Bible Strands
Exodus 12:14
And this day will be a memorial for you, and you are to celebrate it as a feast to the LORD, as a permanent statute for the generations to come.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God addresses Moses and Aaron, speaking to the entire Israelite community, immediately after the command to apply lamb's blood to doorposts to avert the final plague.
The words — The Hebrew לְ/זִכָּרֹן (le./zi.kha.Ron) translates literally as "into a memorial," while חַ֣ג (chag) denotes "a festival" or "feast."
The thread — The directive to maintain a perpetual feast appears in Exodus 12:17 regarding the Feast of Unleavened Bread, is reiterated in Exodus 12:24 as a permanent statute for descendants, and is later invoked in 2 Kings 23:21 when Josiah commands the people to keep the Passover.
Why it lands — The text commands the community to establish a recurring, public observance that institutionalizes the memory of the deliverance event. Readers are required to treat the celebration as a binding, intergenerational obligation rather than a voluntary tradition.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
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.
Cross-references
- 2 Kings 23:21 The king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover of the LORD your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.”
- Exodus 12:17 So you are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your divisions out of the land of Egypt. You must keep this day as a permanent statute for the generations to come.
- Exodus 12:24 And you are to keep this command as a permanent statute for you and your descendants.
- Exodus 13:9 It shall be a sign for you on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that the Law of the LORD is to be on your lips. For with a mighty hand the LORD brought you out of Egypt.
- 1 Corinthians 5:7 Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
- Leviticus 23:4 These are the LORD’s appointed feasts, the sacred assemblies you are to proclaim at their appointed times.
- Exodus 12:43 And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the statute of the Passover: No foreigner is to eat of it.
- Exodus 5:1 After that, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let My people go, so that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.’”
- Deuteronomy 16:1 Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover to the LORD your God, because in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night.
- Deuteronomy 16:11 and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God in the place He will choose as a dwelling for His Name—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levite within your gates, as well as the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widows among you.