Exodus 12:9
Do not eat any of the meat raw or cooked in boiling water, but only roasted over the fire—its head and legs and inner parts.
BSB
Parallel translations (2) ▾
ASV
Eat not of it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roast with fire; its head with its legs and with the inwards thereof.
KJV
Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof.
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Commentary
3 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
16 tagged words| Original | Transliteration | Meaning | Word study |
|---|---|---|---|
| אַל־ | 'al- | may not | H408 → |
| תֹּאכְל֤וּ | to.khe.Lu | you eat | H398 → |
| מִמֶּ֙נּוּ֙ | mi.Me.nu | any of it | H4480 → |
| נָ֔א | Na' | raw | H4995 → |
| וּבָשֵׁ֥ל | u.va.Shel | and boiled | H1311 → |
| מְבֻשָּׁ֖ל | me.vu.Shal | being boiled | H1310 → |
| בַּמָּ֑יִם | ba.Ma.yim | in <the> water | H4325 → |
| כִּ֣י | ki | that | H3588 → |
| אִם־ | 'im- | except | H518 → |
| צְלִי־ | tze.li- | roasted of | H6748 → |
| אֵ֔שׁ | 'Esh | fire | H784 → |
| רֹאשׁ֥וֹ | ro.Sho | head its | H7218 → |
| עַל־ | 'al- | with | H5921 → |
| כְּרָעָ֖יו | ke.ra.'Av | legs its | H3767 → |
| וְעַל־ | ve.'al- | and with | H5921 → |
| קִרְבּֽוֹ׃ | kir.Bo | entrails its | H7130 → |
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