“This month is to be your beginning of months; it will be your first month of the year.

The Lord will fight for you, and you can be still.”

You go get straw for yourselves wherever you can find it, because there will be no reduction at all in your workload.’”

So now, get back to work! You will not be given straw, but you must still produce your quota of bricks!”

Your lamb must be perfect, a male, one year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

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

You must not make gods of silver alongside me, nor make gods of gold for yourselves.

And the incense that you are to make, you must not make for yourselves using the same recipe; it is to be most holy to you, belonging to the Lord.

They will cover the surface of the earth, so that you will be unable to see the ground. They will eat the remainder of what escaped – what is left over for you – from the hail, and they will eat every tree that grows for you from the field.

On the first day there will be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there will be a holy convocation for you. You must do no work of any kind on them, only what every person will eat – that alone may be prepared for you.

See, because the Lord has given you the Sabbath, that is why he is giving you food for two days on the sixth day. Each of you stay where you are; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.”

So the slave masters of the people and their foremen went to the Israelites and said, “Thus says Pharaoh: ‘I am not giving you straw.

I will take you to myself for a people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from your enslavement to the Egyptians.

Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from a furnace, and have Moses throw it into the air while Pharaoh is watching.

You must care for it until the fourteenth day of this month, and then the whole community of Israel will kill it around sundown.

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.

Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel, and told them, “Go and select for yourselves a lamb or young goat for your families, and kill the Passover animals.

When you enter the land that the Lord will give to you, just as he said, you must observe this ceremony.

You must set boundaries for the people all around, saying, ‘Take heed to yourselves not to go up on the mountain nor touch its edge. Whoever touches the mountain will surely be put to death!

“This will be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the tent of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you to speak to you there.