The Book of Exodus
Exodus Chapters 12, 14, 17

INTRODUCTION TO THIS STUDY

The purpose of this work is to guide you in Spirit Filled interpretation of this "Selected Study". As necessary we will provide outlines, historical backgrounds, note the purpose and focus of the text, and also provide the original Hebrew language definitions for the key words in the highlighted text. The English translation used is the King James (Authorized) Version, not because it is the best translation available, but because I just plain prefer it for study!

All Scripture text will be presented in normal cased lettering, and all notes within the text will be in TRUE TYPE FONT, as shown. This (I hope) will allow you to avoid confusion between God's Word and my notes. As I update this website, I will continue to embellish the text so that anyone using NETSCAPE 3.0 or MICROSOFT 3.0 or higher will be able to read the document easier.
 

An excellent site to study Biblical Hebrew is by Lee R. Martin, Biblical Hebrew. The following are excerpts from his Hebrew Dictionary (if you want more, go to his site):

ABSOLUTE: In Hebrew Greek grammar, a word is absolute when it stands independently and has no grammatical relation to other elements in the sentence. The most common instance in Greek is the genitive absolute.

ABSOLUTE STATE: The Hebrew absolute together with a word in the construct state expresses the genitive. Do not confuse with the infinitive absolute. Heb: king (absolute); horse of (construct) the king (absolute), i.e., the king's horse (genitive).

ACCIDENCE: That part of grammar that treats inflection; a subcategory of morphology.

ACCUSATIVE CASE: A substantive used as the direct object of a transitive verb is said to be in the accusative case. In Greek, the accusative is the case of extension. Heb: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Gk: "He gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12).

ACCUSATIVE ENDING: In Hebrew see DIRECTIVE h.

ACTIVE VOICE: In the active voice, the subject is the doer of the action that is expressed by the verb.

AKTIONSART: German for "kind of action."

ANARTHROUS: A word that appears without the article is anarthrous.

ARAMAIC: A branch of the northwest Semitic languages that is closely related to Hebrew. In the OT Masoretic text, Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Dan. 2:4b-7:28; and Jer. 10:11 are in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. Aramaic had become the common language of the Jewish people by NT times.

CASE: Case shows the grammatical relation of inflected forms such as nouns and pronouns to other words (nominative, possessive, objective cases).

CAUSATIVE VERB: A transitive verb that can be said to cause the action depicted in a corresponding intransitive verb. Ex: lay ("cause to lie") is the causative of lie; raise, the causative of rise.

DIRECT OBJECT: The word, phrase, or clause that is the primary goal or result of the action of the verb (cf. accusative case); the person or thing is directly affected by the action of the verb. Heb: "God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Gr: "He grabbed him and began to choke him" (Matt. 18:28).

GENITIVE: The case that expresses possession or specifies a relationship that can be expressed in English by "of." In Hebrew this is called a construct relationship. The Greek genitive is the specifying case answering the question "What kind?" Heb: "the expanse of the sky" (Gen. 1:21). Gk: "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4).

GUTTURALS: The mute consonants whose sounds are produced when the front of the tongue approaches the palate of the mouth. Four letters in Hebrew, a h j and [ are the guttural letters (r has some guttural characteristics). Hebrew gutturals cannot be doubled, prefer a-class vowels, and composite shevas. In Greek, the guttural letters are g k and c also called velars, laryngeals, or palatals.

HITHPAEL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action (classified by some grammars as causative action) and reflexive voice. For this emphasis in Greek, middle voice. Heb: "A group of adventurers gathered around [lit., gathered themselves around] him" (Judg. 11:3).

HOPHAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses causative action and passive voice. Heb: "Let seven of his male descendants be given [hophal] to us" (2 Sam. 21:6).

IMPERATIVE: A verb or verbal mood that expresses command or makes a request.

IMPERFECT: In Hebrew, the form of the verb used to express action that is incomplete or unfinished. Heb: "What if they do not believe me" (Exod. 4:1). The Greek imperfect tense expresses incomplete, linear action in past time. Gk: "People were eating and drinking..." (Luke 17:28). Other regular uses of the tense include iterative, frequentative, inceptive, and conative.

INFINITIVE: A verbal noun that has characteristics of both verbs and nouns. In English usually introduced by to. Hebrew has both infinitive absolute and infinitive construct forms. Heb: "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land" (Gen. 15:7). The Greek infinitive is used as a substantive, in subordinate clauses, with prepositions, and in epexegesis. Gk: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Phil. 1:21).

INFINITIVE ABSOLUTE: A form of the Hebrew infinitive that may function in a number of ways: to express certainty or intensification ("you will surely die," Gen. 2:17); to express repeated or continued action ("Be ever hearing," Isa. 6:9); as a finite verb ("They...broke the jars," Judg. 7:19); to express an emphatic imperative ("Remember the Sabbath day," Exod. 20:8).

MASORETIC TEXT: The vocalized text of the Hebrew Bible, prepared by a group of Jewish scholars around A.D. 700 to preserve the oral pronunciation of the Hebrew words.

MOOD: Mood indicates the manner in which the action is conceived (or its relation to reality). Moods are indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative. Mood may be expressed by finite verbs in Greek and by various means (form, words, or context) in Hebrew. Mode.

NIPHAL: A verbal form (stem) in Hebrew that expresses simple action and passive or reflexive voice. Heb: "She was given in marriage to Adriel of Meholah" (1 Sam. 18:19).

OPTATIVE MOOD: The mood of possibility and more doubtful assertion that expresses wish or desire. See also jussive and cohortative. Heb: "If only we had died in Egypt!" (Num. 14:2). Gk: "Maythe Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance" (2 Thess. 3:5).

PARTICIPLE: A verbal form that has characteristics of both noun and verb. In Hebrew it represents characteristic, continual, uninterrupted action. Heb: "The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (Gen. 1:2). The Greek participle is widely used as a substantive, adjective, and adverb in phrases and clauses. Gk:"...in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him" (1 Peter 1:21).

PARTICLE: A unit of speech that is ranked as an uninflected word but expresses some kind of syntactical relationship or some general aspect of meaning. Some grammarians classify all conjunctions, prepositions, and negatives as particles.

PASSIVE VOICE: A voice form of the verb that represents the subject as receiver of the action. Heb: "This land was given to us as our possession" (Ezek. 11:15). Gk: "You were marked in him with a seal" (Eph. 1:13).

PERFECT/PERFECT TENSE: In Hebrew, this form of the verb is used to express completed action, whether in reality or in the thought of the speaker or writer. Heb: rm'v; is a perfect form of the verb and would be translated "he guarded." The Greek perfect tense, by contrast, represents a state of completion with abiding results and is often translated as a present perfect. Gk: The perfect leluke would be rendered "he has released."

PIEL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action and active voice. Heb: "They destroyed the high places and the altars" (2 Chron. 31:1).

PREPOSITION: A word that shows relationships between its object and some other word in the sentence. Some common English prepositions are in, to, from, with, above, for, by.

PRETERITE: A Latin name for the past tense; it is the equivalent of the perfect in Hebrew and the aorist indicative in Greek.

PUAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action and passive voice. Heb: "There was Baal's altar, demolished" (Judg. 6:28).

QAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses simple action and active voice; it is sometimes spelled Kal. Ex:"Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew" (Gen.25:34).

REFLEXIVE VOICE: Denotes an action that is directed back upon the agent or subject; expressed in Hebrew by the niphal and the hithpael, in Greek by the middle voice.Heb: "I have...kept myself from sin" (Ps. 18:23). Gk: "Then he went away and hanged himself" (Matt. 27:5).

ROOT: That part of a word left when all affixes are removed; the morpheme that carries the minimal unit of meaning in a word and can be common to several different words. The three consonants in Hebrew that ordinarily compose the basic uninflected spelling of a word are called the root letters. Occasionally a Hebrew word may have two or four root letters. Gk: the root dik- is common to dikaio", "righteous," dikh, "justice," and dikaiow, "to acquit." Also called "Lexeme."

STATIVE VERB, STATIC VERB: A stative verb is one that indicates a state of being or relationship rather than action. In Hebrew, its vowel pattern is different from that of verbs of action or motion. Greek statives include eijmi, ginomai, and uJparcw. Heb: "the hands...will be strengthened (2 Sam. 16:21). Gk: "Who, being in very nature God" (Phil. 2:6).

STEM: The noun or verb base formed by the addition of derivational affixes to the root. Thus, in Greek, doro- is the stem of the noun doron, "gift"; do- is the root, ro is the affix (in this case, a suffix). Also called base in recent grammars. In Hebrew, the term is used to designate verb forms that express certain kinds of action and voice; the major Hebrew verbal stems are qal, niphal, piel, pual, hithpael, hiphil, and hophal.

STRONG VERB: In Hebrew, the regular verb whose stem consonants do not change, i.e., remain unmodified in conjugation, in contrast to the weak verb. In Greek, a tense stem formed from the verb stem or root itself by vowel gradation.

VOICE: Voice is a modification of a verb that tells whether the subject of the verb acts or is acted upon. There are three voices in English, Hebrew, and Greek: active, passive, and reflexive.

WEAK VERB: In Hebrew, the verbs with gutturals or weak letters ( n in first root position, y and w in first or second root position, identical second and third root letters) as radicals, which produce modifications in the conjugation, in contrast to the strong verb. In Greek, a tense stem formed by adding a suffix to the verb stem or root.

If you discover obvious errors (as I am human, and do make mistakes), please let me know. Do not contact me to argue about the doctrinal differences that you may have with my teaching. I do not argue Theology with anyone, so all Legalists, cultists, and others with extremist views, please save your (and my) time. If you want to discuss your doctrinal differences, or share a viewpoint, please contact me at Didaskalos Ministries. I am not so arrogant as to think I know it all, or even 1% of what the scripture teaches.
 
 

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, (The first Passover was on April 14, 1441 BC, and Christ was crucified on April 14, 32 AD - on the anniversary of this historic event)
 

2 This month (The month of Nissan, April by our calendar. This is a picture of Christ, a prophetic picture, for when His blood was shed the Death Angel passes over us - we have new Life)

[shall be] unto you the beginning of months: it [shall be] the first month of the year to you.
 

3 Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth (the Lamb is killed, having no blemish. Represents the Virgin born Christ)

[day] of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of [their] fathers, a lamb for an house:
 

4 And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house take [it] according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating (men ate of the Lamb. This was symbolic of the non meritorious belief in Christ. Jesus would institute the Lord's Table later and show how we symbolically "eat" of His flesh to be saved)

shall make your count for the lamb.
 

5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, (symbolizes the purity of Christ)

a male of the first year: ye shall take [it] out from the sheep, or from the goats: (The lamb was held for three days before it was killed. This symbolized the three year ministry of Christ on the earth prior to His crucifixion)
 

6 And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth (this was exactly the time of Christ's crucifixion about 1.5 millennia later)

day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. (literally = "between the evenings". The Jewish day is reckoned from sundown to sundown. Christ died just prior to sundown)
 

7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike [it] on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.
 

8 And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, (represents the judgment that Christ bore for us)

and unleavened bread; (represents the sinless nature of Christ)

[and] with bitter [herbs] (represents the sinfulness of humanity)

they shall eat it.
 

9 Eat not of it raw, (You cannot be saved without the judgmental fire of God. The Lamb must suffer for us)

nor sodden at all with water, (water will not save {baptism does not save})

but roast [with] fire; (represents the judgment that Christ bore for us)

his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof.
 

10 And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire.
 

11 And thus shall ye eat it; [with] your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it [is] the LORD'S passover.
 

12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I [am] the LORD.
 

13 And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye [are]: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy [you], when I smite the land of Egypt.
 

14 And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.
 

15 Seven days (Refers to the life of the believer on the earth. Seven days, one week, the complete lifetime)

shall ye eat unleavened bread; (This followed the feast of Passover, and symbolized fellowship with God in time)

even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: (See 1 John 1.9, all sin must go)

for whosoever eateth leavened (symbolic of sin. See Luke 12.1; Mat 16.6; Mk 8.15; 1 Cor 5.8; Gal 5.9)

bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
 

16 And in the first day [there shall be] an holy convocation, (a special Sabbath)

and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation (a special Sabbath)

to you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save [that] which every man must eat, that only may be done of you.
 

17 And ye shall observe [the feast of] unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever.
 

18 In the first [month], on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat (symbolic of fellowship with Christ)

unleavened bread, (the bread symbolized the body of Christ. See Jo 6.35, 47-48)

until the one and twentieth day of the month at even. (the Jewish day was reckoned from sunset to sunset)
 

19 Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born in the land. (this was the discipline for failure to obey - loss of blessing in time)
 
 
 
 
 

10  And when Pharaoh drew nigh, (Hophal Imperfect qarab, be caused to advance)

the children of Israel lifted up (qal imperfect nasa = stared intently)

their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched (qal active naca`, bore down on in marching)

after them; and they were sore afraid: (qal active me`od yare', extremely frightened)

and the children of Israel cried out unto (literally = to scream in panic)

the LORD.
 

11  And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away (qal perfect, laqach, to be delivered)

to die (qal construct muwth, to die)

in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt (`asah, qal perfect = to manufacture something out of something. The Jews were implying that Moses led a conspiracy against Israel)

thus with us, to carry us forth out (Hophal Infinitive construct, yatsa',  cause to be led out)

of Egypt?
 

12  Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, (qal imperative chadai, leave alone)

that we may serve (qal imperative `abad, to be slaves. They were saying they told Moses it was better to stay as slaves. This is how sin propagates a lie. Once I tried to defend a person who was told to leave the Church by another member, but later she oscillated in order to stay with the Church and claimed what the person initially said was "not that bad". Sin propagates a lie.)

the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die (qal infinitive muwth, rather than our dying)

in the wilderness.
 

13  And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, (qal imperfect yare' + au, stop fearing)

stand still, (Hithpael Imperative yatsab, stand firm, stand fast, stay in place)

and see (qal imperative ra'ah, watch, concentrate on)

the salvation (yeshuw`ah, deliverance of)

of the LORD, which he will shew (qal imperative asah, manufacture something out of something)

to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. (ad olam = no, never again)
 

14  The LORD (Yehovah, the highest name of God)

shall fight (niphal imperfect lacham, reflexive = He Himself shall fight)

for you, and ye shall hold your peace. (hophal imperfect, charash, be caused to keep quiet)
 
 
 

1  And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed (naca`, to pull up tent pins, to advance)

from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the LORD, and pitched (qal imperfect chanah, to bivouac, camp)

in Rephidim: (literally means "place of refreshment")

and there was no (ajim = no chance of. This was a hopeless situation, humanly speaking)

water for the people (around 2 million men, women, children)

to drink. (qal infinitive shathah, to drink and sustain life)
 

2  Wherefore the people did chide (riyb, to complain bitterly)

with Moses, and said, (qal imperfect 'amar, repeatedly said)

Give (qal imperative nathan, we demand, give us. Symbolized revolution)

us water that we may drink. (shathah, qal imperfect = satisfy our thirst)

And Moses said unto them, Why (interoggative mah = why)

chide ye with me? wherefore do ye tempt (nacah, piel imperfect = to test, provoke)

the LORD?
 

3  And the people thirsted (tsame', qal imperfect = were acutely thirsty)

there for water; and the people murmured (luwn, qal imperfect, habitually complained)

against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up (hophal perfect, `alah, caused to be brought up)

out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? (note the order of accusation: themselves first, then their children, then their cattle)
 

4  And Moses cried (tsa`aq, qal imperfect = to yell out stridently. Moses had to yell above the sounds of the crowd, which had turned into a mob)

unto the LORD, saying, What shall I do (asah = to manufacture something out of something)

unto this people? they be almost ready to stone (cqqal, to stone to death)

me.
 

5  And the LORD said unto Moses, Go on before (paniym, qal imperative = pass in review, pass in front of)

the people, and take (laqach, qal imperative = grab)

with thee of the elders (zaqen, administrators, sub leaders)

of Israel; and thy rod, (mateh = staff, cain, scepter. A symbol of divine authority)

wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go. (halak, qal perfect = to move out. march out)
 

6  Behold, (hen, interjectory demonstrative = behold me)

I will stand before (amad = stand before)

thee there upon the rock in Horeb; (located in the Sinai region, Moses was first here when he saw the burning bush. See Exo 3.1-2)

and thou shalt smite (nakah, hophal stem = to cause to be hit)

the rock, and there shall come (qal perfect yatsah = to gush out, roar out of)

water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
 

7  And he called (qara', qal imperfect = named so that the name remained)

the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the chiding (riyb, quarrelsomeness)

of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not? (Psa 78.20; 105.41; Deu 6.16; 9.32; 33.8)