Exodus 12:8
וְאָכְלוּ אֶת־הַבָּשָׂר בַּלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה צְלִי־אֵשׁ וּמַצּוֹת עַל־מְרֹרִים יֹאכְלֻֽהוּ׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וְאָכְל֥וּ אֶת־הַבָּשָׂ֖ר בַּלַּ֣יְלָה הַזֶּ֑ה צְלִי־אֵ֣שׁ וּמַצּ֔וֹת עַל־מְרֹרִ֖ים יֹאכְלֻֽהוּ׃
καὶ φάγονται τὰ κρέα τῇ νυκτὶ ταύτῃ ὀπτὰ πυρί, καὶ ἄζυμα ἐπὶ πικρίδων ἔδονται.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Et edent carnes nocte illa assas igni, et azymos panes cum lactucis agrestibus.
Esa misma noche comerán la carne asada al fuego, acompañada de pan sin levadura y hierbas amargas.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y aquella noche comerán la carne asada al fuego, y panes sin levadura: con hierbas amargas lo comerán.
They are to eat the meat that night, roasted over the fire, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
✦ What the text says
Summary
Exodus 12:8 instructs that the meat is to be eaten on that specific night, prepared as tze.li 'esh ("roasted of fire", H6748/H0784), accompanied by matzot ("unleavened breads", H4682) and mororim ("bitter herbs", H4844). The verse frames the manner and accompaniments of the ritual meal in a single compact sentence.
Key words
- 'a.khe.Lu ("they will eat", H0398) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain of instructions; marks the first mention of eating in the verse.
- ba.Sar ("meat", H1320) — masculine singular noun, marked with the definite article ha (H9009) and the object marker 'et (H0853), identifying it as the specific meat already referred to in context.
- tze.li ("roasted of", H6748) — construct form, meaning it grammatically binds to the following word 'esh ("fire", H0784) to form the phrase "roasted of fire," describing the cooking method.
- ma.Tzot ("unleavened breads", H4682) — feminine plural noun, joined by the conjunction u ("and", H9002) to the preceding phrase, listed as a second food item.
- yo.khe.Lu.hu ("they will eat it", H0398 + H9033) — qal imperfect verb with third-person masculine singular pronominal suffix hu ("it", H9033), repeating the verb "to eat" but now referring back to the meat via the suffix, closing the sentence.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence contains two verbs built from the same root H0398 ("to eat"): first 'a.khe.Lu in the sequential perfect near the start, and then yo.khe.Lu.hu in the imperfect at the end, with the suffix hu ("it") pointing back to ha.ba.Sar ("the meat"). This creates a frame structure: the verb "eat" opens and closes the verse, with the descriptive material — the timing (ba.Lay.lah ha.Zeh, "in the night, this"), the cooking method (tze.li-'esh, "roasted of fire"), and the accompaniments (u.ma.Tzot, "and unleavened breads"; 'al-me.ro.Rim, "with bitter herbs") — placed between the two occurrences of the eating verb.
The construct phrase tze.li-'esh ("roasted of," H6748, bound to "fire," H0784) is a compact construction where a noun of state ("roasted") is linked directly to its instrument ("fire") without an intervening preposition, a construct-chain pattern characteristic of Biblical Hebrew that differs from the prepositional phrasing used in the target-language versions.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders tze.li-'esh as ὀπτὰ πυρί ("roasted with/by fire"), using a dative noun πυρί instead of the Hebrew construct chain. The Vulgate similarly translates it as assas igni ("roasted with fire"), using an ablative. Where the Hebrew literally has mororim as an adjective ("bitter [things]", H4844) used substantively for "bitter herbs," the Vulgate specifies lactucis agrestibus ("wild lettuces"), a more concrete botanical rendering not explicit in the Hebrew term itself.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.