In the first month you are to eat unleavened bread, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.
Beginning the year with spring, when the earth renews itself, was a fitting shadow of Christ's coming. Yet here is the deeper lesson: when our heads swim with care and our hands are full of urgent business, we must not let religion slip away or excuse ourselves from devotion. The sacred rite binds us to God even in our haste.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 12:1-20
In the first month,.... As it was now ordered to be reckoned, the month Abib or Nisan: the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread; that is, at the evening following, the fourteenth of Nisan, and which was the beginning of the fifteenth day, the Jews beginning their day from the evening: hence the Targum of Jonathan is,"on the fourteenth...
Seven days of unleavened bread commemorates Israel's hurried departure, when they had no time to leaven their dough. The Jews searched every corner with a candle to remove leaven from their houses. One who eats leaven during those days is cut off from the community and its privileges.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 12:15-51