Exodus 13:7

Summary

The verse commands that unleavened bread (matzot) be eaten during the seven-day period, and states that no leavened substance — described through two distinct Hebrew terms — is to be present or visible within the addressee's territory.

Key words

• matzot ("unleavened bread", H4682) — feminine plural noun, subject of a singular passive verb, creating a collective/distributive sense ("bread of the unleavened kind" as a category).
• ye'akhel ("it will be eaten", H0398) — niphal (passive) imperfect, third person masculine singular; the passive voice removes a stated agent, so the text does not specify who eats.
• chametz ("leaven", H2557A) — grammatically an adjective/substantive referring to the leavened product or state itself, not the fermenting agent.
• se'or ("leaven", H7603) — a separate noun referring to the leavening agent or starter substance, distinct in form and referent from chametz.
• yera'eh ("it will be seen", H7200G) — niphal imperfect, repeated twice; passive construction with the preposition le ("to/for") plus pronominal suffix -kha ("you"), forming the idiom "it will not be seen to you," i.e., "you will not have it visible."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the object matzot placed before its verb ye'akhel, a common Biblical Hebrew word order for emphasis on the item being discussed. The verb is singular even though matzot is plural, treating the category of unleavened bread as a single collective concept rather than individual loaves. The passive niphal form avoids naming who performs the eating, leaving the action stated generally rather than attributing it to a specific subject.

The two prohibitions that follow are grammatically parallel: ve-lo yera'eh lekha ("and it will not be seen to you") is repeated verbatim, once with chametz and once with se'or. Despite both terms being commonly translated "leaven" in English, the Hebrew distinguishes between the leavened substance/product (chametz) and the leavening agent itself (se'or), covering two related but distinct referents under the same syntactic construction. The phrase lekha ("to/for you") combined with the passive verb produces an idiomatic sense of possession or presence — literally "it will not appear/be visible for you" — rather than a simple visual observation.

Differences between versions

The LXX preserves the passive construction for the first clause (ὀφθήσεταί σοι, "it will be seen to you"), matching yera'eh, but shifts the second clause to ἔσται σοι ζύμη ("there will be to you leaven"), abandoning the "seen" verb and using "to be" instead — breaking the Hebrew's repeated parallel phrasing. The Vulgate follows a similar pattern: non apparebit ("it will not appear") for the first instance, but the second clause drops the verb entirely, reading only nec in cunctis finibus tuis ("nor in all your borders"), relying on ellipsis rather than repeating an equivalent verb.