22 You shall not watch your neighbor’s ox or sheep straying away and ignore them; you shall take them back to their owner. ² If the owner does not reside near you or you do not know who the owner is, you shall bring it to your own house, and it shall remain with you until the owner claims it; then you shall return it. ³ You shall do the same with a neighbor’s donkey; you shall do the same with a neighbor’s garment; and you shall do the same with anything else that your neighbor loses and you find. You may not withhold your help.

⁴ You shall not see your neighbor’s donkey or ox fallen on the road and ignore it; you shall help to lift it up.

⁵ A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.

⁶ If you come on a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, with the mother sitting on the fledglings or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. ⁷ Let the mother go, taking only the young for yourself, in order that it may go well with you and you may live long.

⁸ When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof; otherwise you might have bloodguilt on your house, if anyone should fall from it.

⁹ You shall not sow your vineyard with a second kind of seed, or the whole yield will have to be forfeited, both the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard itself.

¹⁰ You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.

¹¹ You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.

¹² You shall make tassels on the four corners of the cloak with which you cover yourself.

Laws concerning Sexual Relations

¹³ Suppose a man marries a woman, but after going in to her, he dislikes her ¹⁴ and makes up charges against her, slandering her by saying, “I married this woman; but when I lay with her, I did not find evidence of her virginity.” ¹⁵ The father of the young woman and her mother shall then submit the evidence of the young woman’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. ¹⁶ The father of the young woman shall say to the elders: “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man but he dislikes her; ¹⁷ now he has made up charges against her, saying, ‘I did not find evidence of your daughter’s virginity.’ But here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” Then they shall spread out the cloth before the elders of the town. ¹⁸ The elders of that town shall take the man and punish him; ¹⁹ they shall fine him one hundred shekels of silver (which they shall give to the young woman’s father) because he has slandered a virgin of Israel. She shall remain his wife; he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.

²⁰ If, however, this charge is true, that evidence of the young woman’s virginity was not found, ²¹ then they shall bring the young woman out to the entrance of her father’s house and the men of her town shall stone her to death, because she committed a disgraceful act in Israel by prostituting herself in her father’s house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

²² If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.

²³ If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, ²⁴ you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

²⁵ But if the man meets the engaged woman in the open country, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. ²⁶ You shall do nothing to the young woman; the young woman has not committed an offense punishable by death, because this case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor. ²⁷ Since he found her in the open country, the engaged woman may have cried for help, but there was no one to rescue her.

²⁸ If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are caught in the act, ²⁹ the man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife. Because he violated her he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.

^30 [a] A man shall not marry his father’s wife, thereby violating his father’s rights.^[b]

Those Excluded from the Assembly

23 No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

² Those born of an illicit union shall not be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

³ No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord, ⁴ because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. ⁵ (Yet the Lord your God refused to heed Balaam; the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you.) ⁶ You shall never promote their welfare or their prosperity as long as you live.

⁷ You shall not abhor any of the Edomites, for they are your kin. You shall not abhor any of the Egyptians, because you were an alien residing in their land. ⁸ The children of the third generation that are born to them may be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

Sanitary, Ritual, and Humanitarian Precepts

⁹ When you are encamped against your enemies you shall guard against any impropriety.

¹⁰ If one of you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he shall go outside the camp; he must not come within the camp. ¹¹ When evening comes, he shall wash himself with water, and when the sun has set, he may come back into the camp.

¹² You shall have a designated area outside the camp to which you shall go. ¹³ With your utensils you shall have a trowel; when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up your excrement. ¹⁴ Because the Lord your God travels along with your camp, to save you and to hand over your enemies to you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.

¹⁵ Slaves who have escaped to you from their owners shall not be given back to them. ¹⁶ They shall reside with you, in your midst, in any place they choose in any one of your towns, wherever they please; you shall not oppress them.

¹⁷ None of the daughters of Israel shall be a temple prostitute; none of the sons of Israel shall be a temple prostitute. ¹⁸ You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a male prostitute^[c] into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are abhorrent to the Lord your God.

¹⁹ You shall not charge interest on loans to another Israelite, interest on money, interest on provisions, interest on anything that is lent. ²⁰ On loans to a foreigner you may charge interest, but on loans to another Israelite you may not charge interest, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings in the land that you are about to enter and possess.

²¹ If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not postpone fulfilling it; for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and you would incur guilt. ²² But if you refrain from vowing, you will not incur guilt. ²³ Whatever your lips utter you must diligently perform, just as you have freely vowed to the Lord your God with your own mouth.

²⁴ If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in a container.

²⁵ If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.

Psalm 98

Praise the Judge of the World

A Psalm.

Paul Defends Himself before Agrippa

26 Agrippa said to Paul, “You have permission to speak for yourself.” Then Paul stretched out his hand and began to defend himself:

² “I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, ³ because you are especially familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews; therefore I beg of you to listen to me patiently.

⁴ “All the Jews know my way of life from my youth, a life spent from the beginning among my own people and in Jerusalem. ⁵ They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that I have belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee. ⁶ And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, ⁷ a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night. It is for this hope, your Excellency,^[a] that I am accused by Jews! ⁸ Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?

⁹ “Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth.^{[b] 10} And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. ¹¹ By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities.

Paul Tells of His Conversion

¹² “With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, ¹³ when at midday along the road, your Excellency,^[c] I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. ¹⁴ When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew^[d] language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.’ ¹⁵ I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The Lord answered, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. ¹⁶ But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me^[e] and to those in which I will appear to you. ¹⁷ I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you ¹⁸ to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

Paul Tells of His Preaching

¹⁹ “After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, ²⁰ but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance. ²¹ For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me. ²² To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place: ²³ that the Messiah^[f] must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.”

Paul Appeals to Agrippa to Believe

²⁴ While he was making this defense, Festus exclaimed, “You are out of your mind, Paul! Too much learning is driving you insane!” ²⁵ But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking the sober truth. ²⁶ Indeed the king knows about these things, and to him I speak freely; for I am certain that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this was not done in a corner. ²⁷ King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.” ²⁸ Agrippa said to Paul, “Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?”^{[g] 29} Paul replied, “Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am—except for these chains.”

³⁰ Then the king got up, and with him the governor and Bernice and those who had been seated with them; ³¹ and as they were leaving, they said to one another, “This man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment.” ³² Agrippa said to Festus, “This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to the emperor.”