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Exodus

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Chapter 12

1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month is to be your beginning of months; it will be your first month of the year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel, ‘On the tenth day of this month they each must take a lamb for themselves according to their families—a lamb for each household. 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. 5 Your lamb must be perfect, a male, one year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 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. 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. 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.⁠ 9 Do not eat it raw or boiled in water, but roast it over the fire with its head, its legs, and its entrails.⁠ 10 You must leave nothing until morning, but you must burn with fire whatever remains of it until morning. 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 “‘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.⁠ 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. 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. 15 For seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. Surely on the first day you must put away yeast from your houses because anyone who eats bread made with yeast from the first day to the seventh day will be cut off from Israel.⁠ 16 “‘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. 17 So you will keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because on this very day I brought your regiments out from the land of Egypt, and so you must keep this day perpetually as a lasting ordinance. 18 In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you will eat bread made without yeast until the twenty-first day of the month in the evening. 19 For seven days yeast must not be found in your houses, for whoever eats what is made with yeast—that person will be cut off from the community of Israel, whether a resident foreigner⁠ or one born in the land. 20 You will not eat anything made with yeast; in all the places where you live you must eat bread made without yeast.’” 21 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. 22 Take a branch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply to the top of the doorframe and the two side posts some of the blood that is in the basin. Not one of you is to go out the door of his house until morning. 23 For the Lord will pass through to strike Egypt, and when he sees the blood on the top of the doorframe and the two side posts, then the Lord will pass over the door, and he will not permit the destroyer⁠ to enter your houses to strike you.⁠ 24 You must observe this event as an ordinance for you and for your children forever. 25 When you enter the land that the Lord will give to you, just as he said, you must observe this ceremony. 26 When your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’— 27 then you will say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, when he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck Egypt and delivered our households.’” The people bowed down low to the ground, 28 and the Israelites went away and did exactly as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron. 29 It happened at midnight—the⁠ Lord attacked all the firstborn in the land of Egypt,⁠ from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the prison,⁠ and all the firstborn of the cattle. 30 Pharaoh got up in the night, along with all his servants and all Egypt, and there was a great cry in Egypt,⁠ for there was no house in which there was not someone dead. 31 Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, “Get up, get out from among my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, serve the Lord as you have requested! 32 Also, take your flocks and your herds, just as you have requested, and leave.⁠ But bless me also.” 33 The Egyptians were urging the people on, in order to send them out of the land quickly, for they were saying, “We are all dead!” 34 So the people took their dough before the yeast was added, with their kneading troughs bound up in their clothing on their shoulders. 35 Now the Israelites had done as Moses told them—they had requested from the Egyptians silver and gold items⁠ and clothing.⁠ 36 The Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and they gave them whatever they wanted, and so they plundered Egypt.⁠ 37 The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkoth.⁠ There were about 600,000 men on foot, plus their dependents.⁠ 38 A mixed multitude also went up with them, and flocks and herds—a very large number of cattle. 39 They baked cakes of bread without yeast using the dough they had brought from Egypt, for it was made without yeast. Because they were thrust out of Egypt and were not able to delay, they could not prepare food for themselves either. 40 Now the length of time the Israelites lived in Egypt was 430 years.⁠ 41 At the end of the 430 years, on the very day, all the regiments of the Lord went out of the land of Egypt. 42 It was a night of vigil for the Lord to bring them out from the land of Egypt, and so on this night all Israel is to keep the vigil to the Lord for generations to come. 43 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover. No foreigner may share in eating it.⁠ 44 But everyone’s servant who is bought for money, after you have circumcised him, may eat it. 45 A foreigner and a hired worker must not eat it. 46 It must be eaten in one house; you must not bring any of the meat outside the house, and you must not break a bone of it. 47 The whole community of Israel must observe it. 48 “When a resident foreigner lives with you and wants to observe the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised, and then he may approach and observe it, and he will be like one who is born in the land—but no uncircumcised person may eat of it. 49 The same law will apply to the person who is native-born and to the resident foreigner who lives among you.”⁠ 50 So all the Israelites did exactly as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. 51 And on this very day the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt by their regiments.

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 12:31 and Deuteronomy 16:6

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Exodus 12 presents Passover at night, with the meal eaten as the plague strikes at midnight and Pharaoh sends Israel out before morning. Deuteronomy 16 says the sacrifice was at sunset, showing how later tradition reshaped the timing of the ritual.

Passages

Exodus 12:31

Hebrew Bible
29 It happened at midnight—the Lord attacked all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the prison, and all the firstborn of the cattle. 30 Pharaoh got up in the night, along with all his servants and all Egypt, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no house in which there was not someone dead. 31 Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, “Get up, get out from among my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, serve the Lord as you have requested! 32 Also, take your flocks and your herds, just as you have requested, and leave. But bless me also.” 33 The Egyptians were urging the people on, in order to send them out of the land quickly, for they were saying, “We are all dead!”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

Deuteronomy 16:6

Hebrew Bible
4 There must not be a scrap of yeast within your land for seven days, nor can any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until the next morning. 5 You may not sacrifice the Passover in just any of your villages that the Lord your God is giving you, 6 but you must sacrifice it in the evening in the place where he chooses to locate his name, at sunset, the time of day you came out of Egypt. 7 You must boil13 and eat it in the place the Lord your God chooses; you may return the next morning to your tents. 8 You must eat bread made without yeast for six days. The seventh day you are to hold an assembly for the Lord your God; you must not do any work on that day.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

References

"... When Jubilees, a book much concerned with chronology and calendrical precision, did not have to improve upon its sources regarding the date of Passover (as it did in the case of the Festival of Weeks). Several scriptural passages define 1/14 as the date of Passover (e.g., Exodus 12:6; Leviticus 23:5; Numbers 9:3, 5; 28:16), and Jubilees simply repeats it (49:1, 10). If the date was not in question, the specific times for sacrificing and eating the Passover lamb were less clear. Exodus 12 says about these issues: “You shall keep it [the lamb] until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight ... They shall eat the lamb that same night ...” (12:6, 8). Exodus 12:29 names midnight as the time when the Lord struck the firstborn (as the Israelites were feasting), and Deuteronomy 16:6 adds that the Passover sacrifice is to occur “in the evening at sunset, the time of day when you departed from Egypt.” Exodus 12:10 stipulates that nothing is to remain until the morning; if it does it is to be burned. The Book of Jubilees elaborates on these givens, in particular on the sense of “twilight” (literally: between the evenings) ..."
James C. VanderKam, “Exegesis of Pentateuchal Legislation in Jubilees and Related Texts Found at Qumran,” in Pentateuchal Traditions in the Late Second Temple Period: Proceedings of the International Workshop in Tokyo, August 28–31, 2007, ed. Akio Moriya and Gohei Hata, JSJSup 158 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 177–200.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exodus 12:31 and Deuteronomy 16:6

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