Exodus 12:15

Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread,.... From the evening of the fourteenth day to the evening of the twenty first; and this was a distinct festival from what was properly called the feast of

Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.

Seven days, besides and after the day of eating the passover, which was a distinct feast, and no part of the feast of unleavened bread, shall ye eat unleavened bread, to remind them of their departure out of Egypt, which was so sudden that they had not leisure to leaven their dough. See Poole on "". That soul shall be cut off, either by excommunication, or by death to be inflicted by the magistrate, and, in case of his neglect, by God himself. Nor let any one think that this was too severe a punishment for what may seem no great offence. For this was indeed a very great crime, being a manifest contempt of God, and a rebellion against God’ s authority and express command, which surely deserves as severe a punishment as is inflicted upon rebels against their prince, especially considering that the Israelites were the people and subjects of God in a peculiar manner. It was also a tacit renunciation of their religion, and of the covenant of God with them, and of their interest both in that past deliverance out of Egypt, and in the future deliverance by the Messias. See Poole on ".

Exodus 12:15 Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.Ver. 15. Ye shall put away leaven.] All unsoundness in point of faith, and insincerity in point of practice. The Jews, at this day, on the night before their passover, search and sweep every mouse hole for crumbs of leaven with wax candles. If they find none, they purposely fling down some, that they might not seem to have prayed and laboured in vain.

(15) Seven days.—The division of time into periods of seven days each was unknown to the more ancient Egyptians, but is thought to have existed in Babylonia as early as B.C. 2000. That it was recognised in the family of Abraham appears from Genesis 29:27. According to some, God established the division by an express command to our first parents in Paradise that they should keep the seventh day holy (see Genesis 2:3); but this is greatly questioned by others, who regard Genesis 2:3 as anticipatory, and think the Sabbath was not instituted until the giving of the manna (Exodus 16:23). However this may have been, it is generally allowed that the Israelites had not observed the seventh day in Egypt. where, indeed, they were held to labour continually. and that the Sabbath as an actual observance dates from the Exodus. The injunction here given, if it belongs to the time of the tenth plague, would be the first preliminary note of warning with respect to the Sabbath, raising an expectation of it, and preparing the way for it, leading up to the subsequent revelations in the wilderness of Sin and at Sinai. Ye shall put away leaven out of your houses.—There was to be no compromise, nothing resembling half measures. Leaven, taken as typical of corruption, was to be wholly put away, not allowed by any householder to lurk anywhere within his house—a solemn warning that we are to make no compromise with sin. That soul shall be cut off from Israel.—See the Note on Genesis 17:14.

Verse 15. Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread] This has been considered as a distinct ordinance, and not essentially connected with the passover. The passover was to be observed on the fourteenth day of the first month; the feast of unleavened bread began on the fifteenth and lasted seven days, the first and last of which were holy convocations. That soul shall be cut off] There are thirty-six places in which this excision or cutting off is threatened against the Jews for neglect of some particular duty; and what is implied in the thing itself is not well known. Some think it means a violent death, some a premature death, and some an eternal death. It is very likely that it means no more than a separation from the rights and privileges of an Israelite; so that after this excision the person was considered as a mere stranger, who had neither lot nor part in Israel, nor any right to the blessings of the covenant. This is probably what St. Paul means, Romans 9:3. But we naturally suppose this punishment was not inflicted but on those who had showed a marked and obstinate contempt for the Divine authority. This punishment appears to have been nearly the same with excommunication among the Christians; and from this general notion of the cutting off, the Christian excommunication seems to have been borrowed.

15. Seven days] from the 15th to the 21st of the first month. unleavened cakes] See on v. 8. So vv. 17, 18, 20 (on v. 39, see note). even] rather, surely: cf. in the Heb. Exodus 31:13, Leviticus 23:27; Leviticus 23:39, Numbers 1:49. put away] Heb. make to cease. The later Hebrews were very punctilious in carrying out this injunction; and even before the Passover (which was also eaten with unleavened cakes, v. 8), the house was elaborately searched with candles in order to discover and remove any ‘leaven’ (i.e. fermented dough, or certain articles made of fermented grain: see EB. iii. 2753) that might be in it (Pesβḥ ?im i.–iii.). See an illustration of the search for leaven, from a drawing of 1725, in the Jewish Encyclopaedia, ix. 548; or, on a smaller scale, in Oesterley and Box, The Religion and Worship of the Synagogue (1907), p. 210. leaven] Heb. se’τr,—in practice (see Leaven in EB.; cf. i. 604), a piece of sour (i.e. fermented) dough, reserved for the purpose from the previous day’s baking. Leaven was regarded as produced by corruption (cf. on Exodus 23:18 a, and Plut. Quaest. Rom. 109 ‘Now leaven is itself the offspring of corruption, and corrupts the lump (φύραμα) with which it is mixed’); and so in the NT. it becomes a figure of corrupt teaching or practice, Matthew 16:6 (= Mark 8:15 = Luke 12:1), 11: St Paul twice quotes the saying, ‘A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump’ (1 Corinthians 5:6, Galatians 5:9), with reference to moral corruption: and in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, with evident reference to the injunction here, bids Christians ‘clear away the old leaven,’ and ‘keep the feast’ of their Passover, Christ (i.e. live the Christian life), with the ‘unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’ that soul shall be cut off from Israel] a formula, with slight variations (as he or that man for that soul; and from his father’s kin or from the congregation for from Israel), very common in P: v. 19, Genesis 17:14, Exodus 30:37-38; Exodus 31:14, Leviticus 7:20-21; Leviticus 7:25; Leviticus 7:27; Leviticus 17:4; Leviticus 17:9; Leviticus 18:29; Leviticus 19:8; Leviticus 20:17-18; Leviticus 22:3; Leviticus 23:29, Numbers 9:13; Numbers 15:30-31; Numbers 19:13; Numbers 19:20† (cf. with the first person, I will cut off …, Leviticus 17:10; Leviticus 20:3; Leviticus 20:5-6†; I will destroy …, Leviticus 23:30†). The offence for which this is the penalty is usually neglect of some ceremonial observance, and only occasionally a moral offence, or idolatry. The punishment intended is not death by the civil power (which would be out of the question in many of the cases in which ‘cutting off’ is prescribed, and which is moreover denoted regularly by the formula, ‘shall be put to death’), but excommunication (cf. Ezra 10:8), combined with a threat of divine interposition to root out the evil-doer, as is clear from the variants in which the first person is used (Di. on Genesis 17:14).

Cut off - The penalty inflicted on those who transgressed the command may be accounted for on the ground that it was an act of rebellion; but additional light is thrown upon it by the typical meaning

15. Seven days — Through the sacred cycle of days they were to learn the lessons taught by the “bread of affliction.” That soul shall be cut off — Excommunicated from the sacred body, since such a