To BOIL, seethe, cook in liquid — and the verb at the centre of the Bible’s sharpest unresolved instruction about the Passover. Exodus 12:9 forbids it in the strongest form Hebrew has, doubling the verb on itself and naming the medium: u-vashel mevushal ba-mayim, boiled, boiled in water — ki im tsli esh, but roast with fire. Deuteronomy 16:7 then uses that same verb as its command: u-vishalta ve-akhalta, and you shall boil it and eat it. ⭐ The COOKING sense is pinned by Exodus itself, which names the medium — in water: the manna is baked or boiled (Exodus 16:23), the ram of installation has its flesh boiled in a holy place (29:31), and a kid is not to be boiled in its mother’s milk (23:19). ⚠ The root does carry a SECOND sense, to RIPEN, and this entry should not be read as denying it: grapes ripen at Genesis 40:10 and the harvest is ripe at Joel 3:13 — the same verse that supplies maggal, the other sickle word. What settles Deuteronomy 16:7 is not the root’s range but Exodus 12:9’s own ba-mayim, in water. ⚠ Twelve of the thirteen versions this project tracks decline to print it at Deuteronomy 16:7 — seven write in Exodus’s ‘roast’, four soften it to ‘cook’, one goes vague with ‘dress’ — and the NWT 1984 alone prints ‘And you must do the boiling and the eating’. ⭐ The Bible’s own harmonisation is a welded joint you can see: 2 Chronicles 35:13 (not yet on these pages) says Josiah’s Passover was boiled with fire, according to the ordinance — Deuteronomy’s verb, Exodus’s fire — and then uses the same verb normally, of other offerings boiled in pots. → first discussed at Deut 16:7