According to Jewish traditions, it was on a passover night when Jehovah entered into a cross-over covenant with Abraham on the boundary of his new possessions in Canaan.[563] It was on a passover night that Lot welcomed the angel visitors to his home in Sodom.[564] It was at the passover season that the Israelites crossed the threshold of their new home in Canaan, when the walls of Jericho fell down, and the blood-colored thread on the house of Rahab was a symbol of the covenant of the Hebrew spies with her and her household.[565] The protection of the Israelites against the Midianites,[566] and the Assyrians,[567] and the Medes and the Persians,[568] and again the final overthrow of Babylon,[569] all these events were said to have been at the passover season.[570] These traditions would seem to show that the pass-over covenant was deemed a cross-over covenant, and a covenant of welcome at the family and the national threshold. In the passover rite as observed by modern Jews, at a certain stage of the feast the outer door is opened, and an extra cup and chair are arranged at the table, in the hope that God’s messenger will cross the threshold, and enter the home as a welcome guest.[571] All this points to the meaning of “cross-over,” and not of “pass-by.” In some parts of northern and eastern Europe there is a custom still preserved among the Jews of jumping over a tub of water on passover night, which is said to be symbolic of crossing the Red Sea, but which shows that the passover feast was a feast of crossing over.[572] 5. MARRIAGE OF JEHOVAH WITH ISRAEL. It seems clear that the Egyptian passover rite was a rite of threshold covenanting, as ordered of God and as understood by the Israelites. Its sacrifice was on the threshold of the homes of the Hebrews on the threshold of a new year,[573] and on the threshold of a new nationality. Then Israel began anew in all things. Moreover, it was recognized as the rite of marriage between Jehovah and Israel; as the very Threshold Covenant had its origin in the rite of primitive marriage. That first passover night was the night when Jehovah took to himself in covenant union the “Virgin of Israel,” and became a Husband unto her. From that time forward any recognition of, or affiliation with, another God, is called “whoredom,” “adultery,” or “fornication.”[574] In this light it is that the prophets always speak of idolatry. Jeremiah recognizes the first passover night as the time of this marriage covenant, when he says: “Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, That I will make a new covenant With the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers In the day that I took them by the hand To bring them out of the land of Egypt; Which my covenant they brake, Although I was an husband unto them, saith Jehovah.”[575]