Skip to content
mannafest.faith

Exodus 12:34

So the people took their dough before it was leavened, carrying it on their shoulders in kneading bowls wrapped in clothing.

BSB

Parallel translations (2) ▾

ASV

And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.

KJV

And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneadingtroughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.

Commentary

1 voice

Voices 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

11 tagged words
OriginalTransliterationMeaningWord study
וַיִּשָּׂ֥אvai.yi.Sa'and it carried offH5375
הָעָ֛םha.'Amthe peopleH5971
אֶת־'et-<obj.>H853
בְּצֵק֖וֹbe.tze.Kodough itsH1217
טֶ֣רֶםTe.rembeforeH2962
יֶחְמָ֑ץyech.Matzit was leavenedH2556
מִשְׁאֲרֹתָ֛םmish.'a.ro.Tamkneading troughs theirH4863
צְרֻרֹ֥תtze.ru.Rot[were] bound upH6887
בְּשִׂמְלֹתָ֖םbe.sim.lo.Tamin clothes theirH8071
עַל־'al-onH5921
שִׁכְמָֽם׃shikh.Mamshoulder theirH7926

The walk

About Exodus

The Firstborn of the Egyptians Are Slain — Gustave Doré, Doré's English Bible (1866), public domain
The Firstborn of the Egyptians Are Slain — Gustave Doré, Doré's English Bible (1866), public domain