Exodus 12:16

The LORD speaks these words to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, straight after the instructions for the first Passover: the lamb without blemish, its blood on the doorposts and lintel, and the meal eaten in haste by people ready to leave (Exodus 12:1–13). The last plague, the death of the firstborn, is about to fall, and the blood will be the sign by which the LORD passes over the houses of Israel. Verse 14 turns that single night into a yearly institution, and verses 15 to 20 join the seven days of unleavened bread to it, so that deliverance and the clean life that follows it form one memorial. When the LORD has finished, Moses carries the commands to the elders of Israel, and the people do as they are told (Exodus 12:21–28). The whole of Exodus 12 then moves on to the departure itself.

“This day” uses yôwm, the ordinary Hebrew word for a day, which can also mean a span of time. Here it is a day God himself appointed, the day from which Israel’s life as his redeemed nation is counted.

The day is to be “for a memorial”, zikrôwn, a word that comes from the root for remembering. In Israel a memorial was something the people did. The past was retold and acted out so that each new generation received it as its own story and answered it with gratitude and obedience. The later Seder meal shows this well, with its set actions, its symbolic foods and its ordered telling of the exodus, the Haggadah. Moses expects children to ask what these statutes mean, and he tells parents to answer with the story of how the LORD brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand (Deuteronomy 6:20–25). The Psalms do the same work in song when they recount the marvels God did in Egypt and in the wilderness (Psalm 78:12–16).

Israel is to keep the day as a “feast”, chag, the word for a pilgrimage festival. A chag was joyful and shared, with the people gathering, eating together and bringing offerings. The command “ye shall keep it a feast” is given twice in the verse, and the first time it is “a feast to the LORD”, because the celebration is about what he did. God’s deliverance is a cause for gladness and thanksgiving among his people together.

The feast is kept “by an ordinance for ever”. An ordinance, chuqqâh, is something prescribed, an enactment or statute, so the Passover rests on God’s command and stands as law for Israel. “For ever” is ʻôwlâm, time out of mind, always. Together with “throughout your generations” it binds every generation of Israel that would follow, long after those who walked out of Egypt had died.

The bread of the feast is matstsâh, unleavened bread, a thin loaf made with no yeast and so never soured by it. Israel ate it first because of how they left. The Egyptians pressed them to go so quickly that the people carried their dough away before it was leavened (Exodus 12:34) and baked unleavened cakes from it on the road (Exodus 12:39). Leavened bread was the daily staple, so a week of flat bread was a change every household felt at every meal. God made that necessity into a yearly lesson, and each year the taste of the bread brought back the speed of his rescue. Moses later calls it “the bread of affliction” (Deuteronomy 16:3), which ties it to the hardship of slavery as well as to the haste of leaving.

The feast lasts seven days, a number that in Scripture often marks completeness. A week gave the memory time to settle into the life of the whole nation.

Verse 18 fixes the dates. The word for month, chôdesh, comes from the new moon, because Israel’s months followed the moon. This is “the first month”, Abib, later called Nisan, which God had made the beginning of Israel’s year. From then on their calendar was counted from their redemption. The phrase “at even” uses ʻereb, evening or sunset, and it comes twice in this verse, marking the start and the end of the week. Israel reckoned a day from sunset, so the eating of unleavened bread begins on the evening of the fourteenth day, the Passover night, and runs to the evening of the twenty-first. The detailed dates show how exactly God expected the feast to be kept.

Verse 20 gathers the command into two halves. Israel is to eat what is unleavened and to refuse what is leavened, and they are to do so “in all your habitations”. The feast was kept in every home where an Israelite lived, at every meal of the week, so that ordinary family life became the place where God’s deliverance was remembered.

To be “cut off” is to lose one’s place among the covenant people. The verb is kârath, to cut off or cut down, and it is the same verb in verse 15 and verse 19. The person cut off lost the identity, the worship and the blessings that belonged to Israel, and the phrase can also carry the threat of God’s own judgment, even an early death. The law uses the same penalty for a person who eats the peace offering while unclean (Leviticus 7:20–21). The verse is speaking of a person’s standing among God’s people in this life, and it leaves the question of eternal destiny to other parts of Scripture.

The penalty is severe because of what the feast said. Eating leavened bread in that week was a refusal of the sign that marked Israel as the people God had redeemed, and so it was a breach of loyalty to him. Verse 19 names “the congregation of Israel”, the whole assembly, because one household’s disregard touched the holiness of all.

The feast opens and closes with “an holy convocation”. A convocation, miqrâʼ, comes from the verb “to call” and means a called meeting, a public assembly. God is the one who summons, and the people are called out of their ordinary labour to gather before him. “Holy” is qôdesh, what is set apart as sacred. The day is holy because God has claimed it for himself.

On these two days “no manner of work shall be done”. Work, mᵉlâʼkâh, is employment, business or labour, the ordinary toil by which people earn their living, such as farming, craft and trade. The rest anticipates the Sabbath command (Exodus 20:8–11), and Leviticus calls the weekly Sabbath a holy convocation as well (Leviticus 23:3). For people who had laboured under Egypt’s taskmasters, a commanded rest declared that their living and their freedom came from God’s hand.

One kind of work stays open: “save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you.” Food for the day could be prepared. God asks for his people’s attention, and he remembers that they need to eat, so the holy day is free of needless hardship.

The first and seventh days are singled out because they frame the week. The first follows the Passover night and the seventh brings the feast to its close. The days between still belonged to the feast and still required unleavened bread, while leaving room for necessary tasks. Later law repeats the pattern. Leviticus sets the feast in Israel’s yearly calendar (Leviticus 23:6–8), Numbers names the holy convocation of the first day among the offerings of the feast (Numbers 28:18), and Deuteronomy speaks of the solemn assembly on the seventh day, when work stops (Deuteronomy 16:8). The same balance of worship and daily need shapes the Feast of Weeks (Leviticus 23:15–22) and the Feast of Booths (Leviticus 23:33–43).

The word is tsâbâʼ, an army or host. It is used of fighting forces and also of the host of heaven. Israel on that night was a nation of slaves with no military strength of its own, so the word points to the God who led them. He says, “have I brought your armies out”, and the people he brings out leave as an ordered host under his command and protection.

Verse 17 gives the reason for the whole feast in that one clause. Israel keeps the feast because of what God did “in this selfsame day”. The obedience he asks is the thankful answer of people he has already rescued, and the yearly feast guards them against forgetting him.

John the Baptist saw Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Paul names him plainly as the Passover and reads this very feast in his light: “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:6–8).

As the lamb’s blood sheltered Israel from death, the blood of Christ redeems us, “as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18–19). The unleavened bread points to his purity, for he was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Israel was brought out of slavery to Pharaoh, and Christ brings his people out of slavery to sin and death, so that those the Son sets free are free indeed (John 8:36). He also said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35), the true food of which the bread of affliction was a sign.

Paul’s order matters. Believers are already unleavened, made clean by Christ’s sacrifice, “sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). Because that is true, we clear out the old leaven of malice and wickedness and walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). Israel’s search of the house has become a search of the heart, and God gives what it requires: a new heart and his own Spirit within us (Ezekiel 36:26–27). Under the old covenant the unfaithful were cut off, and in Christ those who believe are brought near.

The memorial has its fulfilment too. At a Passover table Jesus gave bread and the cup to his disciples (Matthew 26:26–28) and said, “This cup is the new testament in my blood” (Luke 22:20). The church keeps that supper in every generation and so shows the Lord’s death “till he come” (1 Corinthians 11:23–26). Many churches use unleavened bread at the Lord’s table as a sign of his sinless body. The supper looks ahead to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9), when the redeemed will feast in God’s presence.

The rest of the holy days is fulfilled in him as well. Jesus calls all who labour and are heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28), and Hebrews says that a rest remains for the people of God, in which a person ceases from his own works (Hebrews 4:9–10). The convocation finds its fulfilment in the church, God’s people called out of the world to worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24).

This passage shows a God who wants his rescue remembered. He knew how quickly his people would forget, so he placed the memory in bread, in a cleaned house, in a week of the year and in the questions of children. Faith rests on what God has done in history, and he has given us the Lord’s Supper so that the death of his Son stays before our eyes in the same way.

It shows as well that the God who saves is holy, and that he saves a people to be his own. Israel put away leaven because they had been brought out, and the order is the same for us: Christ our Passover has been sacrificed, and so we keep the feast with sincerity and truth. If you belong to him, the putting away of old sin is the life of someone already set free, lived out day by day.

And it shows his kindness. He commands joy, he commands rest, he allows for the meal each person needs, and he welcomes the stranger under the same rule as the native-born. Every generation is included in “throughout your generations”, which leaves each of us with a story to hand on to those who come after us.