The First Passover Instituted

12 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ² “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.^{(A) 3} Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. ⁴ If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. ⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.^{(B) 6} You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight.^{(C) 7} They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ⁸ They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.^{(D) 9} Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. ¹⁰ You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn with fire.^{(E) 11} This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord.^{(F) 12} I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.^{(G) 13} The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

¹⁴ “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.^{(H) 15} Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day shall be cut off from Israel.^{(I) 16} On the first day you shall hold a solemn assembly and on the seventh day a solemn assembly; no work shall be done on those days; only what everyone must eat, that alone may be prepared by you.^{(J) 17} You shall observe the Festival of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your companies out of the land of Egypt: you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a perpetual ordinance.^{(K) 18} In the first month, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day, you shall eat unleavened bread.^{(L) 19} For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, for whoever eats what is leavened shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether an alien or a native of the land.^{(M) 20} You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your settlements you shall eat unleavened bread.”

Jesus and the Woman of Samaria

4 Now when Jesus^[a] learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”^{(A) 2} (although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized), ³ he left Judea and started back to Galilee. ⁴ But he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.^{(B) 6} Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)^{[b](C) 10} Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”^{(D) 11} The woman said to him, “Sir,^[c] you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”^{(E) 15} The woman said to him, “Sir,^[d] give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”^(F)

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” ¹⁷ The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir,^[e] I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you^[f] say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”^{(G) 21} Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you^[g] will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.^{(H) 22} You^[h] worship what you^[i] do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.^{(I) 23} But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.^{(J) 24} God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”^{(K) 25} The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”^{(L) 26} Jesus said to her, “I am he,^[j] the one who is speaking to you.”^(M)

²¹ Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go, select lambs for your families, and slaughter the Passover lamb.^{(A) 22} Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood in the basin. None of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning.^{(B) 23} For the Lord will pass through to strike down the Egyptians; when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over that door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you down.^{(C) 24} You shall observe this as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children.^{(D) 25} When you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. ²⁶ And when your children ask you, ‘What does this observance mean to you?’^{(E) 27} you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ” And the people bowed down and worshiped.^(F)

²⁸ The Israelites went and did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron; so they did.

The Tenth Plague: Death of the Firstborn

²⁹ At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon and all the firstborn of the livestock.^{(G) 30} Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his officials and all the Egyptians, and there was a loud cry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.^{(H) 31} Then he summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, “Rise up, go away from my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, serve the Lord, as you said.^{(I) 32} Take your flocks and your herds, as you said, and be gone. And ask a blessing for me, too!”^(J)

The Exodus: From Rameses to Succoth

³³ The Egyptians urged the people to hasten their departure from the land, for they said, “We shall all be dead.”^{(K) 34} So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls wrapped up in their cloaks on their shoulders. ³⁵ The Israelites had acted according to the word of Moses; they had asked the Egyptians for jewelry of silver and gold and for clothing,^{(L) 36} and the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. And so they plundered the Egyptians.^(M)

From Death to Life

2 You were dead through the trespasses and sins ² in which you once walked, following the course of this world,^[a] following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.^{[b](A) 3} All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, doing the will of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else,^{(B) 4} but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us^{(C) 5} even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ^[c]—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places^[d] in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— ⁹ not the result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰ For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.^(D)

One in Christ

¹¹ So then, remember that at one time you gentiles by birth,^[e] called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a circumcision made in the flesh by human hands^(E)— ¹² remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.^{(F) 13} But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.^{(G) 14} For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us,^{(H) 15} abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace,^{(I) 16} and might reconcile both to God in one body^[f] through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.^{[g](J) 17} So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, ¹⁸ for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.^{(K) 19} So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God,^{(L) 20} built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone;^{[h](M) 21} in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord,^{(N) 22} in whom you also are built together spiritually^[i] into a dwelling place for God.