Exodus 12:18
In the first month you are to eat unleavened bread, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.
BSB
Parallel translations (2) ▾
ASV
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even.
KJV
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even.
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Commentary
1 voiceVoices on this verse
loading…Hebraic traditional view
The night Israel still keeps
This chapter founds Passover, in Hebrew Pesach, the spring feast that remembers the night God struck Egypt's firstborn and passed over the blood-marked houses. Jewish families keep it to this day with a ceremonial meal called the seder (Hebrew for “order”): unleavened flatbread (matzah), bitter herbs, cups of wine, and the retelling of this chapter's story, with the children asking the questions.
Honesty about the timeline helps the reader: in the Bible's own period the center of the feast was the lamb, slain and eaten as this chapter commands. The seder as now practiced took its shape after the Temple fell in AD 70 and the lamb could no longer be offered; its oldest written outline is in the Mishnah, the first code of Jewish oral law (about AD 200), which already includes the four cups and the rule that “in every generation a person must see himself as if he personally came out of Egypt.”
Sources: Mishnah Pesachim 10 (the seder's oldest outline) · Mishnah Pesachim 10:5 (“in every generation”) · The Feasts of the LORD (this site's study)
Original language & word study
14 tagged words| Original | Transliteration | Meaning | Word study |
|---|---|---|---|
| בָּרִאשֹׁ֡ן | ba.ri.Shon | in the first [month] | H7223 → |
| בְּאַרְבָּעָה֩ | be.'ar.ba.'Ah | on [the] four- | H702 → |
| עָשָׂ֨ר | 'a.Sar | teen | H6240 → |
| י֤וֹם | Yom | day | H3117 → |
| לַחֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ | la.Cho.desh | of the month | H2320 → |
| בָּעֶ֔רֶב | ba.'E.rev | in the evening | H6153 → |
| תֹּאכְל֖וּ | to.khe.Lu | you will eat | H398 → |
| מַצֹּ֑ת | ma.Tzot | unleavened bread<s> | H4682 → |
| עַ֠ד | 'ad | until | H5704 → |
| י֣וֹם | Yom | [the] day | H3117 → |
| הָאֶחָ֧ד | ha.'e.Chad | <the> one | H259 → |
| וְעֶשְׂרִ֛ים | ve.'es.Rim | and twenty | H6242 → |
| לַחֹ֖דֶשׁ | la.Cho.desh | of the month | H2320 → |
| בָּעָֽרֶב׃ | ba.'A.rev | in the evening | H6153 → |
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