Hyssop

Hyssop was a small, bushy aromatic plant whose leafy branches made a natural brush. Its very ordinariness was the point: it was the tool of purification, used to sprinkle blood or water in the cleansing rituals of the law.

At the first Passover, the Israelites used a bunch of hyssop to brush lamb's blood onto their doorposts. It reappears in the cleansing of lepers and of the defiled, so that David, pleading for forgiveness, cries, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” The plant became a byword for being made pure before God.

John notes a poignant detail at the crucifixion: the sponge of sour wine lifted to Jesus' lips was put on a stalk of hyssop. The herb that had applied the Passover blood now touched the dying Passover Lamb — a quiet thread tying the cross back to that first night of deliverance.