What Does Exodus 12:14 Mean in the King James?
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.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse makes memory something you enter together: a feast can hold what a passing thought cannot.
THE MEANING
Here, memory is not only a private glance backward; it takes form in a feast and is carried from generation to generation. When you return to the day through a shared practice, the deliverance it marks remains present in communal life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief is that remembering is only mental recall and cannot shape the present. Here, remembrance is a shared practice that keeps a day’s meaning active across generations.
THE ROOT
זִכָּרוֹן
zikkārôn
GROWS FROM
זכר
z-k-r
To remember, call to mind, or mention.
The word translated “memorial” comes from the same root used for remembering and making mention. Its force is active: the feast keeps deliverance in shared practice, not only in a record of the past.
ALSO GROWS
zākar: To remember or call to mind.
זָכַר
This is the active remembering the memorial calls into being.
hizkîr: To mention or bring to remembrance.
הִזְכִּיר
This branch shows memory becoming something spoken and shared.
חַג
ḥag
GROWS FROM
חגג
ḥ-g-g
To celebrate a feast or keep a festival, often with the sense of pilgrimage.
The feast is a recurring act of celebration, not merely a date marked on a calendar. Its repeated gathering gives memory a shared form that can be entered again.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāgag: To celebrate a feast or keep a festival.
חָגַג
The verb makes clear that the feast is something enacted, not simply recalled.
ḥagigah: A festal celebration or festival offering.
חֲגִיגָה
This branch carries the feast into celebration and shared observance.
חֻקָּה
ḥuqqāh
GROWS FROM
חקק
ḥ-q-q
To cut or inscribe; by extension, to prescribe or decree.
The ordinance gives remembrance a prescribed shape that can endure through generations. What is remembered is inscribed into a recurring practice.
ALSO GROWS
ḥōq: A statute, prescribed measure, or portion.
חֹק
This branch shows remembrance held within a defined, repeatable practice.
ḥāqûq: Engraved or inscribed.
חָקוּק
The image of inscription illuminates how the observance keeps memory present over time.
THE PATTERN
Repeated acts of eating and gathering give deliverance a form that carries its memory across generations.
Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.THE THREAD
And Moses said unto the people, Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the LORD brought you out from this place: there shall no leavened bread be eaten.“Memorial” and “Remember” grow from the same Hebrew root, זכר (z-k-r), meaning to remember or mention. Exodus 12 gives remembrance the form of a feast; Exodus 13 names what that practice keeps alive: the day of deliverance.
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