Exodus 12
New Catholic Bible
The Passover
Chapter 12
Preparations for the Passover.[a] 1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it shall be your first month of the year.[b] 3 Speak to the whole community of Israel and say, ‘The tenth of this month each person shall obtain a lamb for each family, one for each household. 4 If the family is too small to eat the lamb, they should join with their neighbors, based on the number of people. Figure the lamb according to how much each person can eat. 5 Your lamb should be without blemish,[c] male, a year old. You can choose either a sheep or a goat. 6 Keep it until the fourteenth day of this month. Then the whole community of Israel shall slaughter it in the evening. 7 Take a bit of its blood, put it on the two doorposts and upon the lintel of every house in which it is to be eaten. 8 That night eat its meat roasted. Eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat it raw or boiled in water, but only roasted with the head, legs, and inner organs. 10 Do not let any of it be kept until the morning. Whatever is left over in the morning shall be burned in the fire. 11 This is how you shall eat it, with your loins girt and sandals on your feet and a staff in your hand. Eat it quickly. It is the Passover[d] of the Lord.
12 “ ‘On that night I will pass over the land of Egypt and strike the firstborn of the land of Egypt, both human and animal, to render justice against all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. 13 The blood on your houses shall be the sign that you are inside. I will see the blood and pass over. There shall be no plague for you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 Preparations for the Unleavened Bread.[e]“ ‘This day shall be a memorial for you. You shall celebrate it as a feast of the Lord. From generation to generation, let there be an ordinance that you celebrate this feast. 15 For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall dispose of all leaven from your house. Whoever eats leavened goods from the first day til the seventh shall be cut off from Israel. 16 On the first day you shall hold a sacred assembly and another on the seventh day. On those days you shall not work. You shall only prepare what is to be eaten by everyone.
17 “ ‘You shall observe the custom of unleavened bread, for on this same day I brought out your hosts from the land of Egypt. You shall observe this day from generation to generation as an eternal ordinance. 18 In the first month, the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first of the month, in the evening. 19 For seven days leavened bread shall not be found in your house, for whoever eats leavened bread shall be cut off from the community of Israel, whether it be a foreigner or a native of the land. 20 You shall not eat leavened bread; in all your houses you shall eat unleavened bread.’ ”
21 Celebration of the Passover. Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and told them, “Go and obtain a lamb for each family and slaughter it for the Passover.[f] 22 Take a bunch of hyssop[g] and dip it into the blood in the bowl and sprinkle the blood from the bowl on the lintel and the two doorposts. None of you shall go outside until the morning. 23 The Lord will pass over to strike the Egyptians. He will see the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts. The Lord will, therefore, pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter into your house to strike anyone there.[h]
24 “You shall observe this command as a fixed rite for yourselves and your children forever. 25 When you will have entered into the land that the Lord will give you, as he promised, you shall observe this rite. 26 When your children ask you, ‘What does this rite of yours mean,’ 27 you shall tell them, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Passover of the Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians and spared our houses.’ ”
The people knelt down and worshiped. 28 Then the children of Israel went and did exactly what the Lord had ordered Moses and Aaron.
The Exodus from Egypt and the Journey to Sinai
Departure from Egypt
29 Tenth Plague: The Death of the Firstborn.[i] At midnight the Lord slew every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat upon the throne to the firstborn of the prisoners being held in dungeons, all the firstborn, both human and animal. 30 Pharaoh got up during the night along with his ministers and all the Egyptians, and a loud cry arose out of Egypt, for every house had someone who had died.
31 Permission to Depart.[j]Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron during the night and said, “Arise and leave my people, you and the children of Israel! Go and serve the Lord as you have said. 32 Take your herds and your flocks, as you have said, and leave. Bless me, too.”
33 The Egyptians urged on the people to drive them out of the land quickly, for they said, “We are all about to die.” 34 The people took their unleavened dough with them, placing their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks on their shoulders. 35 The children of Israel carried out Moses’ order and had the Egyptians give them objects of silver and gold and clothes. 36 The Lord had inclined the Egyptians favorably toward the people so that they gave them whatever they requested. So, they plundered the Egyptians.
37 Departure from Egypt. The children of Israel traveled from Rameses to Succoth. There were six hundred thousand men on foot, not counting children. 38 There was also a large crowd of people of mixed ancestry with them, together with large numbers of flocks and herds. 39 They baked the dough that they had carried with them from Egypt as cakes of unleavened bread for it had not been leavened. They had been hurried out of Egypt and had not had time to hesitate nor to prepare provisions for the journey.
40 The children of Israel had lived in Egypt for four hundred and thirty years. 41 At the end of four hundred and thirty years, exactly to the day, all the hosts of the Lord went up out of Egypt. 42 This was a night of vigil unto the Lord, for bringing them out of the land of Egypt. Hence, it must be a night of vigil in honor of the Lord for all the children of Israel, from one generation to the next.
43 Ordinances for the Passover.[k] The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “These are the ordinances for the Passover:
“No foreigner may eat it. 44 As for each slave bought with money, you shall circumcise him so that he may eat it. 45 The foreigner and the hired laborer cannot eat it.
46 “It must be eaten in one house. One may not carry the meat outside of the house, and none of its bones is to be broken.[l] 47 All the community of Israel shall celebrate it.
48 “If a foreigner dwells among you and wishes to celebrate the Passover of the Lord, let each man in his household be circumcised. Then let him draw near to celebrate and he will be like a native of the land. But no one who is uncircumcised can eat it. 49 The same law will be binding on the native and the foreigner who is living in your midst.”
50 All the children of Israel did just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron. 51 On that very day the Lord brought Israel out of the land of Egypt, organized according to their hosts.
Footnotes
- Exodus 12:1 Passover was already being celebrated in the period when the Hebrews were pastoral nomads and used to offer the firstfruits of the flock. The blood poured on the posts of the tent was to protect those living in it. Once this ancient spring festival was connected with the departure from Egypt, it would commemorate the deliverance effected by God.
The Passover was essentially sacrificial from the beginning. Added to this was the meal (v. 11) and the urgency in which it was to be held because of the circumstances it commemorated: there is no time for seasoning anything (v. 9); neither is any other food to be eaten with it except for the bread and desert herbs; and the people are to be in traveling dress—standing, wearing sandals, and holding a staff—indicating that they are on a journey to the true Promised Land.
Jesus chose to institute the Eucharist in the context of the Passover meal and to be crucified during Passover. He thus becomes the true Passover lamb, whose blood is shed for the salvation of all humankind. - Exodus 12:2 This is the month of Abib, of the ripe ears of corn (see Ex 13:4). It would later be called Nisan (March-April).
- Exodus 12:5 The words without blemish are translated as absgue macula (spotless) in the Vulgate; hence the widely used expression “spotless Lamb” for Jesus, the Passover lamb prefigured by the Jewish practice.
- Exodus 12:11 Passover: Hebrew, pesah, “passage”; that is, the Lord passed by, leaving untouched the houses marked with blood. The etymology of the Hebrew word is disputed.
- Exodus 12:14 The Feast of Unleavened Bread was an agricultural feast at which the new harvest was dedicated to the divinity. When the Hebrews settled in Canaan, they adopted this feast and amalgamated it with Passover. The biblical tradition connects it with the Exodus of the Hebrew people; therefore, it finds a place in this book, where it has become a pure commemoration.
- Exodus 12:21 The reference is to the Passover lamb (Mt 26:17; 1 Cor 5:7)
- Exodus 12:22 Hyssop: was an aromatic plant used in purification rites.
- Exodus 12:23 The destroying angel, charged with inflicting punishment; see 1 Cor 10:10; Heb 11:28.
- Exodus 12:29 This time Egypt cannot remain indifferent to the misfortune that has come upon it.
- Exodus 12:31 This is the memorable night during which the Lord kept watch in order to deliver his people from slavery. With a view to magnifying the divine intervention, Israelite piety obviously exaggerated the numbers involved; historical fact has been transformed into liturgical story. For Christians, the Easter vigil will sing of the deliverance brought by Christ.
- Exodus 12:43 The traditional ritual (vv. 1-14) is supplemented by further arrangements that suppose the Hebrews to be already settled in Canaan.
- Exodus 12:46 This detail of the rite is fulfilled in Jesus: Jn 19:36.
