16 “Observe the month of Aviv, and keep Pesach to Adonai your God; for in the month of Aviv, Adonai your God brought you out of Egypt at night. ² You are to sacrifice the Pesach offering from flock and herd to Adonai your God in the place where Adonai will choose to have his name live. ³ You are not to eat any hametz with it; for seven days you are to eat with it matzah, the bread of affliction; for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste. Thus you will remember the day you left the land of Egypt as long as you live. ⁴ No leaven is to be seen with you anywhere in your territory for seven days. None of the meat from your sacrifice on the first day in the evening is to remain all night until morning. ⁵ You may not sacrifice the Pesach offering in just any of the towns that Adonai your God is giving you; ⁶ but at the place where Adonai your God will choose to have his name live — there is where you are to sacrifice the Pesach offering, in the evening, when the sun sets, at the time of year that you came out of Egypt. ⁷ You are to roast it and eat it in the place Adonai your God will choose; in the morning you will return and go to your tents. ⁸ For six days you are to eat matzah; on the seventh day there is to be a festive assembly for Adonai your God; do not do any kind of work.

⁹ “You are to count seven weeks; you are to begin counting seven weeks from the time you first put your sickle to the standing grain. ¹⁰ You are to observe the festival of Shavu‘ot [weeks] for Adonai your God with a voluntary offering, which you are to give in accordance with the degree to which Adonai your God has prospered you. ¹¹ You are to rejoice in the presence of Adonai your God — you, your sons and daughters, your male and female slaves, the L’vi’im living in your towns, and the foreigners, orphans and widows living among you — in the place where Adonai your God will choose to have his name live. ¹² Remember that you were a slave in Egypt; then you will keep and obey these laws.

(Maftir) ¹³ “You are to keep the festival of Sukkot for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing-floor and winepress. ¹⁴ Rejoice at your festival — you, your sons and daughters, your male and female slaves, the L’vi’im, and the foreigners, orphans and widows living among you. ¹⁵ Seven days you are to keep the festival for Adonai your God in the place Adonai your God will choose, because Adonai your God will bless you in all your crops and in all your work, so you are to be full of joy!

¹⁶ “Three times a year all your men are to appear in the presence of Adonai your God in the place which he will choose — at the festival of matzah, at the festival of Shavu‘ot and at the festival of Sukkot. They are not to show up before Adonai empty-handed, ¹⁷ but every man is to give what he can, in accordance with the blessing Adonai your God has given you.

Haftarah Re’eh: Yesha‘yahu (Isaiah) 54:11–55:5

B’rit Hadashah suggested readings for Parashah Re’eh: 1 Corinthians 5:9–13; 1 Yochanan (1 John) 4:1–6

Parashah 48: Shof’tim (Judges) 16:18–21:9

¹⁸ “You are to appoint judges and officers for all your gates [in the cities] Adonai your God is giving you, tribe by tribe; and they are to judge the people with righteous judgment. ¹⁹ You are not to distort justice or show favoritism, and you are not to accept a bribe, for a gift blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of even the upright. ²⁰ Justice, only justice, you must pursue; so that you will live and inherit the land Adonai your God is giving you.

²¹ “You are not to plant any sort of tree as a sacred pole beside the altar of Adonai your God that you will make for yourselves. ²² Likewise, do not set up a standing-stone; Adonai your God hates such things.

17 “You are not to sacrifice to Adonai your God a cow or sheep that has a defect or anything wrong with it; that would be an abomination to Adonai your God.

² “If there is found among you, within any of your gates [in any city] that Adonai your God gives you, a man or woman who does what Adonai your God sees as wicked, transgressing his covenant ³ by going and serving other gods and worshipping them, the sun, the moon, or anything in the sky — something I have forbidden — ⁴ and it is told to you, or you hear about it; then you are to investigate the matter diligently. If it is true, if it is confirmed that such detestable things are being done in Isra’el; ⁵ then you are to bring the man or woman who has done this wicked thing to your city gates, and stone that man or woman to death. ⁶ The death sentence is to be carried out only if there was testimony from two or three witnesses; he may not be sentenced to death on the testimony of only one witness. ⁷ The witnesses are to be the first to stone him to death; afterwards, all the people are to stone him. Thus you will put an end to this wickedness among you.

⁸ “If a case comes before you at your city gate which is too difficult for you to judge, concerning bloodshed, civil suit, personal injury or any other controversial issue; you are to get up, go to the place which Adonai your God will choose, ⁹ and appear before the cohanim, who are L’vi’im, and the judge in office at the time. Seek their opinion, and they will render a verdict for you. ¹⁰ You will then act according to what they have told you there in that place which Adonai will choose; you are to take care to act according to all their instructions. ¹¹ In accordance with the Torah they teach you, you are to carry out the judgment they render, not turning aside to the right or the left from the verdict they declare to you. ¹² Anyone presumptuous enough not to pay attention to the cohen appointed there to serve Adonai your God or to the judge — that person must die. Thus you will exterminate such wickedness from Isra’el — ¹³ all the people will hear about it and be afraid to continue acting presumptuously.

(ii) ¹⁴ “When you have entered the land Adonai your God is giving you, have taken possession of it and are living there, you may say, ‘I want to have a king over me, like all the other nations around me.’ ¹⁵ In that event, you must appoint as king the one whom Adonai your God will choose. He must be one of your kinsmen, this king you appoint over you — you are forbidden to appoint a foreigner over you who is not your kinsman. ¹⁶ However, he is not to acquire many horses for himself or have the people return to Egypt to obtain more horses, inasmuch as Adonai told you never to go back that way again. ¹⁷ Likewise, he is not to acquire many wives for himself, so that his heart will not turn away; and he is not to acquire excessive quantities of silver and gold.

¹⁸ “When he has come to occupy the throne of his kingdom, he is to write a copy of this Torah for himself in a scroll, from the one the cohanim and L’vi’im use. ¹⁹ It is to remain with him, and he is to read in it every day, as long as he lives; so that he will learn to fear Adonai his God and keep all the words of this Torah and these laws and obey them; ²⁰ so that he will not think he is better than his kinsmen; and so that he will not turn aside either to the right or to the left from the mitzvah. In this way he will prolong his own reign and that of his children in Isra’el.

18 (iii) The cohanim, who are L’vi’im, and indeed the whole tribe of Levi, is not to have a share or an inheritance with Isra’el. Instead, their support will come from the food offered by fire to Adonai and from whatever else becomes his. ² They will have no inheritance with their brothers, because Adonai is their inheritance — as he has said to them.

³ “The cohanim will have the right to receive from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether ox or sheep, the shoulder, the jowls and the stomach. ⁴ You will also give him the firstfruits of your grain, new wine and olive oil, and the first of the fleece of your sheep. ⁵ For Adonai your God has chosen him from all your tribes to stand and serve in the name of Adonai, him and his sons forever.

(iv) ⁶ “If a Levi from one of your towns anywhere in Isra’el where he is living comes, highly motivated, to the place which Adonai will choose, ⁷ then he will serve there in the name of Adonai his God, just like his kinsmen the L’vi’im who stand and serve in the presence of Adonai. ⁸ Such a Levi will receive the same share as they do, in addition to what he may receive from selling his inherited ancestral property.

⁹ “When you enter the land Adonai your God is giving you, you are not to learn how to follow the abominable practices of those nations. ¹⁰ There must not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through fire, a diviner, a soothsayer, an enchanter, a sorcerer, ¹¹ a spell-caster, a consulter of ghosts or spirits, or a necromancer. ¹² For whoever does these things is detestable to Adonai, and because of these abominations Adonai your God is driving them out ahead of you. ¹³ You must be wholehearted with Adonai your God. (v) ¹⁴ For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to soothsayers and diviners; but you, Adonai your God does not allow you to do this.

¹⁵ “Adonai will raise up for you a prophet like me from among yourselves, from your own kinsmen. You are to pay attention to him, ¹⁶ just as when you were assembled at Horev and requested Adonai your God, ‘Don’t let me hear the voice of Adonai my God any more, or let me see this great fire ever again; if I do, I will die!’ ¹⁷ On that occasion Adonai said to me, ‘They are right in what they are saying. ¹⁸ I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kinsmen. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I order him. ¹⁹ Whoever doesn’t listen to my words, which he will speak in my name, will have to account for himself to me.

²⁰ “‘But if a prophet presumptuously speaks a word in my name which I didn’t order him to say, or if he speaks in the name of other gods, then that prophet must die.’ ²¹ You may be wondering, ‘How are we to know if a word has not been spoken by Adonai?’ ²² When a prophet speaks in the name of Adonai, and the prediction does not come true — that is, the word is not fulfilled — then Adonai did not speak that word. The prophet who said it spoke presumptuously; you have nothing to fear from him.

2 Then after fourteen years I again went up to Yerushalayim, this time with Bar-Nabba; and I took with me Titus. ² I went up in obedience to a revelation, and I explained to them the Good News as I proclaim it among the Gentiles — but privately, to the acknowledged leaders. I did this out of concern that my current or previous work might have been in vain.

³ But they didn’t force my Gentile companion Titus to undergo b’rit-milah. ⁴ Indeed, the question came up only because some men who pretended to be brothers had been sneaked in — they came in surreptitiously to spy out the freedom we have in the Messiah Yeshua, so that they might enslave us. ⁵ Not even for a minute did we give in to them, so that the truth of the Good News might be preserved for you.

⁶ Moreover, those who were the acknowledged leaders — what they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by outward appearances — these leaders added nothing to me. ⁷ On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the Good News for the Uncircumcised, just as Kefa had been for the Circumcised; ⁸ since the One working in Kefa to make him an emissary to the Circumcised had worked in me to make me an emissary to the Gentiles. ⁹ So, having perceived what grace had been given to me, Ya‘akov, Kefa and Yochanan, the acknowledged pillars of the community, extended to me and Bar-Nabba the right hand of fellowship; so that we might go to the Gentiles, and they to the Circumcised. ¹⁰ Their only request was that we should remember the poor — which very thing I have spared no pains to do.

¹¹ Furthermore, when Kefa came to Antioch, I opposed him publicly, because he was clearly in the wrong. ¹² For prior to the arrival of certain people from [the community headed by] Ya‘akov, he had been eating with the Gentile believers; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, because he was afraid of the faction who favored circumcising Gentile believers. ¹³ And the other Jewish believers became hypocrites along with him, so that even Bar-Nabba was led astray by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴ But when I saw that they were not walking a straight path, keeping in line with the truth of the Good News, I said to Kefa, right in front of everyone, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Goy and not like a Jew, why are you forcing the Goyim to live like Jews? ¹⁵ We are Jews by birth, not so-called ‘Goyishe sinners’; ¹⁶ even so, we have come to realize that a person is not declared righteous by God on the ground of his legalistic observance of Torah commands, but through the Messiah Yeshua’s trusting faithfulness. Therefore, we too have put our trust in Messiah Yeshua and become faithful to him, in order that we might be declared righteous on the ground of the Messiah’s trusting faithfulness and not on the ground of our legalistic observance of Torah commands. For on the ground of legalistic observance of Torah commands, no one will be declared righteous.^[a]

¹⁷ But if, in seeking to be declared righteous by God through our union with the Messiah, we ourselves are indeed found to be sinners, then is the Messiah an aider and abettor of sin? Heaven forbid! ¹⁸ Indeed, if I build up again the legalistic bondage which I destroyed, I really do make myself a transgressor. ¹⁹ For it was through letting the Torah speak for itself that I died to its traditional legalistic misinterpretation, so that I might live in direct relationship with God. ²⁰ When the Messiah was executed on the stake as a criminal, I was too; so that my proud ego no longer lives. But the Messiah lives in me, and the life I now live in my body I live by the same trusting faithfulness that the Son of God had, who loved me and gave himself up for me. ²¹ I do not reject God’s gracious gift; for if the way in which one attains righteousness is through legalism, then the Messiah’s death was pointless.