A MIXED MULTITUDE — a mingled crowd; erev is a mixture, and the phrase names the non-Israelites who walked out of Egypt with Israel: 'a great MIXED MULTITUDE also went up with them' (Exodus 12:38). ⚠️ Exodus has already shown who some of them must have been — at the hail, 'the one who FEARED the word of Jehovah among the servants of Pharaoh' brought his household indoors (9:20). Egypt was not a solid block. So Israel is not ethnically pure from its first hour as a free people, which is why the same chapter legislates for the circumcised sojourner and declares 'ONE LAW for the native and for the sojourner' (12:48-49). The mixed multitude is later blamed for the craving at Kibroth-hattaavah (Numbers 11:4), and the phrase turns up again at Nehemiah 13:3. → first discussed at Exod 12:38