Exodus

12 And Jehovah said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt 2 “This month is your New Year’s month: it is the first of the months of the year for you. 3 Tell all the congregation of Israel, on the tenth of this month they are to take themselves a sheep or goat apiece per family, an animal to a household. 4* And if the household is too small for an animal let him and his next-door neighbor take by rating of appetites: you shall rate each one for the animal in proportion to his eating. 5 You shall have it a faultless yearling male; you shall take from the sheep and from the goats. 6 And you shall have it in safekeeping till the fourteenth day of this month; and all the assembly of the congregation of Israel shall slaughter it in the evening hours 7 and take some of the blood and put it on both jambs of the door and on the lintel, on the houses they are eating it in. 8 And they shall eat the flesh that same night: they shall eat it as fire-roast, and matzoth with spring salad. 9 Eat none of it raw nor as boiled meat, cooked with water, but as fire-roast, head and legs and entrails and all. 10 And you are not to leave any of it till morning; what is left till morning of it you are to burn up. 11 And this is the way you are to eat it: your waists belted, your sandals on your feet, your staves in your hands; and you shall eat it hurriedly; it is a passover for Jehovah.

12 “And I will pass through Egypt this night and strike dead every firstborn in Egypt, both of man and of beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am Jehovah— 13 and you shall have the blood for a token on the houses where you are, and I will see the blood and pass over you, and there shall not be any ravaging calamity among you when I am smiting in Egypt.

14 “And this day shall be a commemoration of yours, and you shall keep it as a feast to Jehovah: generation after generation you shall keep it as a perpetual institution. 15 Seven days you shall eat matzoth; on the first day you must clean out yeast from your homes, because whoever eats anything raised, that person shall be cut off from Israel, 16 from the first day to the seventh. And on the first day you shall have a sacred meeting, and on the seventh day a sacred meeting: no work shall be done among you; only what is to be eaten by each person, that alone shall be prepared for you. 17* And you shall keep the matzoth, because it was on this very day that he brought your legions out of Egypt, and you shall keep this day generation after generation as a perpetual institution. 18** In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at evening, you shall eat matzoth and keep it up till the twenty-first day of the month at evening. 19 For seven days no yeast shall be found in your homes, because whoever eats anything raised, that person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, immigrant and native. 20 You shall not eat anything raised whatever: in all your abodes you shall eat matzoth.”

21 And Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them “March off and take yourselves sheep and goats clan by clan, and slaughter the passover; 22 and take a bunch of marjoram and dip it in the blood on the threshold, and touch blood off the threshold to the lintel and both the jambs; and you shall not go out of your doors till morning. 23 And Jehovah will pass along to smite the Egyptians, and will see the blood on the lintel and both the jambs, and Jehovah will pass over the door and not let the ravager go into your homes to smite. 24* And you shall keep this rite as an institution for yourself and your sons forever; 25 and when you go into the country that Jehovah will give you as he promised, you shall keep up this service. 26 And when your sons ask you ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say ‘It is a passover sacrifice to Jehovah, because he passed over the homes of the sons of Israel in Egypt when he smote the Egyptians, and brought our homes off safe.’” And the people bowed down and did reverence; 28 and the sons of Israel went and did it: as Jehovah had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

29 And at midnight Jehovah struck every firstborn in Egypt, from the Pharaoh’s firstborn who was to sit on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoners of war in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle. 30 And the Pharaoh rose in the night, he and all his officers and all the Egyptians; and there was a great outcry in Egypt, because there was not a house where there was not somebody dead. 31 And he called Moses and Aaron in the night and said “Off with you, get out from among my people, you and the sons of Israel too, and go worship Jehovah as you have been saying. 32 Take your flocks and herds too, as you said, and go; and bless me too.” 33 And the Egyptians insisted on sending the people out of the country in all haste, because they thought “We are all dead men”; 34 and the people took their dough up before it had had the yeast put in, taking their mixing-bowls wrapped up in their blankets on their shoulders. 35 And the sons of Israel did as Moses had said, and asked the Egyptians for articles of gold and silver and clothing, 36 and Jehovah gave the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians and they handed them over; and they despoiled the Egyptians.

37 And the sons of Israel marched from Raʽmeses to Succoth, the men about six hundred thousand of foot, besides women and children; 38 and a great mass of drifters too went up with them, and sheep and goats and cows, an immense drove of stock. 39 And they baked the dough they had brought out of Egypt in flat matzoth, because it had not had any yeast put in because they were expelled from Egypt and could not delay, and they had not supplied themselves with provisions either.

40 And the stay of the sons of Israel in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years; 41 and at the end of four hundred and thirty years, this very day, all Jehovah’s armies came out of Egypt. 42 That was a watch-night of Jehovah’s for bringing them out of Egypt; this night is a watch-night to Jehovah for all the sons of Israel generation after generation.

43 And Jehovah said to Moses and Aaron “This is the rule for the passover: No foreigner shall eat of it. 44* But everyone who is any man’s slave, bought with money, you shall circumcise: then he shall eat of it. 45 Dependent and hired man shall not eat of it. 46 It shall be eaten in one house: you shall not take any of the meat outside the house; and no bone in it shall be broken. 47 All the congregation of Israel shall celebrate it; 48 and when an immigrant lives among you and is to celebrate a passover to Jehovah, he must have every male of his circumcised; then he shall be admitted to celebrate it, and shall be like the native-born; but nobody uncircumcised shall eat of it. 49 There shall be one ruling for the native and for the immigrant who lives among you.”

50 And all the sons of Israel did as Jehovah had commanded Moses and Aaron; so they did. 51 And this very day Jehovah brought the sons of Israel out of Egypt corps by corps.