Exodus 12:15-30

New Catholic Bible

¹⁵ For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall dispose of all leaven from your house. Whoever eats leavened goods from the first day til the seventh shall be cut off from Israel. ¹⁶ On the first day you shall hold a sacred assembly and another on the seventh day. On those days you shall not work. You shall only prepare what is to be eaten by everyone.

¹⁷ “ ‘You shall observe the custom of unleavened bread, for on this same day I brought out your hosts from the land of Egypt. You shall observe this day from generation to generation as an eternal ordinance. ¹⁸ In the first month, the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first of the month, in the evening. ¹⁹ For seven days leavened bread shall not be found in your house, for whoever eats leavened bread shall be cut off from the community of Israel, whether it be a foreigner or a native of the land. ²⁰ You shall not eat leavened bread; in all your houses you shall eat unleavened bread.’ ”

²¹ Celebration of the Passover. Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and told them, “Go and obtain a lamb for each family and slaughter it for the Passover.^{[a] 22} Take a bunch of hyssop^[b] and dip it into the blood in the bowl and sprinkle the blood from the bowl on the lintel and the two doorposts. None of you shall go outside until the morning. ²³ The Lord will pass over to strike the Egyptians. He will see the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts. The Lord will, therefore, pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter into your house to strike anyone there.^[c]

²⁴ “You shall observe this command as a fixed rite for yourselves and your children forever. ²⁵ When you will have entered into the land that the Lord will give you, as he promised, you shall observe this rite. ²⁶ When your children ask you, ‘What does this rite of yours mean,’ ²⁷ you shall tell them, ‘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.’ ”

The people knelt down and worshiped. ²⁸ Then the children of Israel went and did exactly what the Lord had ordered Moses and Aaron.

The Exodus from Egypt and the Journey to Sinai

Departure from Egypt

²⁹ Tenth Plague: The Death of the Firstborn.^[d] At midnight the Lord slew every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat upon the throne to the firstborn of the prisoners being held in dungeons, all the firstborn, both human and animal. ³⁰ Pharaoh got up during the night along with his ministers and all the Egyptians, and a loud cry arose out of Egypt, for every house had someone who had died.