21. Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and procure lambs for your families, and slaughter the Passover victims.
22. Then take a bunch of hyssop, and dipping it in the blood that is in the basin, apply some of this blood to the lintel and the two doorposts. And none of you shall go outdoors until morning.
23. For when the Lord goes by to strike down the Egyptians, seeing the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over that door and not let the destroyer come into your houses to strike you down.
24. “You will keep this practice forever as a statute for yourselves and your descendants.
25. Thus, when you have entered the land which the Lord will give you as he promised, you must observe this rite.
26. When your children ask you, ‘What does this rite of yours mean?’
27. you will reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice for the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt; when he struck down the Egyptians, he delivered our houses.’”Then the people knelt and bowed down,
28. and the Israelites went and did exactly as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron.
29. And so at midnight the Lord struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner in the dungeon, as well as all the firstborn of the animals.
30. Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians; and there was loud wailing throughout Egypt, for there was not a house without its dead.
31. During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Leave my people at once, you and the Israelites! Go and serve the Lord as you said.
32. Take your flocks, too, and your herds, as you said, and go; and bless me, too!”
33. The Egyptians, in a hurry to send them away from the land, urged the people on, for they said, “All of us will die!”
34. The people, therefore, took their dough before it was leavened, in their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks on their shoulders.