12:1 5 The Lord said 6 to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 7 12:2 “This month is to be your beginning of months; it will be your first month of the year. 8 12:3 Tell the whole community of Israel, ‘In the tenth day of this month they each 9 must take a lamb 10 for themselves according to their families 11 – a lamb for each household. 12 12:4 If any household is too small 13 for a lamb, 14 the man 15 and his next-door neighbor 16 are to take 17 a lamb according to the number of people – you will make your count for the lamb according to how much each one can eat. 18 12:5 Your lamb must be 19 perfect, 20 a male, one year old; 21 you may take 22 it from the sheep or from the goats. 12:6 You must care for it 23 until the fourteenth day of this month, and then the whole community 24 of Israel will kill it around sundown. 25 12:7 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. 12:8 They will eat the meat the same night; 26 they will eat it roasted over the fire with bread made without yeast 27 and with bitter herbs. 12:9 Do not eat it raw 28 or boiled in water, but roast it over the fire with its head, its legs, and its entrails. 12:10 You must leave nothing until morning, but you must burn with fire whatever remains of it until morning. 12:11 This is how you are to eat it – dressed to travel, 29 your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover. 30
12:12 I will pass through 31 the land of Egypt in the same 32 night, and I will attack 33 all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of humans and of animals, 34 and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. 35 I am the Lord. 12:13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, so that when I see 36 the blood I will pass over you, 37 and this plague 38 will not fall on you to destroy you 39 when I attack 40 the land of Egypt. 41
12:14 This day will become 42 a memorial 43 for you, and you will celebrate it as a festival 44 to the Lord – you will celebrate it perpetually as a lasting ordinance. 45 12:15 For seven days 46 you must eat 47 bread made without yeast. 48 Surely 49 on the first day you must put away yeast from your houses because anyone who eats bread made with yeast 50 from the first day to the seventh day will be cut off 51 from Israel.
12:16 On the first day there will be a holy convocation, 52 and on the seventh day there will be a holy convocation for you. You must do no work of any kind 53 on them, only what every person will eat – that alone may be prepared for you. 12:17 So you will keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because on this very 54 day I brought your regiments 55 out from the land of Egypt, and so you must keep this day perpetually as a lasting ordinance. 56 12:18 In the first month, 57 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. 12:19 For seven days 58 yeast must not be found in your houses, for whoever eats what is made with yeast – that person 59 will be cut off from the community of Israel, whether a foreigner 60 or one born in the land. 12:20 You will not eat anything made with yeast; in all the places where you live you must eat bread made without yeast.’”
12:21 Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel, and told them, “Go and select 61 for yourselves a lamb or young goat 62 for your families, and kill the Passover animals. 63 12:22 Take a branch of hyssop, 64 dip it in the blood that is in the basin, 65 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 66 the door of his house until morning. 12:23 For the Lord will pass through to strike Egypt, and when he sees 67 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 68 to enter your houses to strike you. 69 12:24 You must observe this event as an ordinance for you and for your children forever. 12:25 When you enter the land that the Lord will give to you, just as he said, you must observe 70 this ceremony. 12:26 When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 71 – 12:27 then you will say, ‘It is the sacrifice 72 of the Lord’s Passover, when he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck 73 Egypt and delivered our households.’” The people bowed down low 74 to the ground, 12:28 and the Israelites went away and did exactly as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron. 75
12:29 76 It happened 77 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. 12:30 Pharaoh got up 78 in the night, 79 along with all his servants and all Egypt, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no house 80 in which there was not someone dead. 12:31 Pharaoh 81 summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, “Get up, get out 82 from among my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, serve the Lord as you have requested! 83 12:32 Also, take your flocks and your herds, just as you have requested, and leave. But bless me also.” 84
12:33 The Egyptians were urging 85 the people on, in order to send them out of the land quickly, 86 for they were saying, “We are all dead!” 12:34 So the people took their dough before the yeast was added, 87 with their kneading troughs bound up in their clothing on their shoulders. 12:35 Now the Israelites had done 88 as Moses told them – they had requested from the Egyptians 89 silver and gold items and clothing. 12:36 The Lord 90 gave the people favor 91 in the sight of the Egyptians, and they gave them whatever they wanted, 92 and so they plundered Egypt. 93
12:37 The Israelites journeyed 94 from Rameses 95 to Sukkoth. There were about 600,000 men 96 on foot, plus their dependants. 97 12:38 A mixed multitude 98 also went up with them, and flocks and herds – a very large number of cattle. 99 12:39 They 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 100 of Egypt and were not able to delay, they 101 could not prepare 102 food for themselves either.
12:40 Now the length of time the Israelites lived in Egypt was 430 years. 103 12:41 At the end of the 430 years, on the very day, all the regiments 104 of the Lord went out of the land of Egypt. 12:42 It was a night of vigil for the Lord to bring them out from the land of Egypt, 105 and so 106 on this night all Israel is to keep the vigil 107 to the Lord for generations to come.
12:43 108 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover. No foreigner may 109 share in eating it. 110 12:44 But everyone’s servant who is bought for money, after you have circumcised him, may eat it. 12:45 A foreigner and a hired worker must not eat it. 12:46 It 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. 12:47 The whole community of Israel must observe it.
12:48 “When a foreigner lives 111 with you and wants to observe the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised, 112 and then he may approach and observe it, and he will be like one who is born in the land 113 – but no uncircumcised person may eat of it. 12:49 The same law will apply 114 to the person who is native-born and to the foreigner who lives among you.”
12:50 So all the Israelites did exactly as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. 115 12:51 And on this very day the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt by their regiments.
20:3 “You shall have no 116 other gods before me. 117