The Institution of the Passover
1The
2“This month is to be your beginning of months; it will be your first month of the year.
3Tell the whole community of Israel, ‘In the tenth day of this month they each must take a lamb for themselves according to their families – a lamb for each household.
4If 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.
5Your lamb must be perfect, a male, one year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
6You must care for it until the fourteenth day of this month, and then the whole community of Israel will kill it around sundown.
7They 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.
8They will eat the meat the same night; they will eat it roasted over the fire with bread made without yeast and with bitter herbs.
9Do not eat it raw or boiled in water, but roast it over the fire with its head, its legs, and its entrails.
10You must leave nothing until morning, but you must burn with fire whatever remains of it until morning.
11This 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
12I 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
13The 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.
14This day will become a memorial for you, and you will celebrate it as a festival to the
15For 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.
16On 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.
17So 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.
18In 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.
19For 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 foreigner or one born in the land.
20You will not eat anything made with yeast; in all the places where you live you must eat bread made without yeast.’”
21Then 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.
22Take 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.
23For the
24You must observe this event as an ordinance for you and for your children forever.
25When you enter the land that the
26When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ –
27then you will say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the
28and the Israelites went away and did exactly as the
The Deliverance from Egypt
29It happened at midnight – the
30Pharaoh 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.
31Pharaoh 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
32Also, take your flocks and your herds, just as you have requested, and leave. But bless me also.”
33The Egyptians were urging the people on, in order to send them out of the land quickly, for they were saying, “We are all dead!”
34So the people took their dough before the yeast was added, with their kneading troughs bound up in their clothing on their shoulders.
35Now the Israelites had done as Moses told them – they had requested from the Egyptians silver and gold items and clothing.
36The
37The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkoth. There were about 600,000 men on foot, plus their dependants.
38A mixed multitude also went up with them, and flocks and herds – a very large number of cattle.
39They baked cakes of bread without yeast using the dough they had brought from Egypt, for it was made without yeast – because they were thrust out of Egypt and were not able to delay, they could not prepare food for themselves either.
40Now the length of time the Israelites lived in Egypt was 430 years.
41At the end of the 430 years, on the very day, all the regiments of the
42It was a night of vigil for the
Participation in the Passover
43The
44But everyone’s servant who is bought for money, after you have circumcised him, may eat it.
45A foreigner and a hired worker must not eat it.
46It must be eaten in one house; you must not bring any of the meat outside the house, and you must not break a bone of it.
47The whole community of Israel must observe it.
48“When a foreigner lives with you and wants to observe the Passover to the
49The same law will apply to the person who is native-born and to the foreigner who lives among you.”
50So all the Israelites did exactly as the
51And on this very day the