Exodus 12:42

These verses follow straight on from the tenth plague. At midnight the LORD struck the firstborn of Egypt (Exodus 12:29), on the night Israel ate the first Passover as he had commanded (Exodus 12:1). Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron by night, told them to take the people with their flocks and herds and go, and asked them to bless him as well (Exodus 12:31–32). The Egyptians urged the people to hurry, saying, “We be all dead men” (Exodus 12:33), and Israel set out carrying their dough and the goods the Egyptians had given them (Exodus 12:34–37). The whole account of that night runs through Exodus 12:29–39. The people obeyed at once and went out together, a whole nation moving as one.

Rameses, Raʻmᵉçêç, was one of the store cities Israel had built for Pharaoh under forced labour (Exodus 1:11), usually identified with Pi-Ramesse, a royal city in the eastern Nile Delta. Israel’s freedom begins at the very place that stood for their slavery. Succoth, Çukkôwth, means “booths”, a fitting name for the first camp of a people who would now live in tents. The same word names the Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot, which Israel later kept in memory of God’s care for them in the wilderness.

“And a mixed multitude went up also with them.” The word ‘êreb comes from a root meaning to mix or mingle, and rab means much, many or great, so the phrase speaks of a large company of mixed peoples from outside Israel’s tribes. Scripture leaves them unnamed. They probably included Egyptians who had come to fear the LORD through the plagues, other foreigners or slaves living in Egypt, and people of mixed descent. The plagues had shown the LORD’s power to Egypt and to all who lived there, and some left their old lives to go out with his people.

So at the very birth of the nation, people from outside Israel go out with it. God’s saving work came to Israel first, and even here it reaches past Israel’s borders. Isaiah later speaks of “the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the LORD”, and God promises, “Even them will I bring to my holy mountain” (Isaiah 56:6–7).

The mixed company also brought trouble later. In the wilderness “the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting”, and the children of Israel wept again and asked, “Who shall give us flesh to eat?” (Numbers 11:4), longing for the food they had eaten in Egypt (Numbers 11:4–6). God’s people, gathered from many backgrounds, need to hold together around him and guard against what pulls them back.

They baked the dough, bâtsêq, which they had carried out of Egypt, “for it was not leavened”. They made it into matstsâh, unleavened bread, thin bread made without yeast, a word that comes from mâtsats. Leaven needs hours to make dough rise, and they had to bake what they had. The verse gives the reason: “they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry”. gârash means to drive out or expel, and the word for tarry, mâhahh, means to hesitate or delay, so they went at once. They set out with raw dough as their only food for the road.

God had told Moses this would happen: “with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land” (Exodus 6:1). The Pharaoh who had refused again and again now drove them out himself, broken by the death of the firstborn (Exodus 12:29–30). The haste belonged to Egypt, and the hand behind it was the LORD’s.

The bread became Israel’s memorial of that night. God had already ordained the feast before they left: “And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:17), and the Passover was to be kept as “a feast by an ordinance for ever” (Exodus 12:14). The word matstsâh simply means unleavened bread, and each year that flat bread brought back the night their fathers left Egypt in a hurry.

Their bare provisions also set up the journey ahead. A people who left with only their dough would have to be fed by God, and he fed them with manna (Exodus 16). Moses told them why: “that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live” (Deuteronomy 8:3).

“Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.” The word for sojourning, môwshâb, means a dwelling or habitation, and also the time of dwelling somewhere, which is its sense here. “Dwelt” is yâshab, which means to sit down and so to settle and live in a place. Israel had truly settled in Egypt, and all that time they were the people God had spoken of to Abraham: “thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years” (Genesis 15:13). Egypt was a long stop on the way to the land God promised when he first called Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3).

“The children of Israel” are the descendants of Jacob. His name, Yisrâʼêl, is built from words meaning to prevail or have power and God, and Strong’s renders it “he will rule as God”. The name of one man had become the name of a nation, and the years counted here are the years of God’s covenant people.

Then the moment comes: “at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day”. The word for end is qêts. The word behind “selfsame”, ʻetsem, usually means a bone, and joined to yôwm, day, it marks “this very day itself”. The years God had set out in his promise to Abraham (Genesis 15:13–16) ran their course, and on the exact day they ended, Israel went out.

Moses later gave the reason: “because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand” (Deuteronomy 7:8). Long afterwards, when Israel had entered the land, Joshua could say, “There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass” (Joshua 21:45). Promises that wait for generations still come to pass on the day God has set.

The word for night, layil, means the time from sunset to sunrise, and elsewhere it can picture adversity. This was the night the firstborn of Egypt died and Israel went out, a night of judgment on Egypt and of salvation for Israel (Exodus 12:29–32). Israel had sheltered behind the blood of the lamb on their doorposts (Exodus 12:21–27), as the LORD commanded when he gave the Passover (Exodus 12:1–28), and after this verse come further rules for who may eat it (Exodus 12:43–51). The whole story is told in Exodus 12.

“Much observed” translates shimmur, which means an observance and comes from shamar, to keep, guard or watch. The verse uses it twice. The night is first “a night to be much observed unto the LORD for bringing them out from the land of Egypt”, a night that belongs to the LORD because of what he did in it. Then it is “that night of the LORD to be observed of all the children of Israel in their generations”. The LORD watched over his people that night, and his people keep the night for him ever after. The name in the verse is Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, God’s own covenant name. The night is his because he alone brought them out, keeping his promise to Abraham (Genesis 15:13–14).

Every generation was to keep it. The law of the Passover begins, “Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD thy God: for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night” (Deuteronomy 16:1), and goes on to the unleavened bread (Deuteronomy 16:1–8). Each year Israel’s children would learn that they were a people redeemed by the LORD, who judged Egypt and its gods and then overthrew Pharaoh’s army in the sea (Exodus 14).

The going out from Egypt is the great Old Testament picture of salvation, and the New Testament shows it fulfilled in Jesus. John the Baptist pointed to him and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The blood of the Passover lamb sheltered Israel from death (Exodus 12:1–13), and Paul writes, “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7). He goes on to the unleavened bread: “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 5:7–8). In the New Testament leaven often pictures sin and corruption. Jesus said, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6), and Paul warned, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9). Israel’s bread was unleavened because they left in haste, and in Christ that same bread becomes a picture of a life made clean.

Christ sets his people free from sin and death. Jesus said, “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin”, and “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:34–36). Believers are “made free from sin, and become servants to God” (Romans 6:22). God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood” (Colossians 1:13–14). And as God brought Israel out on the selfsame day, so “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4), to redeem us and make us sons and heirs, “no more a servant, but a son” (Galatians 4:4–7).

The mixed multitude looks ahead to the church gathered from every people. Christ “hath broken down the middle wall of partition” between Jew and Gentile, to make “of twain one new man, so making peace” (Ephesians 2:14–16). The redeemed sing to the Lamb, “thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Revelation 5:9), and John saw “a great multitude, which no man could number” standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9–10). They are “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation”, a people gathered by God (1 Peter 2:9–10), the hosts of the LORD in Christ.

The God who sent Israel out with flocks and herds provides for his people still. Jesus said, “he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35), and “his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). Like Israel in Egypt, believers live here as “strangers and pilgrims” (1 Peter 2:11). The patriarchs confessed the same and looked for “a better country, that is, an heavenly” (Hebrews 11:13–16). We wait for “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4), in the new heaven and new earth where God “shall wipe away all tears” (Revelation 21:1–4).

God kept a promise across four hundred and thirty years, and he kept it to the day. What he has promised you in Christ rests on the same faithfulness, however long the wait. Israel walked out with raw dough into a wilderness where God would feed them, and he still provides for his people along the road, one day at a time.

God also gave his people a night to remember. When we come to his table, and when we tell our children what he has done, we are doing what he asked of Israel on that first night: keeping in mind that the LORD brought us out, and handing that on to the generation after us.