The Sin of Nadab and Abihu

10 Now ^(A)Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective ^(B)firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on ^[a]the fire and offered ^[b]strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. ^2 (C)And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. ³ Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the Lord spoke, saying,

So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.

¹⁴ “When you enter the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and you ^(A)take possession of it and live in it, and you say, ‘^(B)I will appoint a king over me like all the nations who are around me,’ ¹⁵ you shall in fact appoint a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses. One ^(C)from among your countrymen you shall appoint as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves, anyone who is not your countryman. ^16 (D)In any case, he is not to acquire many horses for himself, nor shall he ^(E)make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since ^(F)the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’ ¹⁷ And ^(G)he shall not acquire many wives for himself, so that his heart does not turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself.

¹⁸ “Now it shall come about, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this Law on a scroll ^[a](H)in the presence of the Levitical priests. ¹⁹ And it shall be with him, and he shall read it ^(I)all the days of his life, so that he will learn to fear the Lord his God, ^[b]by carefully following all the words of this Law and these statutes, ²⁰ so that his heart will not be haughty toward his countrymen, ^(J)and that he will not turn away from the commandment to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may ^[c]live long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.

⁴⁴ For ^(A)I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and ^(B)be holy, because I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. ^45 (C)For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; so ^(D)you shall be holy, because I am holy.’”

¹² The fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it. It shall not go out, but the priest shall burn wood on it every morning; and he shall lay out the burnt offering on it, and offer up in smoke the fat portions of the peace offerings ^(A)on it.

The Altar of Incense

30 “Now you shall make ^(A)an altar as a place for burning incense; you shall make it of acacia wood.

⁷ Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it; he shall burn it every morning when he trims the lamps. ⁸ And when Aaron sets up the lamps at ^[a]twilight, he shall burn incense. There shall be perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.

² For we all ^(A)stumble in many ways. ^(B)If anyone does not stumble in ^[a]what he says, he is a ^(C)perfect man, able to ^[b](D)rein in the whole body as well.

⁶ And ^(A)the tongue is a fire, the very world of unrighteousness; the tongue is set among ^[a]our body’s parts as that which ^(B)defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of our ^[b]life, and is set on fire by ^[c](C)hell.