18. In the first month of the year you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.
19. For seven days there must not be any yeast in your houses. Anybody who eats yeast during this time, either an Israelite or non-Israelite, must be cut off from the community of Israel.
20. During this feast you must not eat anything made with yeast. You must eat only bread made without yeast wherever you live.”
21. Then Moses called all the elders of Israel together and told them, “Get the animals for your families and kill the lamb for the Passover.
22. Take a branch of the hyssop plant, dip it into the bowl filled with blood, and then wipe the blood on the sides and tops of the doorframes. No one may leave that house until morning.
23. When the Lord goes through Egypt to kill the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the sides and tops of the doorframes, and he will pass over that house. He will not let the one who brings death come into your houses and kill you.
24. “You must keep this command as a law for you and your descendants from now on.
25. Do this when you go to the land the Lord has promised to give you.
26. When your children ask you, ‘Why are we doing these things?’
27. you will say, ‘This is the Passover sacrifice to honor the Lord. When we were in Egypt, the Lord passed over the houses of Israel, and when he killed the Egyptians, he saved our homes.’ ” Then the people bowed down and worshiped the Lord.
28. They did just as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron.
29. At midnight the Lord killed all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt—from the firstborn of the king who sat on the throne to the firstborn of the prisoner in jail. Also, all the firstborn farm animals died.
30. The king, his officers, and all the Egyptians got up during the night because someone had died in every house. So there was a loud outcry everywhere in Egypt.