Lintel

The lintel (Hebrew mashkoph) is the horizontal beam spanning the top of a doorframe. During the first Passover God commanded the Israelites to strike the blood of the paschal lamb on the lintel and the two doorposts, so that when the LORD passed through Egypt he would "pass over" the blood-marked door and not allow the destroyer to enter (Ex. 12:7, 22–23). This blood-marking of the threshold is the foundational image of substitutionary atonement in the Old Testament. The term also appears for the doorposts of the inner sanctuary of Solomon's temple (1 Kgs. 6:31) and in the prophetic vision of the devastated sanctuary where birds nest in ruined lintels (Zeph. 2:14; Amos 9:1).