Exodus 34:25

34:25 “You must not offer the blood of my sacrifice with yeast; the sacrifice from the feast of Passover must not remain until the following morning. ¹ 

Exodus 12:11

12:11 This is how you are to eat it – dressed to travel, ²  your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. ³ 

Exodus 12:21

12:21 Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel, and told them, “Go and select ⁴  for yourselves a lamb or young goat ⁵  for your families, and kill the Passover animals. ⁶ 

Exodus 12:43

Participation in the Passover

12:43 ⁷ The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover. No foreigner may ⁸  share in eating it. ⁹ 

Exodus 12:27

12:27 then you will say, ‘It is the sacrifice ¹⁰  of the Lord’s Passover, when he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck ¹¹  Egypt and delivered our households.’” The people bowed down low ¹²  to the ground,

Exodus 12:48

12:48 “When a foreigner lives ¹³  with you and wants to observe the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised, ¹⁴  and then he may approach and observe it, and he will be like one who is born in the land ¹⁵  – but no uncircumcised person may eat of it.

[34:25]  ¹ sn See M. Haran, “The Passover Sacrifice,” Studies in the Religion of Ancient Israel (VTSup), 86-116.

[12:11]  ² tn Heb “your loins girded.”

[12:11]  ³ tn The meaning of פֶּסַח (pesakh) is debated. (1) Some have tried to connect it to the Hebrew verb with the same radicals that means “to halt, leap, limp, stumble.” See 1 Kgs 18:26 where the word describes the priests of Baal hopping around the altar; also the crippled child in 2 Sam 4:4. (2) Others connect it to the Akkadian passahu, which means “to appease, make soft, placate”; or (3) an Egyptian word to commemorate the harvest (see J. B. Segal, The Hebrew Passover, 95-100). The verb occurs in Isa 31:5 with the connotation of “to protect”; B. S. Childs suggests that this was already influenced by the exodus tradition (Exodus [OTL], 183, n. 11). Whatever links there may or may not have been that show an etymology, in Exod 12 it is describing Yahweh’s passing over or through.

[12:21]  ³ tn Heb “draw out and take.” The verb has in view the need “to draw out” a lamb or goat selected from among the rest of the flock.

[12:21]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew noun is singular and can refer to either a lamb or a goat. Since English has no common word for both, the phrase “a lamb or young goat” is used in the translation.

[12:21]  ⁵ tn The word “animals” is added to avoid giving the impression in English that the Passover festival itself is the object of “kill.”

[12:43]  ⁴ sn The section that concludes the chapter contains regulations pertaining to the Passover. The section begins at v. 43, but vv. 40-42 form a good setting for it. In this unit vv. 43-45 belong together because they stress that a stranger and foreigner cannot eat. Verse 46 stands by itself, ruling that the meal must be eaten at home. Verse 47 instructs that the whole nation was to eat it. Verses 48-49 make provision for foreigners who may wish to participate. And vv. 50-51 record the obedience of Israel.

[12:43]  ⁵ tn This taken in the modal nuance of permission, reading that no foreigner is permitted to share in it (apart from being a member of the household as a circumcised slave [v. 44] or obeying v. 48, if a free individual).

[12:43]  ⁶ tn This is the partitive use of the bet (ב) preposition, expressing that the action extends to something and includes the idea of participation in it (GKC 380 §119.m).

[12:27]  ⁵ 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.

[12:27]  ⁶ 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.

[12:27]  ⁷ 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.

[12:48]  ⁶ tn Both the participle “foreigner” and the verb “lives” are from the verb גּוּר (gur), which means “to sojourn, to dwell as an alien.” This reference is to a foreigner who settles in the land. He is the protected foreigner; when he comes to another area where he does not have his clan to protect him, he must come under the protection of the Law, or the people. If the “resident alien” is circumcised, he may participate in the Passover (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 104).

[12:48]  ⁷ tn The infinitive absolute functions as the finite verb here, and “every male” could be either the object or the subject (see GKC 347 §113.gg and 387 §121.a).

[12:48]  ⁸ tn אֶזְרָח (’ezrakh) refers to the native-born individual, the native Israelite as opposed to the “stranger, alien” (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 104); see also W. F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 127, 210.