1And YHWH said to Moses and to Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying,
2“This month is the beginning of months for you. It is first of the months of the year for you.
12:2. first of the months of the year. According to the Torah, the new year begins in spring, not in the fall as Jews celebrate it now. The holiday that comes on the first day of fall is never referred to in the Torah as Rosh Hashanah (Lev 23:23–25).
12:2–11. This month … This is sometimes thought to be the instruction for the annual observance of Passover for all time. But the wording and context seem rather to apply only to the night before the actual exodus from Egypt. The Passover instructions for future generations come later, starting at 12:14.
3Speak to all of the congregation of Israel, saying: On the tenth of this month, let them each take a lamb for the fathers’ houses, a lamb per house.
4And if the household will be too few for a lamb, then he and his neighbor who is close to his house will take it according to the count of persons; you shall count each person according to what he eats for the lamb.
5You shall have an unblemished, male, year-old lamb; you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats.
6And it will be for you to watch over until the fourteenth day of this month. And all the community of the congregation of Israel will slaughter it ‘between the two evenings.’
12:6. between the two evenings. Understood to mean the early evening hours: “dusk” or “twilight.”
7And they will take some of the blood and place it on the two doorposts and on the lintel on the houses in which they will eat it.
8And they will eat the meat in this night; they will eat it fire-roasted and with unleavened bread on bitter herbs.
9Do not eat any of it raw or cooked in water, but fire-roasted: its head with its legs and with its innards.
10And do not leave any of it until morning; and you shall burn what is left of it until morning in fire.
11And you shall eat it like this: your hips clothed, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is YHWH’s Passover.
12“And I shall pass through the land of Egypt in this night, and I shall strike every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and I shall make judgments on all the gods of Egypt. I am YHWH.
12:12. judgments on all the gods of Egypt. The best-known deity of Egyptian religion is the sun, and Egyptian religion was profoundly concerned with death. The plagues culminate with “judgments” on these. In the ninth plague there is darkness for three days. And in the final plague death itself is shown to be in YHWH’s control, as only firstborn humans and animals die. (The first plague turns Egypt’s waters to blood, and this too undermines Egyptian deities.) Some readers may see in this an implicit recognition of the existence of the pagan deities, who must be thought to exist in order to be thus defeated. The text, however, does not present these “judgments” as a defeat of the gods. The plagues are rather a show of where power resides, namely, outside the gods (which is to say, outside of nature), beyond them. The forces of nature are not personified in the plagues narrative, and they do not confront or challenge the God of Israel. They are merely manipulated in the course of events.
13And the blood will be as a sign for you on the houses in which you are, and I shall see the blood, and I shall halt at you, and there won’t be a plague among you as a destroyer when I strike in the land of Egypt.
12:13,23,27. halt. Hebrew p
sa
does not mean “to pass over.” That wording has led people to images of the deity floating over houses. The verb means “to halt” or “to walk in a halting manner”; it can refer to limping (2 Sam 4:4). The noun form piss
a means a cripple (2 Sam 9:13). Admittedly, this verb occurs in Isaiah in a verse that pictures God defending Jerusalem “like birds flying” (31:5). Still, “halting” fits with the context here in Exodus, especially in 12:23, where it suggests a conception of the deity moving along through Egypt, spotting the blood on the doorposts, and coming to an abrupt stop. God “halts on the threshold” and does not allow the destroying force to enter the house. “Passing over” the threshold does not really fit with this picture of blocking or preventing the destroyer.
12:13,23. destroyer. The Hebrew pun conveys the message: the Israelites are to slaughter (root 
) the lamb so as to keep out the destroyer (root 
).
14“And this day will become a commemoration for you, and you shall celebrate it, a festival to YHWH; you shall celebrate it through your generations, an eternal law:
15Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. Indeed, on the first day you shall make leaven cease from your houses. Because anyone who eats leavened bread: that person will be cut off from Israel—from the first day to the seventh day.
12:15. make leaven cease. In the preceding verse it is said that the Passover festival is to be celebrated as a commemoration of what happened in Egypt. The wording now conveys this: The command to “make leaven cease” recalls Pharaoh’s first meeting with Moses, in which he says, “You’ve made them cease from their burdens” (Exod 5:5).
16And you will have a holy assembly on the first day and a holy assembly on the seventh day. Not any work will be done on them. Just what will be eaten by each person: that alone will be done for you.
17And you shall observe the unleavened bread, because in this very day I brought out your masses from the land of Egypt, and you shall observe this day through your generations, an eternal law.
12:17. observe the unleavened bread. Meaning: observe the commandment concerning the unleavened bread. The Septuagint and the Samaritan have “the commandment.” The confusion may owe to the fact that the words “unleavened bread” and “commandment” look the same in Hebrew consonants: 
.
18In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month, in the evening.
19Seven days leaven shall not be found in your houses, because anyone who eats something leavened: that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether the alien or the citizen of the land.
20You shall not eat anything leavened; in all your homes you shall eat unleavened bread.”
21And Moses called all Israel’s elders, and he said to them, “Pull out and take a sheep for your families and slaughter the Passover.
12:21. Passover. I have retained the English translation “Passover” rather than using some form of the word “halt.” Although the latter would preserve the connection between this word and the story of God’s halting, the fact remains that Passover is now the established, famous name of the holiday, and there is no point in ignoring this in a translation.
22And you’ll take a bunch of hyssop and dip in the blood that is in a basin and touch some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts. And you shall not go out, each one, from his house’s entrance until morning.
23And YHWH will pass to strike Egypt, and He’ll see the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, and YHWH will halt at the entrance and will not allow the destroyer to come to your houses to strike.
24And you shall observe this thing as a law for you and your children forever.
25And it will be, when you will come to the land that YHWH will give to you as He has spoken, that you shall observe this service.
26And it will be, when your children will say to you, ‘What is this service to you?’
27that you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to YHWH, because He halted at the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He struck Egypt, and He saved our houses.’”
And the people knelt and bowed.
28And the children of Israel went and did as YHWH had commanded Moses and Aaron. They did so.
29And it was in the middle of the night, and YHWH struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who was sitting on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the prison house and every firstborn of an animal.
30And Pharaoh got up at night, he and all his servants and all Egypt, and there was a big cry in Egypt, because there was not a house in which there was not one dead.
31And he called Moses and Aaron at night, and he said, “Get up. Go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel, and go, serve YHWH as you spoke.
12:31. he called Moses and Aaron. It is not clear whether this means that they go back to him or that they just receive a message from him. The issue is that Pharaoh had said, “Don’t continue to see my face. Because in the day you see my face you’ll die!” And Moses had answered, “So you’ve spoken: I won’t continue to see your face anymore” (10:28–29). So if Pharaoh sees Moses now, it means that his threat has proved empty; and Moses’ answer to him must be cynical: “So you’ve spoken!” Or, if Pharaoh and Moses do not see each other now, then Moses’ answer must be understood to be ironic: “You’re right, I won’t see you again, because we’ll be gone!”
12:31. as you spoke. What we have seen here is a gradual overwhelming of the power of Egypt through twists of events and personalities, stymieing the Pharaoh’s initial confidence and leading him to surrender unconditionally. In the first meeting he is unbending. In the second meeting and through the first two plagues, he stands firm as his magicians perform the wonders as well. The magicians cannot perform the third plague, and so the Pharaoh, no longer commanding cosmic forces himself, negotiates on the fourth (“Only don’t go too far”). He gets away with his reneging on the negotiation, and so he stands firm again through the fifth plague. His magicians themselves suffer the sixth plague, and, following this indication that the opposing power can even encroach on his forces, the Pharaoh talks to Moses again on the seventh, generously sharing the blame with his subjects (“I and my people are wrong …”). When he reneges yet again, and an eighth plague strikes, his own servants urge him to give up resisting (“Don’t you know yet that Egypt has perished?”). He then negotiates again (“just the men”). When this only leads to a ninth plague, darkening Egypt’s divine sun, he negotiates again, allowing the children, but not the livestock, to go. When Moses insists on the livestock as well, the Pharaoh returns to his original position, refusing to let the people go and harshly telling Moses to get out and never return. The horror of the tenth plague then comes, and the Pharaoh capitulates utterly. It becomes clear that this had never been a matter of negotiation at all, but rather an agonizing, gradual drawing of the Pharaoh to a decision that had been inescapable from the start.
32Take your sheep also, your oxen also, as you spoke, and go. And you’ll bless me as well!”
33And Egypt was forceful on the people to hurry to let them go from the land, because they said, “We’re all dead!”
34And the people carried off its dough before it leavened, their bowls being wrapped in their garments on their shoulder.
12:34. before it leavened. My colleague William Propp asks: Is the bread on the night of the exodus leavened or unleavened? He answers that it is leavened. The reason it does not rise is that the people carry off the dough before it has time to rise. The ban on eating leaven on Passover forever after this is a commemoration of this occurrence: “You shall eat unleavened bread … because you went out from the land of Egypt in haste” (Deut 16:3). He may be right, or perhaps we should understand this verse to mean that the people carry off the dough before they have time to put in the leaven, or that they deliberately do not leaven the dough because they anticipate leaving in a hurry. In any case, the historical origin of not eating leaven on Passover has associations beyond this etiological story. See the comment on Exod 29:2.
35And the children of Israel had done according to Moses’ word, and they asked items of silver and items of gold and garments from Egypt.
36And YHWH had put the people’s favor in the Egyptians’ eyes, and they lent to them, and they despoiled Egypt.
37And the children of Israel traveled from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot—men, apart from infants.
38And also a great mixture had gone up with them, and sheep and oxen, a very heavy livestock.
12:38. heavy. The word that described the Pharaoh’s oppression and the force of the plagues now recurs to describe, for the first time, something good: the substantial quantity of possessions that the people are able to take with them. It is as if this good is in proportion to the bad that they have experienced.
39And they baked the dough that they brought out of Egypt: cakes of unleavened bread, because it had not leavened, because they were driven from Egypt and were not able to delay, and they also had not made provisions for themselves.
40And the duration of the children of Israel that they lived in Egypt was thirty years and four hundred years.
41And it was at the end of thirty years and four hundred years, and it was in that very day: all of YHWH’s masses went out from the land of Egypt.
42It is a night to be observed for YHWH for bringing them out from the land of Egypt. It is this night, to be observed for YHWH for all the children of Israel through their generations.
43And YHWH said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the law of the Passover: any foreigner shall not eat from it.
44And every slave of a man, purchased with money: you shall circumcise him; then he shall eat from it.
12:44. slave. It is extraordinary that, just two verses after reporting that Israel went free from Egypt, there is a reference to the possibility of an Israelite having a slave! The Torah does not forbid slavery. Nor does it criticize the Egyptians for having slaves, but rather for maltreating their slaves. The Torah rather initiates a process that eventually is to bring about an end to all slavery on earth, for Israelites and for everyone else. See the comments on Lev 25:43.
45A visitor and an employee shall not eat from it.
12:45. A visitor and an employee shall not eat from it. These are non-Israelites, who do not partake of the Passover sacrificial meal. This does not apply to the Seder meal, which has been celebrated in place of the sacrificial meal ever since the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. brought an end to all sacrifices in Judaism.
46It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the meat from the house outside. And you shall not break a bone from it.
47All of the congregation of Israel shall do it.
48And if an alien will reside with you and will make a Passover to YHWH, let him be circumcised, every male, and then he may come forward to do it, and he will be like a citizen of the land, but everyone who is uncircumcised shall not eat from it.
49There shall be one instruction for the citizen and for the alien who resides among you.”
12:49. one instruction for the citizen and for the alien. “Instruction” is the translation of Hebrew Tôrh because it denotes both “teaching” and “law.” This is the first occurrence of the word “Torah” in the Torah. It is impressive beyond description that its first appearance is in a verse declaring that a foreigner residing among the people of Israel has the same legal status as an Israelite. The context here concerns the Passover statute, but this principle of treating a resident alien the same as any citizen will be repeated many (about fifteen) times in the Torah.
50And all the children of Israel did as YHWH had commanded Moses and Aaron. They did so.
51And it was in this very day: YHWH brought out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt by their masses.
