Exodus 12:13-23

Living Bible

¹³ The blood you have placed on the doorposts will be proof that you obey me, and when I see the blood I will pass over you and I will not destroy your firstborn children when I smite the land of Egypt.

¹⁴ “You shall celebrate this event each year (this is a permanent law) to remind you of this fatal night. ¹⁵ The celebration shall last seven days. For that entire period you are to eat only bread made without yeast. Anyone who disobeys this rule at any time during the seven days of the celebration shall be excommunicated from Israel. ¹⁶ On the first day of the celebration, and again on the seventh day, there will be special religious services for the entire congregation, and no work of any kind may be done on those days except the preparation of food.

¹⁷ “This annual ‘Celebration with Unleavened Bread’ will cause you always to remember today as the day when I brought you out of the land of Egypt; so it is a law that you must celebrate this day annually, generation after generation. ¹⁸ Only bread without yeast may be eaten from the evening of the fourteenth day of the month until the evening of the twenty-first day of the month. ¹⁹ For these seven days there must be no trace of yeast in your homes; during that time anyone who eats anything that has yeast in it shall be excommunicated from the congregation of Israel. These same rules apply to foreigners who are living among you just as much as to those born in the land. ²⁰ Again I repeat, during those days you must not eat anything made with yeast; serve only yeastless bread.”

²¹ Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and get lambs from your flocks, a lamb for one or more families depending upon the number of persons in the families, and kill the lamb so that God will pass over you and not destroy you. ²² Drain the lamb’s blood into a basin, and then take a cluster of hyssop branches and dip them into the lamb’s blood, and strike the hyssop against the lintel above the door and against the two side panels, so that there will be blood upon them, and none of you shall go outside all night.

²³ “For Jehovah will pass through the land and kill the Egyptians; but when he sees the blood upon the panel at the top of the door and on the two side pieces, he will pass over^[a] that home and not permit the Destroyer to enter and kill your firstborn.