Hurry shapes the Exodus. On the night Israel leaves Egypt, “the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneadingtroughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders” (Exodus 12:34). A kneading trough is the bowl where bread dough is worked, so it stands for ordinary daily food. The frogs of the second plague were to invade these troughs along with the ovens (Exodus 8:3). In Deuteronomy 28, the same word is rendered in the KJV as “thy basket and thy store”, counted first among blessings and then among curses. Exodus 12 is the natural place to begin.
4 verses
And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs:
And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneadingtroughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.
Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.
Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
The vessel in which the dough, after being mixed and leavened, was left to swell or ferment (Ex. 8:3; 12:34; Deut. 28:5, 7). The dough in the vessels at the time of the Exodus was still unleavened, because the people were compelled to withdraw in haste.