Exodus 12:14-27

The Voice

¹⁴This will be a day for you to always remember. I want you and all generations after you to commemorate this day with a festival to Me. Celebrate this feast as a perpetual ordinance, a permanent part of your life together. ¹⁵You are to eat bread made without yeast for seven days. On the first day get rid of any yeast you find in your house. Anyone who eats bread made with yeast during the seven festival days must be cut off from the rest of Israel. ¹⁶On the first day of the festival and again on the seventh, gather the community together for a time of sacred worship. No one may work on those two days except to prepare what every person needs to eat. ¹⁷Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread because it commemorates the day that I led your forces out of Egypt. Honor and celebrate this day throughout all your generations as a perpetual ordinance, a permanent part of your life together. ¹⁸From the evening of the fourteenth day of that first month to the evening of the twenty-first day of that month, eat bread made without yeast. ^19-20No yeast is to be found in any of your houses during the seven festival days. Whoever eats anything that has yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel. It doesn’t matter whether he is a foreigner or a native; the same standards apply. During the seven festival days, do not eat anything made with yeast; wherever you live and gather together, be sure you eat only unleavened bread.

²¹Then Moses called all of Israel’s elders together and gave them instructions.

Moses: Go and pick out lambs for each of your families, and then slaughter your family’s Passover lamb. ²²Take a handful of hyssop branches, dip them down into the bowl of blood you drained from the sacrifice, and mark the top of the doorway and the two doorposts with blood from the bowl. After you do this, no one should go out that door until the next morning.

²³The Eternal will pass through the land during the night and bring death to the Egyptians. But when He sees the blood-markings across the tops of your doorways and down your two doorposts, He will pass over your houses and not allow His messenger of death to enter into your houses and strike you down. ²⁴You and all your descendants are obligated to keep these instructions for all time. ²⁵Even after you arrive in the land the Eternal has promised you—the land flowing with milk and honey—you must keep these instructions and perform this ritual. ²⁶When your children ask you, “What does this ritual mean to you?” ²⁷you will answer them, “It is the Passover sacrifice to the Eternal, for He passed over the houses of the Israelites when we were slaves in Egypt. And although He struck the Egyptians, He spared our lives and our houses.”