In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month refers to seven days after the second ritual described in verse 20.

You shall celebrate the feast of the passover is literally “it will be Passover for you.” The Hebrew pronoun for you is plural, referring to all the Israelites. The word celebrate does not refer to noisy celebration with lots of cheering and drinking, as fans do after their team wins an important football match. Rather, it is an English idiom for holding or conducting a festival or ceremony (compare “Keep” [New International Reader’s Version] and “observe” [New International Version, New King James Version , New American Bible]). Most languages will have words that describe doing a festival or feast. Passover was the Hebrew festival begun by Moses on the night the Hebrew slaves escaped from Egypt (see Exo 12.1-14). It was a festival of deliverance, a time when the people remembered the time that God saved them from death and helped them to escape from slavery in Egypt. It was also at the time of the passover that Jesus was crucified (see Matt 26.2; Mark 14.1; Luke 22.1; John 13.1). In most languages the church will already have decided how to render this term, so translators of this passage should aim to be consistent with these earlier decisions. Translators also need to be aware that the French and Spanish renderings of the name passover (Pâque in French; Pascua in Spanish) are easily confused with the words for the Christian celebration of Easter. Translators must make sure that the terms they choose will not be mistaken for the wrong festival. This clause may be rendered “you will do the ritual [or, ceremony] for the feast of the Passover.”

And for seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten: Instead of for seven days, the Hebrew says “a feast of seven days” (King James Version / New King James Version), which means the Passover “festival will last for seven days” (New Living Translation; similarly Contemporary English Version, New International Reader’s Version, New Century Version, Complete Jewish Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh). Unleavened bread shall be eaten means “everyone will eat bread made without yeast” (Good News Translation). Unleavened bread is bread that has been made with no yeast in it to make it expand. In cultures where “yeast” is unknown, another fermenting agent or a general expression such as “medicine that makes bread dough expand” may be used instead.

A model for this verse is:

• “On the fourteenth day of the first month [of the year], you [or, all the people] must conduct the Passover [or, the Festival of Deliverance]. This festival will last for seven days, and [during that time] you will eat bread that has no yeast in it.

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .