Exodus 12:1-14
The Institution of the Passover
12:1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
12:2 “This month is to be your beginning of months; it will be your first month of the year.
12:3 Tell the whole community of Israel, ‘In the tenth day of this month they each must take a lamb for themselves according to their families – a lamb for each household.
12:4 If any household is too small for a lamb, the man and his next-door neighbor are to take a lamb according to the number of people – you will make your count for the lamb according to how much each one can eat.
12:5 Your lamb must be perfect, a male, one year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.
12:6 You must care for it until the fourteenth day of this month, and then the whole community of Israel will kill it around sundown.
12:7 They will take some of the blood and put it on the two side posts and top of the doorframe of the houses where they will eat it.
12:8 They will eat the meat the same night; they will eat it roasted over the fire with bread made without yeast and with bitter herbs.
12:9 Do not eat it raw or boiled in water, but roast it over the fire with its head, its legs, and its entrails.
12:10 You must leave nothing until morning, but you must burn with fire whatever remains of it until morning.
12:11 This is how you are to eat it – dressed to travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
12:12 I will pass through the land of Egypt in the same night, and I will attack all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of humans and of animals, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord.
12:13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, so that when I see the blood I will pass over you, and this plague will not fall on you to destroy you when I attack the land of Egypt.
12:14 This day will become a memorial for you, and you will celebrate it as a festival to the Lord – you will celebrate it perpetually as a lasting ordinance.