The Passover
12
✭And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, 2 📚“This month is to be for you the beginning of months; it is to be the first month of the year for you. 3 📚Speak to the whole congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month each man among them is to take for himself a lamb for a father’s house, a lamb for each household. 4 And if the household is too small for a lamb, let him and his neighbour nearest to his house take it according to the number of persons there are. Make your estimate for the lamb in accordance with what each person eats. 5 📚✭Your lamb is to be without blemish, a male of the first year. You are to take it from the sheep, or from the goats, 6 📚✭and you are to keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill them in the evening. 7 📚✭And they are to take some of the blood, and put it on both side posts and on the upper beam of the door of the houses where they are going to eat it. 8 📚✭And that very night they are to eat the meat roasted with fire, and they are to eat it with bread made without yeast✭ and with bitter herbs. 9 📚✭Do not eat any of it raw, or even boiled in water, but roasted with fire, its head with its legs, and with its inner parts. 10 📚✭And you are to let none of it remain until morning, and you are to burn in the fire what does remain of it until morning. 11 📚✭And this is how you are to eat it: with your waist bound, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you are to eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover.12 📚✭“For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and animal. And I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13 📚✭And the blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague will not be on you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 📚“So this day shall be to you a memorial, and you are to keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations. You are to keep it as a feast by ordinance for all time. 15 📚✭For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the very first day you are to put away yeast from your houses, for whoever eats bread made with yeast from the first day until the seventh day, that person is to be cut off from Israel. 16 📚And on the first day you are to have a holy convocation, and on the seventh day you are to have another holy convocation. On those days no kind of work is to be done, except what must be eaten by everyone; that alone may be prepared by you.
17 📚✭“And you are to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you are to observe this day throughout your generations by an ordinance forever. 18 📚On the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you are to eat bread made without yeast, until the evening of the twenty-first day of the month. 19 📚For seven days there is to be no yeast found in your houses, for whoever eats anything that is made with yeast, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a foreigner, or someone born in the land. 20 You must not eat anything made with yeast. You are to eat bread made without yeast in all your dwelling places”.
21 📚Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go out and take a lamb for yourselves on behalf of your families, and kill the Passover. 22 📚And you are to take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and put the blood that is in the basin on the upper beam of the door and the two side posts. And none of you is to go out the door of his house until morning. 23 📚✭For the LORD will go through the land to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the upper beam and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you.
24 📚“And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for yourselves and for your sons forever. 25 📚And it is to come about that when you have come to the land which the LORD will give you as he has promised, you must keep this ceremony. 26 📚✭And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this ceremony?’ 27 📚✭then you must say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Passover of the LORD, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians, and spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed their heads and worshipped. 28 ✭And the children of Israel went and did so; they did just as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron.
29 📚And it came about at midnight that the LORD struck 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 dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 📚And Pharaoh got up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not one dead.
Israel leaves Egypt
31 📚✭And during the night he called for Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Get out from the midst of my people, both you and the children of Israel, and go, serve the LORD, as you have said. 32 📚Take your flocks and your herds also, as you have said, and be gone! And bless me also”.
33 📚And the Egyptians urged the people, to get them out of the land in a hurry, for they said, “We are all dead men”. 34 📚And the people took their dough before yeast was put in it, and carried their kneading bowls on their shoulders, wrapped up in their clothes. 35 📚And the children of Israel did what Moses had said; they asked the Egyptians for silver ornaments and gold ornaments and clothing. 36 📚And the LORD gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they requested. And in this way they plundered the Egyptians.
37 📚✭And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children. 38 📚And a mixed multitude also went up with them, and flocks, and herds, a great amount of livestock. 39 📚And they baked flat bread without yeast with the dough which they brought out of Egypt. Yeast was not put in it because they were driven out of Egypt, and could not delay. And they had not prepared any food for themselves.
40 📚Now the length of time the children of Israel stayed in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. 41 📚And it came about at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, on the very day it came about, that all the armies of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt. 42 📚It is a night to be much observed for the LORD for bringing them out of the land of Egypt. This is the LORD’s night, to be observed by all the children of Israel throughout their generations.
Passover instructions
43 📚✭And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover: No foreigner is to eat of it, 44 📚but every man’s slave who is bought with money is to eat of it, after you have circumcised him. 45 📚A foreigner or a hired servant is not to eat of it.
46 📚“It must be eaten in the same house; you are not to carry any of the meat out of the house. And you must not break a bone of it. 47 📚All the congregation of Israel shall celebrate it.
48 📚“And when a foreigner stays among you, and wants to keep the LORD’s Passover, all the males in his household must be circumcised, and then let him come near and celebrate it. Then he will be like one who is born in the land, but no uncircumcised person is to eat of it. 49 📚There is to be one law for him who is native born and for the foreigner who is staying among you”.