Exodus 12:33
And in order to send them out of the land quickly, the Egyptians urged the people on. “For otherwise,” they said, “we are all going to die!”
BSB
Parallel translations (2) ▾
ASV
And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, to send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We are all dead men.
KJV
And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men.
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Commentary
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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
12 tagged words| Original | Transliteration | Meaning | Word study |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַתֶּחֱזַ֤ק | va.te.che.Zak | and it urged | H2388 → |
| מִצְרַ֙יִם֙ | mitz.Ra.yim | Egypt | H4714 → |
| עַל־ | 'al- | on | H5921 → |
| הָעָ֔ם | ha.'Am | the people | H5971 → |
| לְמַהֵ֖ר | le.ma.Her | to hurry | H4116 → |
| לְשַׁלְּחָ֣ם | le.sha.le.Cham | to send away them | H7971 → |
| מִן־ | min- | from | H4480 → |
| הָאָ֑רֶץ | ha.'A.retz | the land | H776 → |
| כִּ֥י | ki | for | H3588 → |
| אָמְר֖וּ | 'a.me.Ru | they said | H559 → |
| כֻּלָּ֥נוּ | ku.La.nu | all of us | H3605 → |
| מֵתִֽים׃ | me.Tim | [are] about to die | H4191 → |
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