Exodus 12:38
And a mixed multitude also went up with them, along with great droves of livestock, both flocks and herds.
BSB
Parallel translations (2) ▾
ASV
And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.
KJV
And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.
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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
10 tagged words| Original | Transliteration | Meaning | Word study |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְגַם־ | ve.gam- | and also | H1571 → |
| עֵ֥רֶב | 'E.rev | a mixed company | H6154 → |
| רַ֖ב | rav | numerous | H7227 → |
| עָלָ֣ה | 'a.Lah | it went up | H5927 → |
| אִתָּ֑ם | 'i.Tam | with them | H854 → |
| וְצֹ֣אן | ve.Tzon | and flock[s] | H6629 → |
| וּבָקָ֔ר | u.va.Kar | and herd[s] | H1241 → |
| מִקְנֶ֖ה | mik.Neh | livestock | H4735 → |
| כָּבֵ֥ד | ka.Ved | numerous | H3515 → |
| מְאֹֽד׃ | me.'Od | very | H3966 → |
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