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. בּ אכל, 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 ועשׂה: “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 עשׂה denotes the wish or intention to do it, the second, the actual execution of the wish. The words בּן־נכר, גּר, תּושׁב and שׂכיר, are all indicative of non-Israelites. בּן־נכר was applied quite generally to any foreigner springing from another nation; גּר was a foreigner living for a shorter or longer time in the midst of the Israelites; תּושׁב, lit., a dweller, settler, was one who settled permanently among the Israelites, without being received into their religious fellowship; שׂכיר was the non-Israelite, who worked for an Israelite for wages.
Verse 49
There was one law with reference to the Passover which was applicable both to the native and the foreigner: no uncircumcised man was to be allowed to eat of it.
verses 50-51
Exo 12:50 closes the instructions concerning the Passover with the statement that the Israelites carried them out, viz., in after times (e.g., Num 9:5); and in Exo 12:51 the account of the Exodus from Egypt is also brought to a close. All that Jehovah promised to Moses in Exo 6:6 and Exo 6:26 had now been fulfilled. But although v. 51 is a concluding formula, and so belongs to the account just closed, Abenezra was so far right in wishing to connect this verse with the commencement of the following chapter, that such concluding formulae generally serve to link together the different incidents, and therefore not only wind up what goes before, but introduce what has yet to come.
Chap. 13
Verse 1
Sanctification of the first-born, and Promulgation of the Law for the Feast of Mazzoth. - Exo 13:1,
