The Passover
1 Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt and said,
2 “This month is to be the beginning of all months, the first month of your year.
3 Speak to the community of Israel and say to them: On the tenth day of this month let each family take a lamb, a lamb for each house.
4 If the family is too small for a lamb, they must join with a neighbor, the nearest to the house, according to the number of persons and to what each one can eat.
5 You will select a perfect lamb without blemish, a male born during the present year, taken from the sheep or goats.
6 Then you will keep it until the fourteenth day of the month. On that evening all the people will slaughter their lambs
7 and take some of the blood to put on the doorposts and on top of the doorframes of the houses where you eat.
8 That night you will eat the flesh roasted at the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
9 Do not eat the meat lightly cooked or boiled in water but roasted entirely over the fire—the head, the legs and the inner parts.
10 Do not leave any of it until the morning. If any is left till morning, burn it in the fire.
11 And this is how you will eat: with a belt round your waist, sandals on your feet and a staff in your hand. You shall eat hastily for it is a passover in honor of Yahweh.
12 On that night I shall go through Egypt and strike every firstborn in Egypt, men and animals; and I will even bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt, I, Yahweh!
13 The blood on your houses will be the sign that you are there. I will see the blood and pass over you; and you will es cape the mortal plague when I strike Egypt.
14 This is a day you are to remember and celebrate in honor of Yah weh. It is to be kept as a festival day for all gene rations forever.
The feast of the unleavened bread
15 For seven days you are to eat unleavened bread. From the first day you are to remove all leaven from your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread from the first to the seventh day will no longer live in Israel.
16 On the first day there will be a sacred reunion and another on the seventh. No work is to be done on these days except what is necessary in the preparation of food.
17 Celebrate the feast of unleavened bread, because on that day I brought your armies out of Egypt. Celebrate it in future generations as an everlasting ordinance.
18 In the first month, from the fourteenth day in the evening to the twenty-first, you are to eat unleavened bread.
19 For seven days there will be no leaven in your houses. Anyone who eats what is leavened will be cut off from the community of Israel whe ther foreigner or native born.
20 No thing leavened is to be eaten; only unleavened bread is to be eaten.”
21 Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Select and take one animal for each family and slaughter the Passover lamb.
22 Take a twig of hyssop dipped in its blood and sprinkle the blood on the doorposts and the top of the doorframe: from then on no one will go out of the door of the house before morning.
23 Because Yahweh will pass through to strike Egypt and when he sees the blood on the lintel and the doorposts, he will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to enter your houses and kill.
24 You and your descendants shall observe these instructions as an everlasting ordinance;
25 you will carry out this ceremony when you enter the land that Yahweh will give you, as he prom ised.
26 And when your children ask you: ‘What does this ceremony mean?’
27 you will tell them: It is the sacrifice of the Passover for Yahweh who passed over the houses of the Israelites when he struck Egypt and spared our houses.” When the people heard this they bowed down and worshiped.
28 Then they went away and did what Yah weh had ordered Moses and Aaron.
Death of the firstborn
29 It happened that in the middle of the night Yahweh struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, heir to the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner in the dungeon and the firstborn of all the animals.
30 Pha raoh, his officials and all the Egyptians got up in the night and there was loud wailing in Egypt for there was no house without a death.
31 Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron in the night and said, “Get up and go from among my people, you and the people of Israel. Go and worship Yahweh as you have said!
32 Take your sheep and your cattle, as you told me, and go! provided that the blessing be for me as well.”
33 The Egyptians, too, pressed the people to leave the country in all haste. For they said, “If they don’t go, we are all going to die.”
34 So the Israelites carried away on their shoulders the dough which had not yet risen, and their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks.
35 They did as Moses had instructed them and borrowed from the Egyptians articles of gold and silver and clothes.
36 Yahweh made the Egyptians agree to the requests of his people and give them what they asked for. In this way they plundered the Egyptians.
Israel departs
37 The Israelites left Rameses for Succoth, about six hundred thou sand of them on the march, counting the men only, and not the children.
38 A great number of other people of all descriptions went with them, as well as sheep and cattle in droves.
39 With the dough they had brought with them from Egypt, they made cakes of unleavened bread. It had not risen, for when they were driven from Egypt they could not delay and had not even provided themselves with food.
40 The Israelites had been in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years.
41 It was at the end of these four hundred and thirty years to the very day that the armies of Yahweh left Egypt.
42 This is the watch for Yahweh who brought Israel out of Egypt. This night is for Yahweh, and all the Israelites are also to keep vigil on this night, year after year, for all time.
Ordinances for the Passover
43 Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, “These are the precepts for the celebration of the Passover. No foreigner is to eat it,
44 except the slave who has been circumcised after having been bought.
45 He may eat it. But not so the temporary resident or the hired worker.
46 The lamb must be eaten inside the house and nothing of it shall be taken outside. Do not break any of its bones.
47 All the community of Israel will observe this rite.
48 If a guest is staying with you and wants to celebrate the Passover of Yahweh, he must have all the males in his household circumcised. Then he may take part like one born in the land, but no uncircumcised man may partic ipate.
49 The law is the same for the native and the stranger living with you.”
50 All the people of Israel did as Yahweh had commanded Moses and Aaron,
51 and that same day Yahweh brought out the sons of Israel and their armies from the land of Egypt.
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Comments Exodus, Chapter 12
• 12.1 Let each family take a lamb. The ancestors of the Hebrews, when wandering with their flocks before they stayed in Egypt, celebrated each year the Pasch of the Lamb, the traditional feast of the shepherds. They sacrificed a lamb on the first moon of spring (12:2) a critical period for the ewes which had just given birth. The lamb set aside for the feast was kept for several days in the same place where the people were (12:6) so that it could be better identified with the family and carry the sins of all its members. Later, the camping tents were sprinkled with its blood to drive away the “dead ly” spirits that threatened people and animals.
I will see the blood and pass over you. The sense of the ancient feast has changed. It must be understood that God established the Pass over at the time of the exodus from Egypt: it would always be there to remind Israel of its liberation.
In sparing the firstborn sons of Israel, God again declares his formal opposition to human sacrifice (Gen 22). Certainly the firstborn of his people belonged to him (13:1) as did the firstborn of the animals and the firstfruits of the land (Dt 26:2); but since God himself had spared the firstborn of Israel when leaving Egypt, every firstborn in Israel would be redeemed, rather than immolated (Ex 13:13).
Henceforth, the Israelite families would con-sider their firstborn as belonging and consecrated to Yahweh (Ex 13:1), for they had been saved from the plague. According to this law, Jesus, the firstborn of Mary and of God, would be presented in the Temple (Lk 2:22).
It is the sacrifice of the Passover for Yahweh. (12:27). This feast coming from most ancient times will acquire a new meaning: the blood of the lamb seals Yahweh’s covenant with the people whom he had chosen from among the other peoples. Henceforth, the Passover will be the feast of Israel’s independence, and God will allow Jesus to die and rise again in the days of the Passover. The death of Jesus seals God’s New Covenant with humanity (Lk 22:20).
Each one of our masses is rooted in the death and resurrection of Christ, “the lamb of God.” Does it help us to enter more deeply into our vocation to be at the service of a world that God continues to free? That takes us far from the idea of an onerous religious obligation to be carried out.
• 15. Centuries later, when Israel became an agricultural people, it was traditional to celebrate yearly, in the spring, a week-long feast during which they ate unleavened bread. This feast was of pagan origin but the Jewish priests, instead of opposing this practice, preferred to combine it with the feast of the Passover and give it a new meaning by relating it to the exit from Egypt. This unleavened bread would call to mind the hurried flight when the Israelites lacked time to leaven their bread.
• 21. Here we find other more ancient in structions on how to celebrate the Passover.
• 37. People of all descriptions (v. 38). The wandering Israelites did not look like a holy people. There were those who, for diverse reasons, had decided to leave with Moses. The Savior catches all in his net and only with time, through the trials of the desert, will the good and the bad be separated.
Six hundred thousand. In reality, those who left with Moses could not have been more than some two hundred persons, including wives and children. Let us not forget that these were shepherds who could not survive with less than ten animals per person. A group of two hundred persons required some two thousand sheep and donkeys. The wells of Sinai and their oases did not permit the transit of more numerous flocks. Maybe these exaggerations originated from a popular version of the events, but otherwise they were intentional. The priests who wrote that paragraph were con scious that the people of Moses initiated the long march of God’s people all along the history, and this is the message they wanted to transmit to us: Moses’ departure was the be gin ning of a great venture.