Exodus 12:21
Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and told them, “Go at once and select for yourselves a lamb for each family, and slaughter the Passover lamb.
BSB
Parallel translations (2) ▾
ASV
Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them, Draw out, and take you lambs according to your families, and kill the passover.
KJV
Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them, Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the passover.
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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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַיִּקְרָ֥א | vai.yik.Ra' | and he summoned | H7121 → |
| מֹשֶׁ֛ה | mo.Sheh | Moses | H4872 → |
| לְכָל־ | le.khol | <to> all | H3605 → |
| זִקְנֵ֥י | zik.Nei | [the] elders of | H2205 → |
| יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל | Yis.ra.'El | Israel | H3478 → |
| וַיֹּ֣אמֶר | vai.Yo.mer | and he said | H559 → |
| אֲלֵהֶ֑ם | 'a.le.Hem | to them | H413 → |
| מִֽשְׁכ֗וּ | mish.Khu | draw | H4900 → |
| וּקְח֨וּ | u.ke.Chu | and take | H3947 → |
| לָכֶ֥ם | la.Khem | for <the> yourselves | |
| צֹ֛אן | tzon | sheep | H6629 → |
| לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתֵיכֶ֖ם | le.mish.pe.cho.tei.Khem | to clans your | H4940 → |
| וְשַׁחֲט֥וּ | ve.sha.cha.Tu | and slaughter | H7819 → |
| הַפָּֽסַח׃ | ha.Pa.sach | the passover | H6453 → |
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