Israel’s Passover Message: ‘Let Our People Go’
For millennia, the Jewish people have celebrated the feast of Passover, instituted by God just before the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. This year, modern Israel is echoing God’s words to Pharaoh (Ex.9:1) in calling for the release of Hamas’s Israeli hostages: “Let my people go.”
Passover 2024 begins tonight, April 22. The Bible shows how God worked signs and wonders to bring His people out of slavery in Egypt, and, under God’s instructions in Exodus 12, each Israelite family ate a lamb and put its blood on the doorposts. This would ensure that the death of every firstborn child at the hands of the angel of death would impact only the Egyptians, not the Jews. The Seder meal Jews eat now is based on this first Passover meal. The Pharaoh finally allowed the Israelites to leave for the land God had promised to them (which still exists today as the nation of Israel). Now, thousands of years later, a ruthless enemy is holding over 130 Israelis hostage, and Israel’s Passover prayer is for their release.
The State of Israel posted on Twitter/X, “Tonight as we gather around the Seder table we will leave a chair empty, to raise awareness of the 133 Israeli hostages who will not spend Passover with their loved ones 🪑. We cannot fully celebrate the Festival of Freedom while our loved ones are in captivity.#LetThemGoNow.” A video was included in the post, which ended with multiple individuals saying, “Let our people go.”
This sentiment is particularly moving because the current fate of the hostages is unknown. Hamas recently indicated that it could not release 40 living hostages. This raised heartbreaking concerns that many of the hostages, from Baby Kfir to the older adults, have already suffered a tortuous and brutal death. Why is there so much more international empathy for the Gazans, nearly three-fourths of whom still support the Oct. 7 atrocities, but so little for the Israeli hostages?
God once brought His people out of Egypt “with a strong hand” (Exodus 13:9). This Passover, let us pray that God will once again give victory to Israel, and that He will be with the hostages and their families, with the bereaved and those soldiers fighting Hamas, so that their mourning will be turned into joy (Psalm 29/30:12).