Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

The hametz prohibited on Pesach seems to mean baked bread. The idea of 
leavening is derivative because leaven was often added before baking.

The word hametz consists of root cells hm and mtz, hot and pressed. 
Confirms Hos7:4: bad baker doesn't watch the dough from kneading until it 
becomes hmtz in the hot oven. Dough is baked in the oven, not leavened.

Nazirite should abstain from hometz wine. Hometz, presumably, is something 
that makes something else hametz. Wine - unlike beer - was not used for 
leavening the bread. Like another word for wine, hmr (hm-mr, hot and rising), 
hmtz here means "hot and pressing", and refers to agitating effect of wine. 
That makes sense of the prohibition. 
Hometz similarly means "violent" in Ps71:4, certainly not "leavened."
The difference between Lev7:12 and 7:13 is now clear: halot matzot (pressed 
cakes) could be oiled, but halot lehem hametz (baked bread) are soft and 
break when oiled. 

Reading hametz as "baked" correlates with the tradition. Hebrews in Egypt 
prepared the last bread at least as usual, more probably - as festive bread 
to accompany the meat sacrifice. They had no reason to prepare the dough 
without leaven. They left in haste, and didn't have time to bake the bread. 
They ate the  pressed sun-dried cakes, a normal food even now in traditional 
Egyptian villages.

Please share your opinions about that suggestion. You can read it in more 
details at http://vadimcherny.org/judaism/custom_pesach.htm

Vadim Cherny
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Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 09:36:30 -0400
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