Page:Birnbaum Haggadah.pdf/35

 29 The Passover Haggadah

means that the exodus story should be recited in the daytime, but the Torah says: “Phis is on account of what the Lord did for me,” clearly pointing to the time when this matah and this maror are set, before you—on Passover night.

At first our forefathers worshiped idols, but now God has brought us near to his service, as it is written: “Joshua said to all the people in the name of the Lord God of Israel: In days of old your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates River, Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, worshiping other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river and led him through all the land of Canaan, multiplying his family and giving him Isaac, To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau; to Esau I gave the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt."

Blessed be God who keeps his promise to Israel; blessed be he.

The Holy One, blessed be he, designated the time for our final deliverance in order to fulfill what he had pledged to our father Abraham in a solemn covenant, as it is written: “He said to Abram, Be sure that your descendants will sojourn in a land that is not their own, where they will be oppressed and treated harshly for four hundred years; but I will punish the nation that held them in slavery, and afterwards they shall come forth with great wealth.”*

ayn wen onaye yr Senna pr mw) wap mewn wa ubetam wb oan 7.1730) pon nob ...09 wy MRyEoo BmoM baw AYIA >31,oAT

peanan pa maa refers to the covenant described in Genesis (15:8-18) as to the question who should be Abraham’s heir and what the inheritance should be. Certain animals were slain and quartered, the corresponding parts being placed opposite one another with a space between. ‘When the sun went down, when it turned dark, there was a smoking furnace and a flaming torch that passed between the pieces. That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram.” Tn the Haggadah texts of Rav Saadyah Gaon and Maimonides the word r7aa is omitted.

Four hundred years, a round number in place of the more precise four hundred and thirty years mentioned in Exodus 12:40 as the time spent by the children of Israel in Egypt. The Greek version of the Bible, the Septuagint, adds the words and in the land of Canaan, Rabbinic tradition, likewise, dates

Noshua 24:2-4, *Genesis 15:13-14. �