2. Consecrate unto Me each firstborn. As Nahum Sarna notes, there are indications elsewhere—e.g., Numbers 3:12—that the firstborn originally served as priests, until they were replaced by the members of the tribe of Levi, and so consecration here has a double meaning: the human firstborn are to be dedicated to God’s cult and the animal firstborn are to be sacrificed to God. These first two verses of the chapter appear to be a separate unit, editorially inserted because of the connection with the instructions about the redemption of the firstborn and the sacrifice of firstborn animals in the next unit (verses 12–13, 15).

breach of each womb. The Hebrew peter means “opening” and is related, by metathesis, to perets, “bursting.” It is a vivid idiom for the firstborn.

3. Remember this day. The Hebrew verb zakhar suggests both the cognitive act of remembering and the ritual act of commemoration. This entire projection into the future in the promised land of the Passover observance clearly duplicates some of the material in 12:14–28, though it stresses even more centrally the function of memory/commemoration.

unleavened stuff. This rendering of ḥamets is preferable to “unleavened bread” used by some translations because the term probably includes grain-based foods other than bread, as later Jewish tradition would extravagantly stipulate in its Passover regulations.

5. this service. The reference is to the Passover ritual. As has often been noted, the Hebrew ʿavodah, the term for service or worship, is also the word repeatedly used for the labor or slavery in Egypt; so the narrative traces a move from coerced manual service to service of the deity.

6. on the seventh day a festival to the LORD. Surprisingly, there is no indication here, as in the previous chapter, of a festival on the first day. Either this is an ellipsis, which would be untypical for legal injunctions, or it reflects a variant tradition.

9. a sign for you on your hand and a remembrance between your eyes. The concrete reference of these famous words remains in doubt. The original intention could conceivably be metaphorical: the story of the Exodus is to be forever present on the hand (or arm), the idiomatic agent of power and action, and between the eyes, the place of perception and observation. Here the key word for our passage, “remembrance” (zikaron), is used for what should be between the eyes. In verse 16 the term used is totafot, “circlets” or “frontlets,” a word of obscure origin and not entirely certain meaning: many imagine it as a headband, although a headband would be worn above, not between, the eyes, whereas there are Egyptian ornaments, as some scholars have noted, that were worn between the eyes. Subsequent Jewish tradition construed this phrase to enjoin the wearing of small leather boxes containing scriptural passages written on parchment (tefillin, conventionally translated as “phylacteries”).

the LORD’s teaching. Here torah has the clear meaning of “teaching” because it is said to be in the mouth (learning in the ancient world would have involved recitation out loud).

12. pass . . . to the LORD. The verb, which is the causative form of the verb used for God’s crossing or passing through Egypt, means in this context “to transfer possession.”

13. every donkey’s breach. Since the donkey was an impure animal for both dietary and ritual purposes, it could not be sacrificed, and a lamb (or sheep) had to be sacrificed in its stead. As William H. C. Propp observes, a donkey was worth several times the value of a sheep, so the sheep substitution would almost certainly be embraced rather than the alternative of destroying the donkey that is put forth in the next clause.

you shall break its neck. The Hebrew verb ʿaraf clearly derives from ʿoref, the nape. It could conceivably refer to slaughter with a knife at the back of the neck rather than at the front, as is ritually prescribed. In postbiblical Hebrew, the verb means “to behead.” In any case, the idea is that if a person should refuse to perform the substitute sacrifice for the donkey, he should be deprived of its use—which no sane owner of this ubiquitous and valuable beast of burden and means of transportation would do.

14. What is this? Again and again, these texts emphasize the educational and commemorative function of the Exodus story and of the Passover ritual embedded in it. The story encodes the very matrix and rationale of Israelite national existence, and it becomes a sustained exercise in collective remembering. The educational formulas here reiterate the verbal motif of “a strong hand” or “strength of hand” that punctuates the Exodus narrative proper.

15. every firstborn of my sons I must redeem. The permanent “redemption” of every firstborn son, in remembrance of all the firstborn Hebrew sons rescued from death on that dire night in Egypt, is evidently a payment in silver or goods to the priests. The notion that this is a substitute for human sacrifice of the firstborn, as Sir James Frazer contended, is at best part of the shadowy archaic antecedents of this practice, here firmly anchored in historical commemoration.

17. And it happened when Pharaoh sent the people off. We now return to the story, with an indication of the escape route that will be important as we approach the dramatic event at the Sea of Reeds.

by way of the land of the Philistines. This would have been the most direct route to Canaan, along what amounted to a coastal highway up through the area that is the present-day Gaza Strip. This route was in fact heavily fortified by the Egyptians as the principal avenue for their varying imperial enterprises to the north, and so would have immediately confronted the fleeing slaves with the prospect of “battle.” The Philistines in this period are an anachronistic reference, for they arrived from the Aegean region (and thus are known as the Sea Peoples) in this coastal strip during the twelfth century B.C.E., perhaps as much as a hundred years after the conjectured date of the Exodus in the later thirteenth century.

18. the Sea of Reeds. This is not the Red Sea, as older translations have it, but most likely a marshland in the northeastern part of Egypt. (Marshes might provide some realistic kernel for the tale of a waterway that is at one moment passable and in the next flooded.) But it must be conceded that elsewhere yam suf refers to the Red Sea, and some scholars have recently argued that the story means to heighten the miraculous character of the event through the parting of a real sea. Even if the setting is a marsh, the event is reported in strongly supernatural terms.

19. he had solemnly made the sons of Israel swear. Here the reference of beney yisraʾel would have to be Joseph’s brothers, the actual sons of Israel/Jacob. But the double sense of the term works nicely by stressing the continuity of obligation between the original sons of Israel who swore to bring Joseph’s bones up out of Egypt and these “sons of Israel” who are the Israelites, the Hebrew nation.

21. And the LORD was going before them. The participial form of the verb in the Hebrew suggests constant action. This effect is complemented by the verb at the very beginning of (in the Hebrew) the next verse, loʾ yamish, which has an iterative force, “would not budge.” The twin images of a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire going before the people extend the representation of the Israelites as “the LORD’s battalions” because in biblical idiom the commander of an army is said to “go out and come in” before it, that is, lead it in battle.

a pillar of cloud . . . a pillar of fire. This spectacular panoramic picture of the Israelite throngs following these miraculous guides through the wilderness nicely counterpoints the plagues that preceded. Several of the plagues involved destruction descending from the sky. Here a great mass of cloud descends from the sky to lead Israel. The penultimate plague plunged Egypt into terrifying darkness, and now a column of divine fire serves as a huge beacon to show Israel the way through the dark of the wilderness.