Exodus 12:8
They are to eat the meat that night, roasted over the fire, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
BSB
Parallel translations (2) ▾
ASV
And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
KJV
And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.
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Commentary
2 voicesVoices 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| Original | Transliteration | Meaning | Word study |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְאָכְל֥וּ | ve.'a.khe.Lu | and they will eat | H398 → |
| אֶת־ | 'et- | <obj.> | H853 → |
| הַבָּשָׂ֖ר | ha.ba.Sar | the meat | H1320 → |
| בַּלַּ֣יְלָה | ba.Lay.lah | in the night | H3915 → |
| הַזֶּ֑ה | ha.Zeh | <the> this | H2088 → |
| צְלִי־ | tze.li- | roasted of | H6748 → |
| אֵ֣שׁ | 'esh | fire | H784 → |
| וּמַצּ֔וֹת | u.ma.Tzot | and unleavened bread<s> | H4682 → |
| עַל־ | 'al- | with | H5921 → |
| מְרֹרִ֖ים | me.ro.Rim | bitter herbs | H4844 → |
| יֹאכְלֻֽהוּ׃ | yo.khe.Lu.hu | they will eat it | H398 → |
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