Some of the flowers mentioned in the Bible are unknown to us in the West. Hyssop is an example of a flowering plant known in the Middle East and southern Europe but unfamiliar to us. It is a shrub-like plant up to two feet tall with woody stems which grow upright, producing leaves and small fragrant flowers in the summer. Cutting and bundling the stems with their leaves intact produces a brush-like tool for dipping and “painting” liquids.

In Egypt, on the night of the first Passover, the Hebrew slaves were instructed to take “a bunch of hyssop,” dip it in a basin of blood from a sacrificial lamb, and spread the blood on the doorposts of their house (Exodus 12:22). The blood would be a sign to “the destroyer” to pass over that house (verse 23). David recalled that imagery when his own sins were found out and he needed to be cleansed: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.”

Thank God today that Jesus is the sacrificial Lamb of God whose blood takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29).

‘Twas grace that gave me to the Lamb, who all my sorrows took.
Philip Doddridge