Giving God the Best

19  You must set apart for the Lord your God every firstborn male born to your herds and flocks. You must not work the firstborn of your bulls or shear the firstborn of your flocks. 20  You and your household must eat them annually before the Lord your God in the place he chooses. 21  If they have any kind of blemish – lameness, blindness, or anything else – you may not offer them as a sacrifice to the Lord your God. 22  You may eat it in your villages, whether you are ritually impure or clean, just as you would eat a gazelle or an ibex. 23  However, you must not eat its blood; you must pour it out on the ground like water.

16  Observe the month Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in that month he brought you out of Egypt by night. 2  You must sacrifice the Passover animal (from the flock or the herd) to the Lord your God in the place where he chooses to locate his name. 3  You must not eat any yeast with it; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast, symbolic of affliction, for you came out of Egypt hurriedly. You must do this so you will remember for the rest of your life the day you came out of the land of Egypt. 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 cook 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.