First, they are indigenous to Egypt.2 This was Egyptian food. Wherever God took the Israelites in the wilderness wanderings and on into the promised land, he wanted his people to remember what it was like to live under the strong and relentless hand of their Egyptian oppressors. Second, the grammar suggests that the bitter herbs were not some sort of garnish but “the basis of the meal.”3 God’s chosen people were to face, year after year, the bitter circumstances their evil captors placed upon them.
