The Night That Gives Israel a Calendar

“In the land of Egypt” is pointed: this is the only statute of Israel’s law given in Egypt rather than in the wilderness. Jewish commentators long noted that the first commandment addressed to Israel as a people comes while they are still enslaved, and it is about time.

The month is later called Abib (13:4), meaning “fresh ears of grain”, and after the exile Nisan. The Hebrew year had also a civil beginning in the autumn, which is why the Jewish New Year falls in Tishri, the seventh month counted from this one. Two new years run side by side.

“Congregation”, edah, is used of Israel here for the first time, a gathered and organised community. “Lamb” is seh, which covers a young sheep or a young goat, as verse 5 makes clear. Selection on the tenth day gave four days to watch the animal.

“According to his eating” means by how much each person can eat. Jewish practice later set a minimum of ten people for a lamb, and Josephus reports groups of ten to twenty. The instruction is practical: no family is too small to keep it, and no lamb is wasted.

“Without blemish” is tamim, whole or complete, the word used of Noah (“perfect”, Genesis 6:9) and required of all later sacrifices. “Of the first year” is literally “a son of a year”, a yearling. 1 Peter 1:19 calls Christ “a lamb without blemish and without spot”.

“Keep it up” means keep it under watch. “In the evening” is literally “between the two evenings”, an old phrase that later tradition took as between noon and sunset, or between sunset and dark. The whole assembly kills it, but each household kills its own.

The side posts are mezuzot, the word that later names the small case fixed to Jewish doorposts under Deuteronomy 6:9. The “upper door post” is the lintel, mashqof, a word found only in this chapter. The blood goes on the frame, the part of the house every person must pass through.

“Bitter herbs” is merorim, from the word for bitter, marar, the same verb as 1:14, “they made their lives bitter”. The meal eats the bondage. Unleavened bread, matsot, is flat bread baked without yeast, quick to make.

“Sodden” means boiled, the old past participle of seethe. The animal is roasted whole, head, legs and “purtenance”, the inner parts. Boiling was the ordinary way to cook sacrificial meat (1 Samuel 2:13–15), so roasting over open fire sets this meal apart and suits people with no time to wait.

Nothing may be kept for the next day. The meal cannot be stored or turned into leftovers; it belongs wholly to this night. Burning what remains prevents any part of the sacred animal from becoming common food.

“Loins girded” means the long robe tucked into the belt for walking or running. Shoes indoors were unusual, and the staff in hand ready for the road. “In haste” is chippazon, the alarm of flight, used again in Deuteronomy 16:3. “Passover” is pesach, named here for the first time.

“Pass through” is avar, a different verb from “pass over” in verse 13. “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment” is the only time Exodus says outright that the plagues target Egypt’s gods. Numbers 33:4 repeats it. Egyptian kings were considered divine and their firstborn heirs were gods-in-waiting.

“Pass over” is pasach, which may mean to leap over, or to hover protectively, as in Isaiah 31:5, where the LORD will “pass over” and preserve Jerusalem like birds flying. The blood is a sign “to you”, for Israel’s assurance, though God is the one who sees it.

“Memorial” is zikkaron, a reminder. “Feast” is chag, the pilgrimage word, and “ordinance for ever” makes it a permanent statute. The order of the verses is striking: the festival is instituted before the event it remembers has taken place.

“Leaven” is se’or, the old fermented dough kept back from the previous batch to start the next, which is why it must be cleared out entirely: it is a chain that runs from year to year. “Cut off” is karat, and whether it means exile or death at God’s hand is debated.

“Holy convocation” is miqra qodesh, a sacred gathering, literally “a holy calling”. The only work permitted is preparing food, a rule that distinguishes these festival days from the Sabbath, when cooking was forbidden (16:23).

“Observe the feast of unleavened bread” is in Hebrew simply “guard the unleavened bread”, and the rabbis read it literally as well: watch the dough so it cannot rise. This is the first time the feast of the seven days is named apart from the Passover lamb itself.

The dates are exact: the fourteenth at evening to the twenty-first at evening, seven days. Hebrew days begin at evening, which is why the phrasing runs from even to even, a count also found in Genesis 1, “the evening and the morning”.

“No leaven found” gave rise to the later practice of searching the house for crumbs by lamplight on the night before Passover. The rule includes the stranger, ger, a resident alien: the household law binds anyone living in an Israelite home.

The shortest statement of the rule, placed last as a summary. “All your habitations” extends the observance wherever Israel lives, which makes it portable, a festival not tied to a single sanctuary as long as the household keeps it.

“Draw out” probably means select from the flock, or go and bring. Moses passes on the instruction to the elders, who pass it to families, the same chain of authority as in 3:16. “Kill the passover” names the lamb itself as “the passover”.

Hyssop was a small, bushy aromatic plant, probably a kind of marjoram, whose hairy stems hold liquid well. It is used again in the cleansing of lepers (Leviticus 14:4) and David’s “purge me with hyssop” (Psalm 51:7). A sponge on hyssop was lifted to Jesus on the cross (John 19:29).

“The destroyer” is ha-mashchit, the same word used of the angel who strikes Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 24:16. Hebrews 11:28 speaks of “he that destroyed the firstborn”. The LORD passes over the door and does not permit the destroyer to go in, which places even the destroyer under his command.

The verb shifts between plural and singular: “ye shall observe” and “to thee and to thy sons”. The ordinance addresses the whole people and each father at once. “For ever” is le’olam, as long as there are generations to keep it.

“Service” is avodah again, the word for the slave labour of chapter 1. The bondage of avodah in Egypt becomes the avodah of worship in the land. The law is given for a future Israel settled in Canaan, not yet reached.

This is the first of four places in the Law where a child’s question is anticipated (13:14, Deuteronomy 6:20 and here, with 13:8 answering an unasked one). The Passover Haggadah builds its “four sons” on these texts, with this one said to be spoken by the wicked son, because he says “you”, not “us”.

The answer holds “houses” twice: God passed over the houses and delivered our houses. The people respond by bowing their heads, the same gesture as in 4:31 when they first believed. They have not yet seen the deliverance, only been told of it.

“Went away, and did” is simple obedience. Israel acts without being able to see what is coming. The phrase “so did they” echoes the obedience of Moses and Aaron in 7:6.

“Captive that was in the dungeon” is literally “in the house of the pit”, a prison cell, the same word Joseph used for his prison in Genesis 40:15. The range in 11:5 was throne to mill; here it is throne to dungeon, reaching even lower.

“Not a house where there was not one dead” is a double negative, total in Hebrew. The cry that Moses foretold in 11:6 comes to pass word for word. Pharaoh rises “in the night”, the man who banished Moses from his face now awake and summoning him.

He called for Moses and Aaron by night, after vowing not to see Moses’ face again (10:28). “As ye have said” cancels every condition he tried to set: distance, persons, livestock. “Serve the LORD” is spoken in Pharaoh’s own mouth.

“Bless me also” is the last request of a defeated king. In Genesis 47:7 Jacob blessed an earlier Pharaoh; now Pharaoh asks a blessing of Israel’s leaders. “As ye have said” is repeated, and the conditions of 10:24 are withdrawn.

“Urgent” is chazaq again, the hardening verb, now used of the Egyptians pressing Israel to go. The strength once used to keep Israel in is now used to push them out. “We be all dead men” is literally “we are all dying”.

The dough had not risen, and the kneading bowls were wrapped in their cloaks and carried on their shoulders. The same kneading troughs were overrun by frogs in 8:3. The detail supplies the origin of the unleavened bread without adding a word of explanation.

Israel did “according to the word of Moses”, the command given in 11:2. “Raiment” means clothing, which appears in the list of 3:22 but not of 11:2. The borrowed clothing may be the fine garments later given for the tabernacle work.

“Lent” is a form of the verb sha’al, “to ask”, in a causative sense: “let them have what they asked”. The ending, “and they spoiled the Egyptians”, is the same word as 3:22, fulfilled exactly. Psalm 105:37 recalls it: “He brought them forth also with silver and gold.”

Rameses is the store city of 1:11. Succoth, “booths”, is often identified with Tjeku in the eastern delta. “Six hundred thousand” rounds the census of Numbers 1:46, 603,550. The size is widely debated, and some take eleph not as a thousand but as a clan or military unit.

“Mixed multitude” is erev rav, a great mixture, non-Israelites who chose to leave, perhaps Egyptians or other foreign labourers. Numbers 11:4 uses a different and harsher word for such people, asafsuf, a rabble, and blames them for the craving for meat.

“Cakes” are uggot, flat rounds baked on hot stones, as Sarah baked for the three visitors in Genesis 18:6. “Victual” is provisions for a journey. The unleavened bread was an emergency food before it became a law.

Genesis 15:13 promised Abraham “four hundred years” of affliction in a round number, and 15:16 said the return would come “in the fourth generation”. Chapter 6’s genealogy counts exactly four from Levi: Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses. How the long years and the short line fit is a question the verse leaves standing.

“The selfsame day” is be’etsem hayom, literally “on the bone of the day”, meaning exactly that day. Israel is called “the hosts of the LORD” for the first time, tsiv’ot YHWH, making them the army of the LORD of hosts.

“A night to be much observed” is leil shimmurim, literally “a night of watchings”. It uses the same word twice: God kept watch that night to bring them out, and Israel keeps watch every year to remember it. Jewish tradition calls Passover night “the night of guarding”.

“Stranger” here is ben nekhar, a son of a foreign land, an outsider with no bond to Israel. This verse and the next begin rules for who eats, given after the departure, to regulate future Passovers in the land.

A slave bought with money belongs to the household, and once circumcised he eats with the family. Genesis 17:12–13 already required the circumcision of slaves bought with money, as members of Abraham’s house.

“Foreigner” is toshav, a temporary resident, and a hired servant is sakhir, paid by the day. Neither belongs to the house permanently, and so neither eats. The distinction turns on belonging, not on ethnicity.

“Neither shall ye break a bone thereof” is quoted in John 19:36 of Jesus on the cross: “A bone of him shall not be broken.” The lamb is eaten in one house and stays whole in death, and Psalm 34:20 applies the same protection to the righteous.

“All the congregation” makes the Passover a duty for every Israelite, not optional devotion. Numbers 9:13 later says anyone who could keep it and does not “shall be cut off”.

“Let him come near” uses qarav, the verb used of approaching an altar with an offering. A stranger who is circumcised becomes “as one that is born in the land”, ezrach, the native-born. Circumcision is the doorway, not ancestry.

“One law” is torah achat, the first time in Exodus that torah names a body of law. The principle returns in Numbers 15:16, “one law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger”. Here it is laid down at the table of the first festival.

The same doubled formula of obedience as in verse 28 and in 7:6. The chapter frames the whole ritual law between two reports of Israel doing exactly what was commanded.

“By their armies” is the last word of the chapter, as in 6:26 when the commission first described them that way. The promise of 6:26 is now done. The verse repeats verse 41, closing the account of the departure as it began.