The Passover

¹ The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ² “This month is to be your beginning of months; it will be your first month of the year. ³ Tell the whole community of Israel, ‘On the tenth day of this month they each must take a lamb for themselves according to their families —a lamb for each household. ⁴ If any household is too small for a lamb, the man and his next-door neighbor are to take a lamb according to the number of people—you will make your count for the lamb according to how much each one can eat. ⁵ Your lamb must be perfect, a male, one year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. ⁶ You must care for it until the fourteenth day of this month, and then the whole community of Israel will kill it around sundown. ⁷ They will take some of the blood and put it on the two side posts and top of the doorframe of the houses where they will eat it. ⁸ They will eat the meat the same night; they will eat it roasted over the fire with bread made without yeast and with bitter herbs. ⁹ Do not eat it raw or boiled in water, but roast it over the fire with its head, its legs, and its entrails. ¹⁰ You must leave nothing until morning, but you must burn with fire whatever remains of it until morning. ¹¹ This is how you are to eat it—dressed to travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.

¹² ‘I will pass through the land of Egypt in the same night, and I will attack all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of humans and of animals, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. ¹³ The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, so that when I see the blood I will pass over you, and this plague will not fall on you to destroy you when I attack the land of Egypt.

¹⁴ ‘This day will become a memorial for you, and you will celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—you will celebrate it perpetually as a lasting ordinance. ¹⁵ For seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. Surely on the first day you must put away yeast from your houses because anyone who eats bread made with yeast from the first day to the seventh day will be cut off from Israel.

¹⁶ ‘On the first day there will be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there will be a holy convocation for you. You must do no work of any kind on them, only what every person will eat—that alone may be prepared for you. ¹⁷ So you will keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because on this very day I brought your regiments out from the land of Egypt, and so you must keep this day perpetually as a lasting ordinance. ¹⁸ In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you will eat bread made without yeast until the twenty-first day of the month in the evening. ¹⁹ For seven days yeast must not be found in your houses, for whoever eats what is made with yeast—that person will be cut off from the community of Israel, whether a resident foreigner or one born in the land. ²⁰ You will not eat anything made with yeast; in all the places where you live you must eat bread made without yeast.’”

²¹ Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel, and told them, “Go and select for yourselves a lamb or young goat for your families, and kill the Passover animals. ²² Take a branch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply to the top of the doorframe and the two side posts some of the blood that is in the basin. Not one of you is to go out the door of his house until morning. ²³ For the Lord will pass through to strike Egypt, and when he sees the blood on the top of the doorframe and the two side posts, then the Lord will pass over the door, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. ²⁴ You must observe this event as an ordinance for you and for your children forever. ²⁵ When you enter the land that the Lord will give to you, just as he said, you must observe this ceremony. ²⁶ When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ — ²⁷ then you will say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, when he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck Egypt and delivered our households.’” The people bowed down low to the ground, ²⁸ and the Israelites went away and did exactly as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.

²⁹ It happened at midnight—the Lord attacked all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the prison, and all the firstborn of the cattle. ³⁰ Pharaoh got up in the night, along with all his servants and all Egypt, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no house in which there was not someone dead. ³¹ Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, “Get up, get out from among my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, serve the Lord as you have requested! ³² Also, take your flocks and your herds, just as you have requested, and leave. But bless me also.”