Now, confess it to the Lord, the God of your ancestors. Do his will and separate yourselves from the people living around you and from your non-Jewish wives.”
So all the people of Israel who returned from captivity ate the Passover lamb. So did the people who had given up the unclean ways of their non-Jewish neighbors in order to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.
You people, leave, leave; get out of Babylon! Touch nothing that is unclean. You men who carry the Lord’s things used in worship, leave there and make yourselves pure.
“Run away from Babylon and save your lives! Don’t stay and be killed because of Babylon’s sins. It is time for the Lord to punish Babylon; he will give Babylon the punishment she deserves.
Dear friends, we have these promises from God, so we should make ourselves pure—free from anything that makes body or soul unclean. We should try to become holy in the way we live, because we respect God.
Then I heard another voice from heaven saying: “Come out of that city, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive the disasters that will come to her.