Exodus 12:18-36

18You are to eat unleavened bread in the first month, from the evening of the fourteenth day of the month until the evening of the twenty-first day.

19Yeast must not be found in your houses for seven days. If anyone eats something leavened, that person, whether a resident alien or native of the land, must be cut off from the community of Israel.

20Do not eat anything leavened; eat unleavened bread in all your homes.”

21Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go, select an animal from the flock according to your families, and slaughter the Passover animal.

22Take a cluster of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and brush the lintel and the two doorposts with some of the blood in the basin. None of you may go out the door of his house until morning.

23When the Lord passes through to strike Egypt and sees the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, he will pass over the door and not let the destroyer enter your houses to strike you.

24“Keep this command permanently as a statute for you and your descendants.

25When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, you are to observe this ceremony.

26When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’

27you are to reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, and he spared our homes.’” So the people knelt low and worshiped.

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

29Now at midnight the Lord struck every firstborn male 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 every firstborn of the livestock.

30During the night Pharaoh got up, he along with all his officials and all the Egyptians, and there was a loud wailing throughout Egypt because there wasn’t a house without someone dead.

31He summoned Moses and Aaron during the night and said, “Get out immediately from among my people, both you and the Israelites, and go, worship the Lord as you have said.

32Take even your flocks and your herds as you asked and leave, and also bless me.”

33Now the Egyptians pressured the people in order to send them quickly out of the country, for they said, “We’re all going to die!”

34So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls wrapped up in their clothes on their shoulders.

35The Israelites acted on Moses’s word and asked the Egyptians for silver and gold items and for clothing.

36And the Lord gave the people such favor with the Egyptians that they gave them what they requested. In this way they plundered the Egyptians.