jewish interpretation commonly understood the crisis this way: Moses had delayed circumcising his son, and the deadly encounter occurred because of that neglect. The biblical text itself does not explicitly state, “God sought to kill Moses because his son was uncircumcised,” so we need to distinguish the traditional explanation from what Exodus directly says. Nevertheless, Zipporah’s immediate circumcision of the child strongly indicates that circumcision is the issue at the center of the crisis.

Then we encounter the mysterious expression “bridegroom of blood.” The Hebrew phrase is ḥatan damim. Exactly what Zipporah means has been debated for centuries. It could refer to Moses as a bridegroom associated with blood because of the circumcision, or it may preserve older language connected with kinship and circumcision. Exodus itself offers only a small clarification, saying that Zipporah spoke concerning the circumcision. We should therefore resist pretending we can solve every detail.

But our investigation does not require us to solve every grammatical mystery before recognizing what happens narratively. A death threat exists. Zipporah performs the covenant sign involving the cutting of flesh. Blood necessarily accompanies that act. Then the threatened person is released. This is the first point we need to write down.

Something even more important appears when we look immediately backward. Just before this strange encounter, God tells Moses exactly what he must say to Pharaoh: “Israel is my son, even my firstborn.” Then God warns Pharaoh, “Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.”

Then comes the Bridegroom of Blood.

That placement deserves our attention. Exodus has just introduced a conflict involving a firstborn son and threatened death. Immediately afterward, Moses’ own household enters a mysterious encounter involving threatened death, a son, the Abrahamic covenant sign, blood, and release. We cannot prove from the placement alone that the author intends every detail to parallel Passover, but we would be poor investigators if we ignored the sequence.

And now look at what will happen later in Exodus 12. Firstborn sons throughout Egypt will face death. Israelite households will receive a command from God involving blood. Those who obey will remain inside their houses behind that blood. The destroyer will not strike them. Once again, we will encounter God’s command, blood, threatened death, and release.

That means Passover does not introduce this pattern completely without preparation.

Before blood appears on the doors of Israel, Exodus has already given us a smaller and much more mysterious episode where covenant obedience involving blood immediately precedes escape from threatened death.

We should be very careful with the word “atonement” here. Exodus 4 never says Zipporah’s action atoned for Moses’ sins. It never calls the circumcision a sacrifice. There is no altar, no priest, no animal victim, and no declaration that blood has removed guilt. If we call this blood atonement, we would be importing a later category that Exodus itself does not give us.

But neither should we minimize what the passage does give us. Circumcision represents belonging to the Abrahamic covenant. That covenant sign had been neglected or remained incomplete within Moses’ household. When the crisis comes, Zipporah performs the commanded sign, and the threat ends.

This may tell us something important about the blood we are eventually trying to understand. The blood is not acting independently of God’s word. Zipporah does not randomly cut someone and discover that blood has magical power over God. She performs something God had already commanded as the sign of His covenant with Abraham. The significance lies in blood associated with obedience to God’s covenant command.

That distinction will become extremely important at Passover. The Israelites will not discover on their own that animal blood frightens away death. God will tell them exactly what animal to take, when to kill it, where to place its blood, what to eat, and where to remain. The blood will have significance because God assigns significance to it within a covenant command.

And something else is beginning to emerge. The pattern we have been tracking toward Jesus continues developing without Jesus being named. We already have the beloved son, substitution, the sacrifice God provides, covenant, blood, accountability, and life preserved while another life is given. Now Exodus adds blood associated with covenant obedience standing beside threatened death and release.

We should not say Exodus 4 is secretly a prediction of the crucifixion. That would go beyond the evidence. But the Old Testament continues constructing categories that the New Testament will eventually bring together in Christ. The work is appearing before the worker is identified.

And the placement of this episode makes the next investigation especially important. God has just called Israel His “firstborn son.” He has warned Pharaoh that a firstborn son will die. Then, almost immediately, Moses’ own household experiences a mysterious encounter involving a son, covenant blood, threatened death, and release.

Why did Exodus put those scenes beside each other?

That is where Investigation 5 takes us.

Investigation 5 – Why Does the Bridegroom of Blood Follow the Firstborn Warning?

The location of the Bridegroom of Blood story may be just as important as the story itself. Exodus 4:24–26 does not appear randomly somewhere in Moses’ life. Immediately before it, God gives Moses a message for Pharaoh that introduces one of the central themes of the coming Passover: the firstborn son. God says, “Israel is my son, even my firstborn,” and then warns Pharaoh, “Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.”

Then, almost without warning, the story moves to the lodging place. Someone in Moses’ household comes under a divine threat of death. Zipporah circumcises her son, blood is shed through the covenant sign, she speaks of a “bridegroom of blood,” and the threatened person is released. The sequence is difficult to ignore: firstborn son, threatened death, covenant, son, blood, release from death. Those ideas appear together before Moses even reaches Pharaoh.

This becomes more significant when we remember Genesis 17. Circumcision was God’s commanded sign of His covenant with Abraham and Abraham’s descendants. Moses is now being sent to rescue the descendants of Abraham because God has remembered His covenant with them. Yet before Moses can act as God’s representative to the covenant nation, his own household encounters a crisis involving that very covenant sign. Whatever uncertainty remains about exactly whom God threatened to kill, circumcision resolves the crisis.

There may therefore be a profound principle operating here: Moses cannot demand covenant accountability from Pharaoh while neglecting covenant accountability in his own house. Moses is preparing to tell Pharaoh that Pharaoh must obey God’s command concerning His son, Israel. Yet Moses himself apparently has an unresolved matter concerning God’s command about his own son. Before judgment comes upon Pharaoh’s household, Moses’ household is confronted first.

That possibility becomes especially striking because of what Moses is about to demand. Pharaoh must “let my son go.” God’s firstborn belongs to God. Pharaoh does not have the right to hold what belongs to Him. Yet circumcision likewise marked Abraham’s male descendants as belonging to God’s covenant. Moses is therefore being sent to speak about God’s claim upon one son while his own family apparently has not completed the sign acknowledging God’s covenant claim upon another.

We need to identify that as an interpretation rather than something Exodus explicitly explains. The text never says, “This happened because Moses could not judge Pharaoh while neglecting his own household.” But the placement of the two episodes makes the relationship worth examining. The firstborn warning occurs in Exodus 4:22–23. The deadly encounter begins immediately in verse 24. There is no unrelated story separating them.

Now compare this carefully with what will happen at Passover. In Exodus 12, death will threaten the firstborn throughout Egypt. God will command Israelite households to kill an animal and place its blood upon their doors. God will then say that when He sees the blood, He will pass over them, and the plague will not destroy them. Once again, blood associated with obedience to God’s command appears at the boundary between threatened death and continued life.

The similarity does not mean circumcision and Passover are identical. At the lodging place, the blood comes from circumcision. At Passover, it comes from a slain animal. Exodus 4 involves Moses’ household; Exodus 12 involves an entire nation. Exodus 4 never calls the blood a sign, while Exodus 12 explicitly does. But the narrative movement is remarkably similar: God’s command matters, death threatens, blood appears, and death does not complete its claim.

This gives us a possible answer to something we have been wondering about. Passover may not suddenly introduce the idea that blood can stand at the boundary between life and death. Exodus has already shown us something resembling that pattern. The Bridegroom of Blood may function as a smaller household crisis preparing us for the much larger household crisis coming across Egypt.

And there is another connection we should not overlook. Circumcision and Passover eventually become directly connected in biblical law. Exodus 12:48 says that an uncircumcised male may not participate in the Passover. If a foreigner wants to keep Passover to the Lord, the males of his household must first be circumcised. The two signs are therefore not completely unrelated institutions. Covenant membership through circumcision becomes a requirement for participation in Passover.

That makes Exodus 4 even more interesting. Before Israel celebrates the first Passover, Moses’ own household experiences a crisis centered upon circumcision. Then Exodus 12 later explicitly joins circumcision and Passover by determining who may participate in the meal. The covenant sign established with Abraham remains relevant when God delivers Abraham’s descendants from Egypt.

Something else is emerging that may eventually matter enormously when we reach Jesus. Notice that blood is repeatedly connected not merely with death but with belonging. Circumcision marks someone within the Abrahamic covenant. Passover blood will identify households responding faithfully to God’s command. Later, covenant itself will be ratified with blood at Sinai. The developing biblical story seems to be bringing blood, covenant identity, and life increasingly close together.

This is where our larger observation about Jesus becomes important. We are watching the Old Testament establish the work before identifying the worker. We already have a beloved son in Isaac, a substitute provided by God, blood representing life, accountability for blood, covenant marked in flesh, and now blood appearing in a covenant context where threatened death ends. Soon Passover will add deliverance from judgment through the blood of a slain animal.

Then consider where the New Testament eventually takes these categories. Jesus will speak about the “blood of the covenant.” Paul will call Christ “our passover.” The New Testament will describe redemption through His blood and present His death as giving life to others. Those ideas will not suddenly appear without biblical background. The vocabulary required to understand them is already being constructed.

But we should not rush there yet. The strength of this investigation comes from allowing the Old Testament evidence to develop before using the New Testament to interpret everything backward. Right now, Exodus has given us something remarkable enough on its own.

God identifies Israel as His firstborn son.

God warns that Pharaoh’s firstborn will die.

Immediately afterward, Moses’ household encounters threatened death.

Circumcision is performed.

Blood appears.

The threat ends.

And later, when the firstborn throughout Egypt actually face death, God will once again give instructions involving blood.

That sequence deserves to remain in our evidence file.

The Bridegroom of Blood therefore may not be a strange interruption in the Exodus story at all. Its placement may prepare us for what comes next by reminding us that Moses, Israel, and Pharaoh all stand beneath God’s authority. Being chosen by God does not mean His covenant commands can simply be ignored. Moses himself encounters this reality before he ever delivers God’s warning to Pharaoh.

And now we are approaching an important turning point. We have followed blood through Genesis and into the opening chapters of Exodus, and the pieces are beginning to accumulate: life, accountability, covenant, substitution, sonship, threatened death, and deliverance.

Before entering Passover, we need to put those pieces together and ask whether something larger has already been constructed.

Because the Old Testament still has not named Jesus.

But it may already be showing us what He will come to do.

Investigation 6 – Has the Old Testament Already Begun Showing Us What Jesus Will Do?

We began this series with one question: why did God choose blood? But as I have followed the evidence through Genesis and into Exodus, another pattern has become increasingly difficult to ignore. The Old Testament is not merely mentioning blood repeatedly. It appears to be establishing, piece by piece, concepts that the New Testament will eventually bring together in Jesus Christ. His name has not appeared in these passages, but much of the work He will eventually accomplish is already being defined.

I want to be careful about what I mean. I am not saying every animal, every drop of blood, or every unusual event in Genesis is secretly a direct prophecy about Jesus. That would allow us to make the Bible say almost anything. Instead, I have been trying to understand each passage first in its own setting. Only after establishing what the passage actually says can we ask whether the same function later appears in Jesus. When we do that, something remarkable begins emerging.

Go back to Abel. His innocent blood is shed, and God says that blood cries from the ground. Blood becomes a witness that a life has been taken and that injustice demands an accounting. After the Flood, God makes the connection even clearer. Genesis 9 associates blood with life and declares that human blood will be required. Before Scripture ever develops a sacrificial system, it has already taught us that blood represents life and that the taking of life creates accountability.

Then Abraham’s story adds covenant and substitution. Animals die during the covenant ceremony of Genesis 15, although their blood is not called atoning blood. Circumcision then places God’s covenant sign into human flesh. Finally, on Moriah, Isaac occupies the place of sacrifice until God stops Abraham and provides a ram that is offered “instead of his son.” One life is given while another life walks away.

That is a major step toward understanding the work the New Testament will eventually attribute to Christ. Jesus will not merely teach people about God. The New Testament will describe His life as being given for others. But the concept that one life can be given while another lives did not suddenly appear at Calvary. The category of substitution had already appeared centuries earlier.

Joseph then adds another layer. His brothers use an animal’s blood as evidence that a beloved son has died, even though Joseph remains alive. Later, those same brothers speak about Joseph’s “blood” being required of them even though they never actually killed him. Blood has now become language not only for physical life but also for accountability concerning what has been done to another person’s life.

Joseph himself presents another pattern worth recording. He is a beloved son rejected by his own people. He suffers because of them, is removed from them, and eventually rises to a position from which he can preserve the lives of those responsible for his suffering. Joseph does not become Jesus, and his story does not cease being about Joseph. But the structure is now in the biblical record before the New Testament ever tells us about Christ.

Then we reached Exodus 4. God identifies Israel as His “firstborn son” and warns Pharaoh concerning the death of his firstborn. Immediately afterward comes the mysterious Bridegroom of Blood episode. Someone faces a divine threat of death, Zipporah performs the covenant sign of circumcision, blood is shed, and the threatened person is released. Once again, we cannot call this atonement because Exodus does not. But covenant, blood, threatened death, and continued life now occupy the same scene.

Look at what has accumulated before Passover even begins. We have innocent blood crying for justice. We have blood representing life. We have accountability for blood. We have covenant. We have covenant marked in flesh. We have a beloved promised son. We have a substitute offered instead of that son. We have God providing the substitute. We have a rejected beloved son eventually preserving those who wronged him. And now we have covenant blood appearing beside threatened death and release.

The Old Testament has not yet said, “This is Jesus.”

But it has already begun constructing His job description.

That distinction may be one of the most important discoveries in this entire investigation. Biblical foresight does not have to consist only of statements such as, “A man named Jesus will someday do this.” Scripture can establish patterns, institutions, problems, and solutions before revealing the person in whom they ultimately converge. The work can be described before the worker arrives.

And we have barely entered Exodus. Passover will add a slain animal whose blood stands between the firstborn and death. Sinai will add covenant blood. The sacrificial system will introduce offerings dealing explicitly with sin and guilt. Leviticus will eventually tell us directly that the life of the flesh is in the blood and that God has given it upon the altar for atonement. The Day of Atonement will bring sacrifice, blood, priesthood, cleansing, and access to God’s presence together. The prophets will add still more.

Only after those categories exist does Jesus arrive.

That is what we need to watch throughout the remaining parts of this series. We should maintain two separate columns in our investigation. First: what did the Old Testament passage actually establish? Second: does the New Testament eventually say Jesus performs that same function? If the answer repeatedly becomes yes without forcing the passages, then the cumulative case becomes much more powerful than any isolated similarity.

The New Testament itself encourages this approach in certain places. Paul explicitly calls Christ “our passover” in 1 Corinthians 5:7. Jesus speaks of His blood in covenant language. Hebrews connects Christ with sacrifice, priesthood, covenant, blood, and access to God. John presents Jesus as the Lamb of God. These writers are not inventing those categories. They are applying already-existing biblical categories to Jesus.

That may eventually answer a question larger than why God chose blood. Why did God spend so much of the Old Testament establishing these strange rituals, sacrifices, signs, sons, substitutes, covenants, priests, and blood ceremonies?

Perhaps because when Jesus finally came, humanity needed a vocabulary capable of explaining what He was doing.

Without Genesis 22, what does it mean for one life to be given for another? Without Passover, what does deliverance through the blood of a slain lamb mean? Without covenant, what does Jesus mean by the blood of the new covenant? Without the priesthood and altar, what does Hebrews mean when it describes Christ as priest and sacrifice? Without the Day of Atonement, what does it mean to enter God’s presence through His blood?

The Old Testament establishes the language before the New Testament announces the fulfillment.

We are not ready to declare the case finished. In fact, doing so now would damage the investigation. We need to continue testing this pattern passage by passage. Perhaps some connections will fail. Perhaps others will prove stronger than we expect. We should let Scripture determine that rather than deciding the conclusion in advance.

But after following the evidence this far, we now have a second question running beside “Why did God choose blood?”

Did God spend the Old Testament showing humanity what His Son would eventually come to do?

We are about to reach Passover, and that may provide our strongest evidence yet. An animal will die. Its blood will be displayed. Judgment will come. The firstborn behind that blood will live. And centuries later, the New Testament will explicitly call Jesus our Passover.

The Old Testament still has not spoken His earthly name.

But the work is already appearing.

And now we are finally ready to examine the night when God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

What We Learned Today

Today we discovered that the road from Mount Moriah to Passover contains evidence we could not afford to skip. Blood continues developing in meaning before God ever tells Israel to place it upon their doors. Scripture appears to be teaching us what blood represents before it finally explains what blood will accomplish.

Joseph’s story gave us two important pieces. His brothers killed a goat and placed its blood on Joseph’s garment because they knew Jacob would interpret blood as evidence that his son had died. Yet Joseph was alive. Later, those same brothers said Joseph’s “blood” was being required of them even though they had never actually shed it. Blood had become language for something larger than the physical substance itself. It represented life, the apparent loss of life, and accountability for what had been done to another person’s life.

Then Genesis 49 gave us the poetic expression “blood of grapes.” It was not literal blood, and we resisted forcing Christian theology into the passage. But Judah’s blessing placed kingship, wine, and blood imagery together long before the New Testament. That became another piece to preserve rather than exaggerate.

The greatest discovery came in Exodus 4. Immediately after God calls Israel His “firstborn son” and warns Pharaoh that his own firstborn will die, someone in Moses’ household comes under a divine threat of death. Zipporah circumcises her son according to the covenant sign established with Abraham, blood is shed, and the threat ends. We cannot honestly call that blood atonement because Exodus never does. But we can observe the sequence: covenant, son, blood, threatened death, and release.

That means Passover will not introduce these ideas out of nowhere. Before we reach the blood-covered doors of Egypt, Scripture has already connected blood with life, accountability, covenant, substitution, belonging, threatened death, and deliverance. The meaning is accumulating one piece at a time.

But perhaps the biggest thing we learned today concerns Jesus. The Old Testament appears to be establishing the work before identifying the worker. We have already encountered the beloved son, the rejected son, the substitute, the sacrifice God provides, covenant, blood, accountability, judgment, mercy, and life preserved in the face of death. Jesus has not yet been named, but categories that the New Testament will eventually bring together in Him are already appearing.

That does not prove that every earlier story is secretly about Jesus, and we will not force that conclusion. Our method remains the same: establish what each Old Testament passage means first, then determine whether the New Testament later identifies Jesus as accomplishing the same work.

If this pattern continues through Passover, Sinai, the sacrificial system, the priesthood, the Day of Atonement, and the prophets, then we may reach an extraordinary conclusion by Part 19. The Old Testament did not merely announce that someone was coming. It spent centuries explaining what He would come to do.

And now we are finally ready for Passover. For the first time, God will deliberately command people to take the blood of a slain animal, display it where He says, and trust His promise that death will not enter.

The question waiting for us is no longer merely why something had to die.

It is why God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

Questions for the Next Episode

We have finally reached Passover, but now the investigation becomes more difficult. God is about to command each Israelite household to select an animal, kill it, take its blood, and place that blood upon the two side posts and the upper doorpost of the house. Why? If God simply wanted to distinguish Israel from Egypt, He could have chosen almost any sign. Why specifically require the blood of a life that had just been killed?

We also need to determine exactly what was happening to the firstborn. Were the Israelite firstborn automatically protected because they belonged to God’s chosen people, or were they genuinely exposed to the coming judgment unless their household obeyed God’s command? Exodus says, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” If belonging to Israel alone was sufficient, why was blood necessary?

Then there is the animal itself. Did the Passover animal actually die instead of the firstborn? Genesis 22 explicitly told us that the ram was offered “instead of” Isaac. Exodus 12 must be examined just as carefully. If a firstborn life was threatened, an animal died, its blood was displayed, and the firstborn lived, are we seeing substitution again? Or are we reading something into Passover that Exodus itself does not say?

We also need to investigate why killing the animal was not enough. God required the blood to be removed from the animal and placed somewhere specific. That means there appears to be a difference between the death of the animal and the application of its blood. Why did the blood need to be visible on the doorway? What did that blood represent that the dead animal alone did not?

And what exactly did God mean by “When I see the blood”? God obviously knew which homes contained Israelites. He did not need blood to locate His people. Was He seeing evidence of obedience? Covenant belonging? A life already given? Was the blood marking a boundary beyond which death would not pass? We need to examine the text before deciding.

Most importantly, we need to continue tracking the pattern concerning Jesus. If Passover establishes that a slain animal’s blood stands between people and death, does the New Testament later apply that specific function to Christ? Paul eventually calls Christ “our passover.” If that connection is explicit, then something extraordinary is happening. The Old Testament may once again establish the work centuries before the New Testament identifies the One who fulfills it.

Part 7 therefore has one central question beneath all the others. When God looked upon those blood-covered doors and declared that death would pass over the people inside, what exactly did the blood mean to Him?

Because if we can answer that from Scripture rather than assumption, we may finally be getting much closer to answering the question that started this entire investigation: Why did God choose blood?

Evidence & Scripture

Genesis 9:4–6 establishes one of the foundations for everything discovered in this episode. God connects blood with life and then speaks about requiring an accounting for human blood. This gives us two concepts that continue appearing later: blood represents life, and responsibility exists for what happens to human life.

Genesis 17:9–14 establishes circumcision as the physical sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants. God commands that the covenant be marked in their flesh and warns that the uncircumcised male has broken the covenant. This becomes essential background for understanding why circumcision suddenly becomes a matter of life and death in Exodus 4.

Genesis 22:7–8 records Isaac asking Abraham where the animal for the burnt offering is. Abraham answers that God will provide the offering. This establishes the theme of divine provision that becomes important when the ram eventually appears.

Genesis 22:10–13 records God stopping Abraham before Isaac is killed and Abraham discovering the ram. The ram is then offered “in the stead of his son.” This is the clearest substitutionary statement encountered before Part 6: one life is offered while another life is preserved.

Genesis 37:23–28 establishes that Joseph is not killed by his brothers. He is stripped of his garment, placed in the pit, and eventually sold. This matters because the blood that subsequently appears on Joseph’s garment cannot possibly be Joseph’s blood.

Genesis 37:31–33 records Joseph’s brothers killing a young goat, dipping Joseph’s garment in its blood, and presenting the garment to Jacob. Jacob sees the blood and concludes that Joseph has been killed by a wild animal. Animal blood therefore functions as visible evidence of the presumed death of a son who is actually still alive.

Genesis 42:21–22 gives us one of the most important pieces of evidence in Part 6. Joseph’s brothers remember his anguish and recognize their guilt concerning what they did to him. Reuben then says, “therefore, behold, also his blood is required.” Joseph is alive and standing near them, demonstrating that “blood” can function as language for accountability concerning another person’s life even when that person’s literal blood was not shed.

Genesis 45:4–8 later confirms both Joseph’s identity and his survival while revealing the larger outcome of the story. The brother whom they rejected and sold eventually becomes the person positioned to preserve life during famine. Joseph himself interprets his circumstances through God’s providence, saying that God sent him ahead “to preserve life.”

Genesis 49:8–10 establishes Judah’s association with leadership and royal authority. Jacob speaks of Judah’s brothers praising him and declares that “the sceptre shall not depart from Judah.” This becomes relevant to our secondary investigation because later Scripture will associate the messianic royal line with Judah.

Genesis 49:11–12 contains the expression “the blood of grapes.” In its immediate context this is poetic language associated with wine and abundance rather than literal sacrificial blood. Its importance to this investigation is primarily linguistic: Scripture can use “blood” metaphorically rather than always referring to physical bloodshed.

Exodus 2:11–15 records Moses killing an Egyptian and fleeing Egypt. Some interpreters have proposed that Moses’ earlier bloodshed may contribute to understanding the deadly encounter of Exodus 4:24–26. However, Exodus itself never explicitly states that God confronts Moses in Exodus 4 because he killed the Egyptian, so this should remain a possible interpretation rather than a conclusion.

Exodus 2:23–25 provides essential covenant context. God hears Israel’s groaning under Egyptian slavery and “remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” Moses’ mission therefore unfolds within the covenant established in Genesis rather than beginning an unrelated story.

Exodus 3:6–10 records God’s commissioning of Moses to deliver Israel. This makes the later deadly encounter particularly startling. The man whom God has just appointed as His instrument of deliverance suddenly finds himself or someone within his household under divine threat.

Exodus 4:18–20 records Moses beginning his return to Egypt with his family. This establishes the immediate setting for the Bridegroom of Blood episode and confirms that the strange encounter occurs while Moses is traveling to carry out God’s commission.

Exodus 4:21–23 introduces the firstborn theme immediately before the Bridegroom of Blood incident. God commands Moses to tell Pharaoh, “Israel is my son, even my firstborn,” and warns that if Pharaoh refuses to release God’s son, “I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.” The placement is significant because the very next episode involves a son, threatened death, circumcision, and blood.

Exodus 4:24–26 is the central passage of Part 6. The Lord encounters “him” and seeks to kill “him,” but the Hebrew pronouns leave uncertainty concerning precisely who is threatened. Zipporah takes a sharp stone, circumcises her son, touches the foreskin to the “feet,” and speaks of a “bloody husband” or “bridegroom of blood.” The passage then says, “So he let him go.” Whatever interpretation is adopted concerning the difficult details, the narrative clearly places threatened death, circumcision, covenant blood, and release together.

Exodus 4:26 also explicitly connects Zipporah’s unusual expression with circumcision. This strengthens the conclusion that the covenant sign established in Genesis 17 lies at the center of the encounter, even though the passage never explicitly states why the circumcision had previously not been performed.

Exodus 12:1–13 provides the destination toward which Part 6 has been moving but should be investigated fully in Part 7. God commands Israel to kill the Passover animal, take its blood, and place it upon the two side posts and upper doorpost. God then declares, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you.” Blood is no longer merely present after a death; God specifically commands its application and assigns meaning to it.

Exodus 12:43–49 later establishes an important connection between circumcision and Passover. An uncircumcised male cannot participate in the Passover meal. A foreigner wishing to participate must have the males of his household circumcised. The Abrahamic covenant sign and Passover therefore become explicitly connected within Israel’s law.

First Corinthians 5:7 provides an important control for our developing Christological investigation because Paul explicitly identifies Christ with Passover imagery: “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” This means the later Christian connection between Jesus and Passover is not dependent solely upon modern comparison; the New Testament itself makes the association.

Hebrews 7:14 explicitly identifies Jesus with Judah: “For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda.” This allows us to document the later connection between Jesus and the tribe blessed with royal imagery in Genesis 49 without claiming that every detail of Judah’s blessing must therefore be a direct prophecy about Christ.

Revelation 5:5 likewise identifies Jesus with the royal line of Judah through the title “the Lion of the tribe of Juda.” This strengthens the later canonical connection between the Judah imagery established in Genesis and the New Testament identification of Christ.

The evidence at the end of Part 6 therefore leaves us with a developing chain rather than a completed doctrine. Blood represents life and accountability in Genesis 9. Animal blood becomes evidence of presumed death in Genesis 37. Joseph’s “blood” represents accountability even though Joseph remains alive in Genesis 42. Circumcision establishes covenant belonging, and Exodus 4 places that covenant sign and its blood inside a scene of threatened death followed by release. Only after all of this does Exodus 12 command blood to be displayed as the sign associated with deliverance from death.

And alongside that blood trail, another trail is becoming visible. The Old Testament has already established beloved sons, rejection, covenant, substitution, divine provision, blood, accountability, threatened death, and preservation of life. The New Testament will eventually identify Jesus with several of those functions explicitly. That does not permit us to turn every earlier passage into a direct prophecy, but it gives us a pattern worth continuing to test: the Old Testament may be establishing the work long before it identifies the One who will ultimately accomplish it.

Bibliography

• Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. 3 vols. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.
• Blenkinsopp, Joseph. “Did Moses Marry a Cushite? Exodus 4:24–26 and Numbers 12:1.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 69, no. 4 (2007): 625–642.
• Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996.
• Cassuto, Umberto. A Commentary on the Book of Exodus. Translated by Israel Abrahams. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1967.
• Childs, Brevard S. The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary. Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974.
• Durham, John I. Exodus. Word Biblical Commentary 3. Waco, TX: Word Books, 1987.
• Fretheim, Terence E. Exodus. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1991.
• Hamilton, Victor P. Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011.
• Hamilton, Victor P. The Book of Genesis: Chapters 18–50. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995.
• Houtman, Cornelis. Exodus. Vol. 1. Historical Commentary on the Old Testament. Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Publishing House, 1993.
• Jewish Publication Society. Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985.
• Meyers, Carol. Exodus. New Cambridge Bible Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Propp, William H. C. “That Bloody Bridegroom (Exodus IV 24–6).” Vetus Testamentum 43, no. 4 (1993): 495–518.
• Propp, William H. C. Exodus 1–18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible 2. New York: Doubleday, 1999.
• Sarna, Nahum M. Exodus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation. JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991.
• Sarna, Nahum M. Genesis: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation. JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989.
• The Holy Bible. King James Version. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• The Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version. New York: National Council of Churches, 1989.
• The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English. Translated by Lancelot C. L. Brenton. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1986.
• Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus. In The Aramaic Bible. Translated by Michael Maher. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994.
• Waltke, Bruce K., with Cathi J. Fredricks. Genesis: A Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001.
• Wenham, Gordon J. Genesis 16–50. Word Biblical Commentary 2. Dallas: Word Books, 1994.
• Westermann, Claus. Genesis 37–50: A Commentary. Translated by John J. Scullion. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986.

Endnotes

1. Genesis 9:4–6 establishes the early biblical connection between blood and life. God prohibits consuming flesh with its life, identified with its blood, and immediately speaks of requiring an accounting for human blood. This passage remains foundational for the investigation because blood is associated with life before Scripture develops the later sacrificial system.
2. Genesis 17:9–14 identifies circumcision as the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants. The uncircumcised male is described as having broken the covenant and is to be “cut off from his people.” This provides the essential covenant background for the circumcision crisis in Exodus 4.
3. Genesis 22:7–8 records Isaac asking Abraham where the animal for the burnt offering is. Abraham answers that God will provide the offering. This introduces the theme of divine provision that reaches its immediate fulfillment when Abraham discovers the ram.
4. Genesis 22:10–13 records God stopping Abraham before Isaac is killed. Abraham then sees the ram and offers it “in the stead of his son.” The text therefore explicitly establishes substitution: Isaac lives while another life occupies the sacrificial position.
5. Genesis 37:23–28 makes clear that Joseph is alive when his brothers sell him. This is essential for interpreting the blood appearing several verses later. Joseph’s blood was not shed when the brothers produced the evidence of his supposed death.
6. Genesis 37:31–33 records Joseph’s brothers slaughtering a young goat and dipping Joseph’s garment in its blood. Jacob sees the blood-covered garment and concludes that Joseph has been killed by a wild animal. The animal’s blood functions as evidence of the supposed death of a son who remains alive.
7. The goat in Genesis 37 should not be described as a sacrificial substitute for Joseph. Genesis provides no altar, divine command, offering, or atoning function. The importance of the passage for this investigation is that the blood of one creature is deliberately used to signify the presumed death of another.
8. Genesis 42:21 records Joseph’s brothers acknowledging their guilt concerning Joseph. They specifically remember seeing “the anguish of his soul” and refusing to listen when he pleaded with them. Their present suffering causes them to believe that an accounting for their treatment of Joseph has arrived.
9. Genesis 42:22 contains Reuben’s remarkable statement, “therefore, behold, also his blood is required.” Joseph is alive and standing nearby. The statement therefore demonstrates that biblical blood-language can represent accountability concerning another person’s life even where that person’s literal blood has not been shed.
10. Genesis 42:22 should be compared with Genesis 9:5, where God says that human lifeblood will be “required.” The similar language strengthens the connection between blood and accountability for human life.
11. Genesis 45:4–8 reveals the extraordinary reversal in Joseph’s story. The rejected brother eventually becomes the means through which the family that wronged him is preserved during famine. Joseph tells them that God sent him ahead “to preserve life.”
12. The comparison between Joseph and Jesus should remain typological rather than being presented as an explicit prediction in Genesis 37–45. Joseph is a beloved son rejected by his own family who later becomes instrumental in preserving those who rejected him. The pattern becomes relevant when later Scripture develops similar categories around Christ, but Genesis itself does not explicitly identify Joseph as a messianic prophecy.
13. Genesis 49:8–10 associates Judah with leadership and royal authority. The statement concerning the “sceptre” becomes especially significant within the later biblical development of the royal line through Judah.
14. Genesis 49:11 uses the expression “blood of grapes.” In its immediate context, this is poetic imagery for wine or grape juice associated with abundance. It should not be treated as literal sacrificial blood or as direct evidence for blood atonement.
15. Later Christian readers naturally notice the combination of Judah, rulership, wine, and blood imagery in Genesis 49. However, responsible interpretation requires establishing the original poetic context before considering later canonical connections with Christ.
16. Hebrews 7:14 explicitly states that Jesus came from Judah, while Revelation 5:5 calls Him “the Lion of the tribe of Juda.” These New Testament passages provide an explicit connection between Jesus and Judah without requiring every detail of Genesis 49 to function as a direct prophecy.
17. Exodus 2:23–25 says that God heard Israel’s groaning and remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Exodus story therefore continues the covenant narrative established in Genesis.
18. Exodus 3:7–10 records God’s commissioning of Moses to bring Israel out of Egypt. This makes Exodus 4:24–26 particularly difficult because the man commissioned for deliverance, or someone in his household, suddenly encounters a divine threat of death.
19. Exodus 4:22–23 introduces the firstborn theme immediately before the Bridegroom of Blood episode. God identifies Israel as “my son, even my firstborn” and warns Pharaoh that refusal to release God’s son will result in the death of Pharaoh’s firstborn.
20. Exodus 4:24–26 contains significant Hebrew ambiguity. The text uses masculine pronouns without explicitly naming the individual whom the Lord encounters and seeks to kill. Moses is the traditional and common identification, although interpretations involving Moses’ son have also been proposed. The uncertainty should be preserved rather than concealed.
21. Zipporah responds to the crisis by taking a flint or sharp stone and circumcising her son. This strongly connects the episode with the Abrahamic covenant sign established in Genesis 17, even though Exodus never explicitly states why the circumcision had been delayed.
22. Exodus 4:25 contains the difficult Hebrew expression ḥatan damim, commonly translated “bridegroom of blood” or, in the KJV, “bloody husband.” The exact force of the expression remains debated. Exodus 4:26 nevertheless connects Zipporah’s statement specifically with the circumcision.
23. Exodus 4:26 states that “he let him go” following Zipporah’s action. Whatever uncertainty surrounds the identities of the pronouns, the narrative sequence remains significant for this investigation: threatened death is followed by circumcision and its accompanying blood, after which the threat ends.
24. Traditional Jewish interpretation commonly connects the episode with Moses’ failure or delay in circumcising his son. This interpretation has ancient roots, but it should be distinguished from an explicit statement of Exodus itself, which never directly explains the cause of the divine attack.
25. Some scholarly interpretations have connected Moses’ earlier killing of the Egyptian in Exodus 2:11–15 with the deadly encounter of Exodus 4. William H. C. Propp, among others, has explored broader interpretations of the “bridegroom of blood” episode. Because Exodus does not explicitly identify the killing of the Egyptian as the cause, this remains a scholarly proposal rather than an established conclusion.
26. The immediate sequence of Exodus 4:22–26 deserves particular attention. First comes God’s identification of Israel as His firstborn and the warning concerning Pharaoh’s firstborn. Immediately afterward comes an episode involving a son, circumcision, blood, threatened death, and release. The text does not explicitly explain the literary relationship, but the proximity makes the connection important to investigate.
27. It is possible to interpret the episode as demonstrating that Moses cannot represent God’s covenant demands before Pharaoh while neglecting the covenant sign within his own household. This is a reasonable theological inference from the narrative sequence, but it should be presented as interpretation rather than as something Exodus explicitly states.
28. Exodus 12:1–13 later gives us a much clearer blood-and-death sequence. Israel is commanded to kill the Passover animal, apply its blood to the doorway, and remain within the household. God declares, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
29. The similarity between Exodus 4 and Exodus 12 should not erase their differences. Exodus 4 concerns circumcision and never calls the blood a sign or sacrifice. Exodus 12 concerns the blood of a slain Passover animal and explicitly calls the blood a sign. What the passages share narratively is God’s command, blood, threatened death, and subsequent preservation.
30. Exodus 12:43–49 later explicitly connects circumcision with participation in Passover. An uncircumcised male cannot eat the Passover meal, while a foreigner wishing to participate must first have the males of his household circumcised. This demonstrates that the Abrahamic covenant sign remains relevant within Passover observance.
31. First Corinthians 5:7 provides one of the strongest controls for the Christian interpretation of Passover because Paul explicitly states, “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” The connection between Christ and Passover therefore arises within the New Testament itself rather than depending solely upon later Christian symbolism.
32. The Old Testament evidence examined thus far does not justify saying that every appearance of blood is atoning. Abel’s blood witnesses to murder. Genesis 9 associates blood with life and accountability. Joseph’s coat uses animal blood as evidence of supposed death. Genesis 42 uses blood-language for accountability. Exodus 4 connects circumcision blood with a covenant crisis involving threatened death. These functions must remain distinct until Scripture explicitly introduces atoning blood.
33. At the same time, a cumulative pattern is developing before Passover: life, blood, accountability, covenant, beloved sons, substitution, divine provision, threatened death, and preservation. These concepts should be documented independently before examining whether later Scripture brings them together in Christ.
34. The developing Christological argument therefore rests upon cumulative biblical patterns rather than the claim that every early Old Testament passage explicitly predicts Jesus. The method of this investigation is to establish what each Old Testament passage does first and then ask whether the New Testament later attributes that same function to Christ.
35. The investigation now reaches Exodus 12 without yet possessing the complete answer to why God chose blood. That is significant. Scripture has spent considerable narrative space associating blood with life and responsibility before explicitly commanding blood to be displayed as protection in the face of judgment. Passover therefore represents the next major development rather than the beginning of the blood story.
36. The question carried into Part 7 is consequently very precise: if blood represents life, if substitution has already been established at Moriah, and if covenant blood has already appeared beside threatened death in Exodus 4, what does God mean in Exodus 12:13 when He finally declares, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you”?

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