THE DESTROYER — 'Jehovah will pass over the door and will not allow THE DESTROYER to come into your houses' (Exodus 12:23). ⚠️ The chapter does not harmonize this with verse 12, where Jehovah says 'I will pass through… I will strike.' Both stand: God strikes, and a destroyer is held at the door. Readers ancient and modern have taken ha-mashchit as a distinct agent (compare the destroying angel who halts at the threshing floor, 2 Samuel 24:16), as a personification of the plague itself, or as a way of speaking of God's own act at one remove. Hebrews 11:28 keeps the same double vision: Moses kept the Passover 'so that THE DESTROYER of the firstborn might not touch them.' → first discussed at Exod 12:23