A striking illustration of the error of translating _saph_ “a bason” or “a cup,” is shown in the rendering of Zechariah 12 : 1–3 in our English Bible. The Lord is there promising to protect the borders of Jerusalem against all besiegers. “Thus saith the Lord, which ... layeth the foundation of the earth:... Behold, I will make Jerusalem a _threshold_ [or, boundary stone, Hebrew, _saph_] of reeling unto all the peoples round about.... I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all the peoples.” The figure seems to be that of the besiegers staggering as they come against that foundation, or threshold stone, which the Lord has established. Yet _saph_ is here translated “cup,” and the passage thereby rendered meaningless. There would seem, indeed, to be little room for doubt that _saph_ should be translated “threshold” in the description of the pass-over sacrifice. In Assyrian, the word _sippu_, from the same root as the Hebrew _saph_, means only threshold, not bason or cup.[557] 4. PASS-OVER OR PASS-BY. The common understanding of the term “passover,” in connection with the Hebrew exodus from Egypt, is that it was, on the Lord’s part, a passing by those homes where the doorways were blood-stained, without entering them. Yet this meaning is not justified by the term itself, nor by the significance of the primitive rite. Jehovah did not merely spare his people when he visited judgment on the Egyptians. He covenanted anew with them by passing over, or crossing over, the blood-stained threshold into their homes, while his messenger of death went into the houses of the Lord’s enemies and claimed the first-born as belonging to Jehovah.[558] This word _pesakh_, translated “passover,” is a peculiar one. Its etymology and root meaning have been much in discussion. It is derived from the root _pāsăkh_ “to cross over,” a meaning which is still preserved in the Hebrew word _Tiphsakh_, the name of a city on the banks of the Euphrates,[559] the Hebrew equivalent of the classical Thapsacus.[560] _Tiphsakh_ means “crossing,” apparently so called from the ford of the Euphrates at that place. Later Jewish traditions and customs point to the meaning of the original passover rite as a crossing over the threshold of the Hebrew homes by Jehovah, and not of his passing by his people in order to their sparing. A custom by which a Hebrew slave became one of the family in a Hebrew household, through having his ear bored with an awl at the door-post of the house, and thereby blood staining the doorway,[561] is connected with the passover rite by the rabbis. “The Deity said: The door and the side-posts were my witnesses in Egypt, in the hour when I passed-over the lintel and the two side-posts, and I said that to Me the children of Israel shall be slaves, and not slaves to slaves; I brought them out from bondage to freedom; and this man who goeth and taketh a lord to himself shall be bored through before these witnesses.”[562]