Exodus 12:8

And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire,.... The night of the fourteenth of Nisan; and as the Jews reckoned their days from the evening preceding, this must be the beginning of

And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. They shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire.

In that night, i.e. the night following the fourteenth, and beginning the fifteenth day. The lamb was killed upon the fourteenth day, in the evening or close thereof, but it was eaten upon the fifteenth day, to wit, in the beginning of it; whence the passover is said to be offered sometimes upon the fourteenth, and sometimes upon the fifteenth day, which may serve for the reconciliation of some seemingly contrary scriptures. Roast with fire; partly for expedition, ; and principally to be a type of the Lamb of God, Christ, and of the sharp and dreadful pains which he suffered, not only from men, but from God too, and from the fire of his sore displeasure against sinners, whose place and person Christ sustained in his sufferings. Unleavened bread; partly, as a monument of their speedy departure out of Egypt, which gave them not time to leaven their bread, , which is the reason alleged for it, ; partly, to teach us how men should be qualified that come to the sacrament, they should be purged from error, and pride, and malice, and hypocrisy, which are called and compared to leaven, ,11 Lu 12:1 ; and partly, to signify the singular purity of Christ from all kind of spiritual leaven. And with bitter herbs; both to remind them of their hard service and bitter usage in Egypt, , from which God delivered them, ; and to prefigure the further crosses and troubles which they were to expect between their going out of Egypt and coming to Canaan. Or, with bitternesses, i.e. with great bitterness, or with grief of heart, that together with faith in God and in Christ, and hope and joy for their approaching deliverance, they might exercise bitter and hearty repentance for their idolatries, and other sinful practices whereof they were guilty in Egypt. And this instructs us as well as them of the absolute necessity of true and bitter repentance in all those that would profitably feed upon Christ our Passover.

Exodus 12:8 And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; [and] with bitter [herbs] they shall eat it.Ver. 8. In that night.] By candle light. So must we feed upon Christ, lumine supernaturali. "By his knowledge doth God’ s righteous servant justify many." Roast withfire.] Not raw: we may not grossly conceive of Christ, nor rashly receive him. Not boiled, but roast: to show that Christ was roasted in the fire of his Father’ s wrath: et sicut tostis cibariis non adhibentur alia, ut in elixis fieri consuevlt: ira solum Christum debemus apprehendere fide, saith an interpreter. And unleavened bread,] And with bitter herbs.] To teach that, "looking upon Christ whom they have pierced," men must be "in bitterness," and feel what "an evil and bitter thing sin is," being ready to suffer hardship with Christ, though he should feed us to the full with bitter herbs, and "make us drunken with wormwood." Alsted.

(8) Roast with fire.—Roasting is the simplest, the easiest, and the most primitive mode of cooking meat. It was also the only mode open to all the Hebrews, since the generality would not possess cauldrons large enough to receive an entire lamb. Further, the requirement put a difference between this and other victims, which were generally cut up and boiled (1 Samuel 2:14-15). Unleavened bread . . . bitter herbs.—As partaking of the lamb typified feeding on Christ, so the putting away of leaven and eating unleavened bread signified the putting away of all defilement and corruption ere we approach Christ to feed on Him (1 Corinthians 5:8). As for the bitter herbs, they probably represented “self-denial” or “repentance”—fitting concomitants of the holy feast, where the Lamb of God is our food. At any rate, they were a protest against that animalism which turns a sacred banquet into a means of gratifying the appetite (1 Corinthians 11:20-22).

Verse 8. They shall eat the flesh - roast with fire] As it was the ordinary custom of the Jews to boil their flesh, some think that the command given here was in opposition to the custom of the Egyptians, who ate raw flesh in honour of Osiris. The AEthiopians are to this day remarkable for eating raw flesh, as is the case with most savage nations. Unleavened bread] מצות matstsoth, from מצה matsah, to squeeze or compress, because the bread prepared without leaven or yeast was generally compressed, sad or heavy, as we term it. The word here properly signifies unleavened cakes; the word for leaven in Hebrew is חמץ chamets, which simply signifies to ferment. It is supposed that leaven was forbidden on this and other occasions, that the bread being less agreeable to the taste, it might be emblematical of their bondage and bitter servitude, as this seems to have been one design of the bitter herbs which were commanded to be used on this occasion; but this certainly was not the sole design of the prohibition: leaven itself is a species of corruption, being produced by fermentation, which in such cases tends to putrefaction. In this very light St. Paul considers the subject in this place; hence, alluding to the passover as a type of Christ, he says: Purge out therefore the old leaven - for 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. Bitter herbs] What kind of herbs or salad is intended by the word מררים merorim, which literally signifies bitters, is not well known. The Jews think chicory, wild lettuce, horehound, and the like are intended. Whatever may be implied under the term, whether bitter herbs or bitter ingredients in general, it was designed to put them in mind of their bitter and severe bondage in the land of Egypt, from which God was now about to deliver them.

8. in that (Heb. this) night] the night between the 14th and the 15th. roast with fire] over the fire, on a spit, not in an oven. unleavened cakes] not ‘bread,’ for the Heb. word is plural. They were a kind of biscuit, which could be baked rapidly, as for an unexpected visitor (Genesis 19:3, Judges 6:19-21, 1 Samuel 28:24), or when there was no time to use leaven (below, v. 39); and they are still the ordinary food of the Bedawin. They were used in other ritual besides that of the Passover (v. 15, Exodus 29:2, Leviticus 2:4; Leviticus 7:12, Numbers 6:15 al.). Unleavened cakes are now usually made in Syria by the thin dough being clapped on to the heated interior side of the tannϋr (Exodus 8:3), after the embers have been removed: they may be thinner than pasteboard, and 1–1½ ft. in diameter (EB. s.v. Bread; L. and B. iii. 219). The unleavened cakes made by modern Jews for the Passover are round, about Ό in. thick, and 12 in. in diameter (Jewish Encycl. viii. 394). For the probable reason why leavened bread was avoided, see on Exodus 23:18 a. In Deuteronomy 16:3 the unleavened cakes (of the Passover and Maẓ ?ẓ ?oth together) are called the ‘bread of affliction,’ and explained symbolically as a memorial of the mingled hurry and alarm (ḥ ?ippβẓ ?τn) with which the Israelites left Egypt (cf. below, vv. 11, 34, 39), and as adapted to lead Israel to a grateful recollection of its deliverance. bitter herbs] only besides Numbers 9:11 (also of the Passover); and Lamentations 3:15 (fig. of severe suffering). LXX. πικρίδες, which is differently explained by the ancients (see Kn. ap. Di.; Nowack, Arch. ii. 173) as meaning either wild lettuce (cf. Vulg. lạ ?ctuca agrestis) or wild endive,—both plants indigenous in Egypt and Syria. The Mishna (Pes. ii. 6) mentions five species of herbs any one of which would satisfy the present injunction: lettuce, wild endive, garden endive (?), nettles, and bitter coriander (?). The intention of the bitter herbs is uncertain: perhaps they were meant simply as a condiment, or salad: the later Jews (Gamaliel in Pesβḥ ?im Exodus 10:5; Rashi) explained them as a memorial of the Israelites’ lives being ‘made bitter’ in bondage (ch. Exodus 1:14).

In that night - The night is thus clearly distinguished from the evening when the lamb was slain. It was slain before sunset, on the 14th, and eaten after sunset, the beginning of the 15th.

8, 9. In that night — The night following the sunset of the fourteenth of Nisan, or Abib.