Exodus 12:8 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

They shall eat the flesh in that night— That is to say, the night following the fourteenth, and beginning the fifteenth day; for we must not forget, that the Hebrew day commenced from the setting of the sun. The lamb was to be sacrificed the fourteenth, between three and six; but it was eaten on the fifteenth, i.e. in the beginning of it: whence the passover is said to be offered sometimes on the fourteenth, and sometimes on the fifteenth day: a remark, which may serve to reconcile some seemingly contrary passages of Scripture. It was to be eaten roast with fire; as not only the most expeditious and convenient method, but as generally supposed to be a fitter type of HIM, who endured the fierceness of Divine wrath for us. See Lamentations 1:13. It was to be eaten with unleavened bread; partly to commemorate their hasty deliverance, which did not allow them to leaven it, as we learn from Exodus 12:39 and partly to remind them of their hardships in Egypt: unleavened bread being more heavy and unsavoury than leavened; nay, and expressly called, in allusion to this event, the bread of affliction, Deuteronomy 16:3. It was designed, most probably, to remind them further of that sincerity, which is an indispensable requisite in every act of religious duty. St. Paul, at least, leads us to this idea, when, 1 Corinthians 5:8 he says, let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth; see Galatians 5:9 and Matthew 16:6 accordingly, the original word for unleavened, signifies pure, unmixed, uncorrupted, for leaven is a kind of corruption. Plutarch tells us, that the use of leaven was forbidden to the priests of Jupiter; because, being itself bred of corruption, it corrupts the mass with which it is mixed. To remind the Israelites also of that hard bondage in Egypt which made their lives bitter, ch. Exodus 1:14 they were to eat the lamb with, or upon bitter herbs. The original expresses no species of herbs; literally it is, with bitterness: with bitter things or ingredients.