Exodus 12:26-27

12:26 When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ ¹  – 12:27 then you will say, ‘It is the sacrifice ²  of the Lord’s Passover, when he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck ³  Egypt and delivered our households.’” The people bowed down low ⁴  to the ground,

¹ tn Heb “what is this service to you?”

² sn This expression “the sacrifice of Yahweh’s Passover” occurs only here. The word זֶבַח (zevakh) means “slaughtering” and so a blood sacrifice. The fact that this word is used in Lev 3 for the peace offering has linked the Passover as a kind of peace offering, and both the Passover and the peace offerings were eaten as communal meals.

³ tn The verb means “to strike, smite, plague”; it is the same verb that has been used throughout this section (נָגַף, nagaf). Here the construction is the infinitive construct in a temporal clause.

⁴ tn The two verbs form a verbal hendiadys: “and the people bowed down and they worshiped.” The words are synonymous, and so one is taken as the adverb for the other.