Exodus 12:20

20 You will eat no [food with] yeast; in all of your dwellings you will eat unleavened bread."

Exodus 12:20 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 12:20

Ye shall eat nothing leavened
Bread or anything else that had any leaven in it: in all your habitations shall ye eat unleavened bread,
that is, if they eat any bread at all, it must be such; otherwise they might eat cakes of almonds or of eggs mixed with sugar, provided there was no leaven used, and this the Jews call the rich unleavened bread ^F16: this is repeated over and over, that they might be the more careful of observing this precept; but as this was limited for a certain time, it plainly appears to be a mistake of Tacitus ^F17 the Roman historian, who represents unleavened bread as the bread the Jews eat of in common.

---

FOOTNOTES:

F16 See Leo Modena's History of the Rites of the Jews, par. 3. c. 3. sect. 5.
F17 Hist. l. 5. c. 4.

Exodus 12:20 In-Context

18 On the first [day], on the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you will eat unleavened bread until the evening of the twenty-first day of the month.

19 For seven days yeast must not be found in your houses, because {anyone eating food with yeast} will be cut off from the community of Israel--[whether] an alien or a native of the land.

20 You will eat no [food with] yeast; in all of your dwellings you will eat unleavened bread."

21 And Moses called all the elders of Israel, and he said to them, "Select and take for yourselves sheep for your clans and slaughter the Passover sacrifice.

22 And take a bunch of hyssop and dip [it] into the blood that [is] in the basin and apply [some] of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts. And you will not go out, anyone from the doorway of his house, until morning.