Exodus 12:8

12:8 They will eat the meat the same night; ¹  they will eat it roasted over the fire with bread made without yeast ²  and with bitter herbs.

Exodus 12:20

12:20 You will not eat anything made with yeast; in all the places where you live you must eat bread made without yeast.’”

Exodus 13:6

13:6 For seven days ³  you must eat ⁴  bread made without yeast, and on the seventh day there is to be ⁵  a festival to the Lord.

Exodus 23:18

23:18 “You must not offer ⁶  the blood of my sacrifice with bread containing yeast; the fat of my festal sacrifice must not remain until morning. ⁷ 

Exodus 23:25

23:25 You must serve ⁸  the Lord your God, and he ⁹  will bless your bread and your water, ¹⁰  and I will remove sickness from your midst.

Exodus 29:32

29:32 Aaron and his sons are to eat the meat of the ram and the bread that was in the basket at the entrance of the tent of meeting.

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¹ tn Heb “this night.”

² sn Bread made without yeast could be baked quickly, not requiring time for the use of a leavening ingredient to make the dough rise. In Deut 16:3 the unleavened cakes are called “the bread of affliction,” which alludes to the alarm and haste of the Israelites. In later Judaism and in the writings of Paul, leaven came to be a symbol of evil or corruption, and so “unleavened bread” – bread made without yeast – was interpreted to be a picture of purity or freedom from corruption or defilement (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 90-91).

³ tn Heb “Seven days.”

⁴ tn The imperfect tense functions with the nuance of instruction or injunction. It could also be given an obligatory nuance: “you must eat” or “you are to eat.” Some versions have simply made it an imperative.

⁵ tn The phrase “there is to be” has been supplied.

⁶ tn The verb is תִּזְבַּח (tizbbakh), an imperfect tense from the same root as the genitive that qualifies the accusative “blood”: “you will not sacrifice the blood of my sacrifice.” The verb means “to slaughter”; since one cannot slaughter blood, a more general translation is required here. But if the genitive is explained as “my blood-sacrifice” (a genitive of specification; like “the evil of your doings” in Isa 1:16), then a translation of sacrifice would work (U. Cassuto, Exodus, 304).

⁷ sn See N. Snaith, “Exodus 23:18 and 34:25,” JTS 20 (1969): 533-34; see also M. Haran, “The Passover Sacrifice,” Studies in the Religion of Ancient Israel (VTSup), 86-116.

⁸ tn The perfect tense, masculine plural, with vav (ו) consecutive is in sequence with the preceding: do not bow down to them, but serve Yahweh. It is then the equivalent of an imperfect of instruction or injunction.

⁹ tn The LXX reads “and I will bless” to make the verb conform with the speaker, Yahweh.

¹⁰ sn On this unusual clause B. Jacob says that it is the reversal of the curse in Genesis, because the “bread and water” represent the field work and ground suitability for abundant blessing of provisions (Exodus, 734).