Exodus 12:15

12:15 For seven days ¹  you must eat ²  bread made without yeast. ³  Surely ⁴  on the first day you must put away yeast from your houses because anyone who eats bread made with yeast ⁵  from the first day to the seventh day will be cut off ⁶  from Israel.

Leviticus 23:7

23:7 On the first day there will be a holy assembly for you; you must not do any regular work. ⁷ 

Leviticus 23:10-11

23:10 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘When you enter the land that I am about to give to you and you gather in its harvest, ⁸  then you must bring the sheaf of the first portion of your harvest ⁹  to the priest, 23:11 and he must wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted for your benefit ¹⁰  – on the day after the Sabbath the priest is to wave it. ¹¹ 

Leviticus 23:15

The Festival of Weeks

23:15 “‘You must count for yourselves seven weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day you bring the wave offering sheaf; they must be complete weeks. ¹² 

Deuteronomy 16:9

The Festival of Weeks

16:9 You must count seven weeks; you must begin to count them ¹³  from the time you begin to harvest the standing grain.

¹ tn This expression is an adverbial accusative of time. The feast was to last from the 15th to the 21st of the month.

² tn Or “you will eat.” The statement stresses their obligation – they must eat unleavened bread and avoid all leaven.

³ tn The etymology of מַצּוֹת (matsot, “unleavened bread,” i.e., “bread made without yeast”) is uncertain. Suggested connections to known verbs include “to squeeze, press,” “to depart, go out,” “to ransom,” or to an Egyptian word “food, cake, evening meal.” For a more detailed study of “unleavened bread” and related matters such as “yeast” or “leaven,” see A. P. Ross, NIDOTTE 4:448-53.

⁴ tn The particle serves to emphasize, not restrict here (B. S. Childs, Exodus [OTL], 183, n. 15).

⁵ tn Heb “every eater of leavened bread.” The participial phrase stands at the beginning of the clause as a casus pendens, that is, it stands grammatically separate from the sentence. It names a condition, the contingent occurrences of which involve a further consequence (GKC 361 §116.w).

⁶ tn The verb וְנִכְרְתָה (vÿnikhrÿtah) is the Niphal perfect with the vav (ו) consecutive; it is a common formula in the Law for divine punishment. Here, in sequence to the idea that someone might eat bread made with yeast, the result would be that “that soul [the verb is feminine] will be cut off.” The verb is the equivalent of the imperfect tense due to the consecutive; a translation with a nuance of the imperfect of possibility (“may be cut off”) fits better perhaps than a specific future. There is the real danger of being cut off, for while the punishment might include excommunication from the community, the greater danger was in the possibility of divine intervention to root out the evildoer (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 94). Gesenius lists this as the use of a perfect with a vav consecutive after a participle (a casus pendens) to introduce the apodosis (GKC 337 §112.mm).

⁷ tn Heb “work of service”; KJV “servile work”; NASB “laborious work”; TEV “daily work.”

⁸ tn Heb “and you harvest its harvest.”

⁹ tn Heb “the sheaf of the first of your harvest.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “for your acceptance.”

¹¹ sn See Lev 7:30 for a note on the “waving” of a “wave offering.”

¹² tn Heb “seven Sabbaths, they shall be complete.” The disjunctive accent under “Sabbaths” precludes the translation “seven complete Sabbaths” (as NASB, NIV; cf. NAB, NRSV, NLT). The text is somewhat awkward, which may explain why the LXX tradition is confused here, either adding “you shall count” again at the end of the verse, or leaving out “they shall be,” or keeping “they shall be” and adding “to you.”

¹³ tn Heb “the seven weeks.” The translation uses a pronoun to avoid redundancy in English.