Unleavened Bread, Etc. Series

UNLEAVENED BREAD, etc.

Exodus 12:15-28 (NIV).

INTRODUCTION

The Lord continues his instructions to Moses and Aaron for their final meal in Egypt. He has already described the killing of the lambs and put the blood on the doorposts of every Israelite household. The blood is a sign for the Lord to pass by that home. Passover is a springtime event when the lambs are likely to be born at the time of the vernal equinox. It is held at night when families have fulfilled their daytime responsibilities and in the middle of the month when the moon is full. The entire Lamb is to be eaten, with nothing saved for the priests. Indeed, the priests are not even involved since all is to be orchestrated by the heads of the households.

Commentary on

Exodus 12:15-28

15 For seven days, you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day, remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.

For seven days, you are to eat bread made without yeast.

From the evening of the fourteenth day to the evening of the twenty-first; and this was a distinct festival from what was called the feast of the Passover correctly, and does not respect the first Passover in Egypt; for though the Passover lamb was eaten with unleavened bread, and the Israelites ate nothing other, not only for seven days, but for thirty days following; yet this was not only by the divine command, but through necessity, they have no other bread to eat; but in later times they were commanded to keep a feast for seven days, in which they were not to eat leavened bread, in commemoration of their hasty departure out of Egypt, not having time to leaven the dough in their troughs, and of their distress and desire for savory bread:

On the first day, remove the yeast from your houses,

That is, from out of their dwelling houses, which were to be diligently searched for that purpose, and every hole and crevice in them; and not only their lower rooms, their dining rooms and parlors, but their upper rooms and bed-chambers; because it was possible a man might sometimes go into them with a piece of bread in his hand, and drop or leave some of it behind him. Synagogues and schools were to be searched since children might carry bread with them, and this search was to be made by the light of a lamp or candle, not by the light of the moon, if in the night; nor by the light of the sun, if in the day, but by the light of a lamp or candle, and not by the light of a torch, or of a lump of fat, or grease, or oil, but by a lamp or candle of wax: and this search was to be made at the beginning of the night of the fourteenth of Nisan. It is said that leavened bread was forbidden from the seventh hour, one o'clock in the afternoon, and upwards, which is the middle of the day, i.e., eleven o'clock in the morning, and burn it at the beginning of the sixth, or noon.

For whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh

For whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day; from the first of the seven days to the last of them, beginning at night of the fourteenth, and ending at the night of the twenty-first:

It must be cut off from Israel.

That soul shall be cut off from Israel; either from the commonwealth of Israel, and be disfranchised, and not described as an Israelite; or from the Israelitish church-state, and have no communion in it, or partake of the ordinances at it; or if it is to be understood of cutting off by death, it is either by the hand of the civil magistrate, or by the immediate hand of God; and is sometimes by the Jews interpreted of a man dying either without children, or before he is fifty years of age, and some even understand it of the destruction of soul and body or eternal damnation.

16 On the first day, hold a sacred assembly and another on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat; that is all you may do.

On the first day, hold a sacred assembly

Moreover, on the first day, there shall be a holy convocation (assembly), a holy day in which the people are called to holy exercises and completely abstain from worldly business done on other days.

And another one on the seventh day.