The people to whom Peter is writing would have immediately recognized the connection between the Precious Blood of Jesus and the blood of the passover lamb. Just as the Hebrew slaves had been “ransomed from the futile ways inherited from their ancestors,” so we are ransomed, too, by the Precious Blood of Jesus. Jesus is thus portrayed as the passover lamb, “a lamb without defect or blemish.” This lamb is not described as dead or slaughtered, but as a lamb that seems to be fully alive, “without defect or blemish.”