Chapter 12

The Passover Ritual Prescribed.^{[a] 1} The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: ^2 [b]This month will stand at the head of your calendar; you will reckon it the first month of the year.^{(A) 3} Tell the whole community of Israel: On the tenth of this month every family must procure for itself a lamb, one apiece for each household. ⁴ If a household is too small for a lamb, it along with its nearest neighbor will procure one, and apportion the lamb’s cost^[c] in proportion to the number of persons, according to what each household consumes. ⁵ Your lamb must be a year-old male and without blemish. You may take it from either the sheep or the goats. ⁶ You will keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, and then, with the whole community of Israel assembled, it will be slaughtered during the evening twilight. ⁷ They will take some of its blood and apply it to the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ⁸ They will consume its meat that same night, eating it roasted with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. ⁹ Do not eat any of it raw or even boiled in water, but roasted, with its head and shanks and inner organs. ¹⁰ You must not keep any of it beyond the morning; whatever is left over in the morning must be burned up.

¹¹ This is how you are to eat it: with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and your staff in hand, you will eat it in a hurry. It is the Lord’s Passover. ¹² For on this same night I will go through Egypt, striking down every firstborn in the land, human being and beast alike, and executing judgment on all the gods of Egypt—I, the Lord!^{(B) 13} But for you the blood will mark the houses where you are. Seeing the blood, I will pass over you; thereby, when I strike the land of Egypt, no destructive blow will come upon you.^(C)

¹⁴ This day will be a day of remembrance for you, which your future generations will celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord; you will celebrate it as a statute forever. ¹⁵ For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. From the very first day you will have your houses clear of all leaven. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day to the seventh will be cut off^[d] from Israel. ¹⁶ On the first day you will hold a sacred assembly, and likewise on the seventh. On these days no sort of work shall be done, except to prepare the food that everyone needs. ¹⁷ Keep, then, the custom of the unleavened bread,^(D) since it was on this very day that I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. You must observe this day throughout your generations as a statute forever. ¹⁸ From the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month until the evening of the twenty-first day of this month you will eat unleavened bread. ¹⁹ For seven days no leaven may be found in your houses; for anyone, a resident alien or a native, who eats leavened food will be cut off from the community of Israel. ²⁰ You shall eat nothing leavened; wherever you dwell you may eat only unleavened bread.

Passover Celebrated. ¹⁴ They proceeded to remove the altars that were in Jerusalem as well as all the altars of incense, and cast them into the Wadi Kidron.^{(A) 15} They slaughtered the Passover on the fourteenth day of the second month. The priests and Levites were shamed into sanctifying themselves and brought burnt offerings into the house of the Lord. ¹⁶ They stood in the places prescribed for them according to the law of Moses, the man of God. The priests splashed the blood given them by the Levites; ¹⁷ for many in the assembly had not sanctified themselves, and the Levites were in charge of slaughtering the Passover victims for all who were unclean so as to consecrate them to the Lord.^{(B) 18} The greater part of the people, in fact, chiefly from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves. Nevertheless they ate the Passover, contrary to the prescription; because Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “May the good Lord grant pardon to ¹⁹ all who have set their heart to seek God, the Lord, the God of their ancestors, even though they are not clean as holiness requires.” ²⁰ The Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people.

²¹ Thus the Israelites who were in Jerusalem celebrated the feast of Unleavened Bread with great rejoicing for seven days, and the Levites and the priests sang the praises of the Lord day after day with all their strength. ²² Hezekiah spoke encouragingly to all the Levites who had shown themselves well skilled in the service of the Lord. And when they had completed the seven days of festival, sacrificing communion offerings and singing praises to the Lord, the God of their ancestors, ²³ the whole assembly agreed to celebrate another seven days. So with joy they celebrated seven days more. ²⁴ King Hezekiah of Judah had contributed a thousand bulls and seven thousand sheep to the assembly, and the princes a thousand bulls and ten thousand sheep. The priests sanctified themselves in great numbers, ²⁵ and the whole assembly of Judah rejoiced, together with the priests and Levites and the rest of the assembly that had come from Israel, as well as the resident aliens from the land of Israel and those that lived in Judah. ²⁶ There was great rejoicing in Jerusalem, for since the days of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, there had been nothing like it in the city. ²⁷ Then the levitical priests rose and blessed the people; their voice was heard and their prayer reached heaven, God’s holy dwelling.

Chapter 35

The Passover. ^1 (A)Josiah celebrated in Jerusalem a Passover to honor the Lord; the Passover sacrifice was slaughtered on the fourteenth day of the first month.^{(B) 2} He reappointed the priests to their duties and confirmed them in the service of the Lord’s house. ³ He said to the Levites who were to instruct all Israel, and who were consecrated to the Lord: “Put the holy ark in the house built by Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. It shall no longer be a burden on your shoulders. Serve now the Lord, your God, and his people Israel.^{(C) 4} Prepare yourselves by your ancestral houses and your divisions according to the prescriptions of David, king of Israel, and the prescriptions of his son Solomon. ⁵ Stand in the sanctuary according to the branches of the ancestral houses of your kin, the common people, so that the distribution of the Levites and the families may be the same.^{(D) 6} Slaughter the Passover sacrifice, sanctify yourselves, and be at the disposition of your kin, that all may be done according to the word of the Lord given through Moses.”^(E)

⁷ Josiah contributed to the common people a flock of lambs and young goats,^(F) thirty thousand in number, each to serve as a Passover victim for all who were present, and also three thousand oxen; these were from the king’s property. ⁸ His princes also gave a voluntary offering to the people, the priests, and the Levites. Hilkiah, Zechariah, and Jehiel, prefects of the house of God, gave to the priests two thousand six hundred Passover victims along with three hundred oxen.^{(G) 9} Conaniah and his brothers Shemaiah, Nethanel, Hashabiah, Jehiel, and Jozabad, the rulers of the Levites, contributed to the Levites five thousand Passover victims, together with five hundred oxen.

¹⁰ When the service had been arranged, the priests took their places, as did the Levites in their divisions according to the king’s command. ¹¹ The Passover sacrifice was slaughtered, whereupon the priests splashed some of the blood and the Levites proceeded with the skinning. ¹² They separated out what was destined for the burnt offering and gave it to various groups of the ancestral houses of the common people to offer to the Lord, as is written in the book of Moses. They did the same with the oxen. ¹³ They cooked the Passover on the fire as prescribed, and also cooked the sacred portions in pots, caldrons, and pans, then brought them quickly to all the common people.^{(H) 14} Afterward they prepared the Passover for themselves and for the priests. Indeed the priests, the sons of Aaron, were busy sacrificing burnt offerings and the fatty portions until night; therefore the Levites prepared for themselves and for the priests, the sons of Aaron. ¹⁵ The singers, the sons of Asaph, were at their posts as commanded by David and by Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, the king’s seer. The gatekeepers were at every gate; there was no need for them to leave their stations, for their fellow Levites prepared for them. ¹⁶ Thus the entire service of the Lord was arranged that day so that the Passover could be celebrated and the burnt offerings sacrificed on the altar of the Lord, as King Josiah had commanded. ¹⁷ The Israelites who were present on that occasion kept the Passover and the feast of the Unleavened Bread for seven days. ^18 (I)No such Passover had been observed in Israel since the time of Samuel the prophet; no king of Israel had observed a Passover like that celebrated by Josiah, the priests, and Levites, all of Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. ¹⁹ It was in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign that this Passover was observed.