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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Exodus 12:43 - 12:43
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Regulations Concerning the Participants in the Passover. - These regulations, which were supplementary to the law of the Passover in Exo 12:3-11, were not communicated before the exodus; because it was only by the fact that a crowd of foreigners attached themselves to the Israelites, that Israel was brought into a connection with foreigners, which needed to be clearly defined, especially so far as the Passover was concerned, the festival of Israel's birth as the people of God. If the Passover was still to retain this signification, of course no foreigner could participate in it. This is the first regulation. But as it was by virtue of a divine call, and not through natural descent, that Israel had become the people of Jehovah, and as it was destined in that capacity to be a blessing to all nations, the attitude assumed towards foreigners was not to be an altogether repelling one. Hence the further directions in Exo 12:44 : purchased servants, who had been politically incorporated as Israel's property, were to be entirely incorporated by circumcision, so as even to take part in the Passover. But settlers, and servants working for wages, were not to eat of it, for they stood in a purely external relation, which might be any day dissolved. בְּ אָכַל, lit., to eat at anything, to take part in the eating (Lev 22:11). The deeper ground fore this was, that in this meal Israel was to preserve and celebrate its unity and fellowship with Jehovah. This was the meaning of the regulations, which were repeated in Exo 12:46 and Exo 12:47 from Exo 12:4, Exo 12:9, and Exo 12:10, where they had been already explained. If, therefore, a foreigner living among the Israelites wished to keep the Passover, he was first of all to be spiritually incorporated into the nation of Jehovah by circumcision (Exo 12:48). פס וְעָשָׂה: “And he has made (i.e., made ready) a passover to Jehovah, let every male be circumcised to him (i.e., he himself, and the male members of his house), and then he may draw near (sc., to Jehovah) to keep it.” The first עָשָׂה denotes the wish or intention to do it, the second, the actual execution of the wish. The words בֶּן־נֵכָר, גֵּר, תֹּושָׁב and שָׂכִיר, are all indicative of non-Israelites. בֶּן־נֵכָר was applied quite generally to any foreigner springing from another nation; גֵּר was a foreigner living for a shorter or longer time in the midst of the Israelites; תֹּושָׁב, lit., a dweller, settler, was one who settled permanently among the Israelites, without being received into their religious fellowship; שָׂכִיר was the non-Israelite, who worked for an Israelite for wages.