Exodus12chapter 12

Passover, in Hebrew Pesach, is kept from this chapter, and this site's own note on it describes the evening as Jewish families keep it now. The meal is called the seder, which is the Hebrew word for order. It carries unleavened bread, bitter herbs, cups of wine and the retelling of this chapter's story, with the children asking the questions. The lamb stood at the centre of the feast while the Temple stood. The seder as it is now practised took its shape after the Temple fell in AD 70, and its oldest written outline is the Mishnah at Pesachim 10. The month this chapter sets first is the month the festival year is counted from. Rashi reads verse 2 as a lesson given by sight. God showed Moses the moon in its renewal and said that this is how the beginning of a month is known (Rashi on Exodus 12:2:1). From Passover the counting runs on toward Weeks, and this site's own note on the firstfruits describes the sheaf brought during the festival week.

Rashi reads this chapter through the Mekhilta and the tractate Pesachim, so the law and the story come together in almost every line. At verse 6 he holds that the four days between taking the lamb and killing it were for examining it against blemish. He carries Rabbi Mathia ben Cheresh on why those days were given (Rashi on Exodus 12:6:1). At verse 13 he reads the blood as a private mark. It is "a sign, and not to others for a sign", and from that he concludes that the blood was placed inside the houses (Rashi on Exodus 12:13:1). At verse 17 he carries Rabbi Josiah's reading of the unleavened bread as a rule about time. Just as dough must not be left to rise, "so we may not let the commandment become leavened by waiting too long before we perform it" (Rashi on Exodus 12:17:1). At verse 23 he gives two senses for the verb the feast is named from, holding that it signifies sparing, and also that it can be read as leaping over (Rashi on Exodus 12:23:1). The text is the Rosenbaum and Silbermann Rashi of 1929 to 1934, in the public domain.

The rabbis take up the lamb of verse 3 at Bekhorot 12a:2 and the company that eats it at Chagigah 7b:10. On the lamb without blemish they taught at Arakhin 31b:10, and on its keeping until the fourteenth day at Arakhin 13b:2. On the eating of it they taught at Berakhot 38b:13 and Bava Metzia 115b:2, and on what is left until morning at Berakhot 9a:18. The Jerusalem Talmud carries the child's question of verses 26 and 27 at Pesachim 10:4:2 and 10:7:5.