Passover

16 “Observe the ^(A)month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for ^(B)in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. ² And you shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock or ^(C)the herd, ^(D)at the place that the Lord will choose, to make his name dwell there. ³ You shall eat no leavened bread with it. ^(E)Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction—for you came out of the land of Egypt ^(F)in haste—that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. ^4 (G)No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days, ^(H)nor shall any of the flesh that you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain all night until morning. ⁵ You may not offer the Passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, ⁶ but at the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the time you came out of Egypt. ⁷ And you shall cook it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose. And in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents. ⁸ For ^(I)six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be ^(J)a solemn assembly to the Lord your God. You shall do no work on it.

The Feast of Weeks

^9 (K)“You shall count seven weeks. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. ¹⁰ Then you shall keep ^(L)the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God with ^(M)the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give ^(N)as the Lord your God blesses you. ¹¹ And ^(O)you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your towns, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are among you, at the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell there. ^12 (P)You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt; and you shall be careful to observe these statutes.

The Feast of Booths

^13 (Q)“You shall keep the Feast of Booths seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your winepress. ^14 (R)You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns. ¹⁵ For ^(S)seven days you shall keep the feast to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.

^16 (T)“Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Booths. ^(U)They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. ¹⁷ Every man ^(V)shall give as he is able, ^(W)according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.

Justice

¹⁸ “You shall appoint ^(X)judges and officers in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. ^19 (Y)You shall not pervert justice. ^(Z)You shall not show partiality, ^(AA)and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. ²⁰ Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Forbidden Forms of Worship

²¹ “You shall not plant any tree as ^(AB)an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God that you shall make. ²² And you shall not set up a pillar, which the Lord your God hates.

17 ^(AC)“You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or a sheep in which is a blemish, any defect whatever, for that is an abomination to the Lord your God.

^2 (AD)“If there is found among you, within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, ^(AE)in transgressing his covenant, ³ and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or ^(AF)the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, ^(AG)which I have forbidden, ⁴ and it is told you and you hear of it, then you shall inquire ^(AH)diligently, and if it is true and certain that such an abomination has been done in Israel, ⁵ then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you ^(AI)shall stone that man or woman to death with stones. ^6 (AJ)On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. ^7 (AK)The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So ^(AL)you shall purge^[a] the evil^[b] from your midst.

Legal Decisions by Priests and Judges

⁸ “If any case arises requiring decision between one kind of homicide and another, one kind of legal right and another, or one kind of assault and another, any case within your towns that is too difficult for you, then you shall arise and go up to ^(AM)the place that the Lord your God will choose. ^9 (AN)And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall consult them, and ^(AO)they shall declare to you the decision. ¹⁰ Then you shall do according to what they declare to you from that place that the Lord will choose. And you shall be careful to do according to all that they direct you. ¹¹ According to the instructions that they give you, and according to the decision which they pronounce to you, you shall do. You shall not turn aside from the verdict that they declare to you, either to the right hand or to the left. ¹² The man who ^(AP)acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest ^(AQ)who stands to minister there before the Lord your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So ^(AR)you shall purge the evil from Israel. ¹³ And all the people ^(AS)shall hear and fear and not act presumptuously again.

Laws Concerning Israel's Kings

¹⁴ “When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ^(AT)‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ ¹⁵ you may indeed set a king over you ^(AU)whom the Lord your God will choose. One ^(AV)from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. ¹⁶ Only he must not acquire many ^(AW)horses for himself or cause the people ^(AX)to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ^(AY)‘You shall never return that way again.’ ¹⁷ And he ^(AZ)shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, ^(BA)nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.

¹⁸ “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, ^(BB)he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, ^(BC)approved by^[c] the Levitical priests. ¹⁹ And ^(BD)it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, ^(BE)that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, ²⁰ that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he ^(BF)may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, ^(BG)so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.

Provision for Priests and Levites

18 “The Levitical priests, all the tribe of Levi, ^(BH)shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. They ^(BI)shall eat the Lord's food offerings^[d] as their^[e] inheritance. ² They shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them. ³ And this shall be the priests' due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: ^(BJ)they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach. ^4 (BK)The firstfruits of your grain, of your wine and of your oil, and the first fleece of your sheep, you shall give him. ⁵ For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes ^(BL)to stand and minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for all time.

⁶ “And if a Levite comes from any of your towns out of all Israel, ^(BM)where he lives—and he may come when he desires^[f]—^(BN)to the place that the Lord will choose, ⁷ and ministers in the name of the Lord his God, ^(BO)like all his fellow Levites who stand to minister there before the Lord, ⁸ then he may have equal ^(BP)portions to eat, besides what he receives from the sale of his patrimony.^[g]

Abominable Practices

⁹ “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, ^(BQ)you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. ¹⁰ There shall not be found among you anyone ^(BR)who burns his son or his daughter as an offering,^[h] anyone who ^(BS)practices divination or ^(BT)tells fortunes or interprets omens, or ^(BU)a sorcerer ¹¹ or a charmer or ^(BV)a medium or a necromancer or ^(BW)one who inquires of the dead, ^12 (BX)for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And ^(BY)because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. ¹³ You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, ¹⁴ for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

A New Prophet like Moses

^15 (BZ)“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— ¹⁶ just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb ^(CA)on the day of the assembly, when you said, ^(CB)‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷ And the Lord said to me, ^(CC)‘They are right in what they have spoken. ^18 (CD)I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. ^(CE)And I will put my words in his mouth, and ^(CF)he shall speak to them all that I command him. ^19 (CG)And whoever will ^(CH)not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. ^20 (CI)But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or^[i] who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ ²¹ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— ^22 (CJ)when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; ^(CK)the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

Do Not Forsake Me, O Lord

A Psalm of David, ^(A)for the memorial offering.

Paul Accepted by the Apostles

2 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. ² I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those ^(A)who seemed influential) the gospel that ^(B)I proclaim among the Gentiles, ^(C)in order to make sure I was not running or had not ^(D)run in vain. ³ But even Titus, who was with me, ^(E)was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. ^4 (F)Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who ^(G)slipped in to spy out ^(H)our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, ^(I)so that they might bring us into slavery— ⁵ to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that ^(J)the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. ⁶ And from those ^(K)who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; ^(L)God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential ^(M)added nothing to me. ⁷ On the contrary, when they saw that I had been ^(N)entrusted with ^(O)the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised ⁸ (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), ⁹ and when James and Cephas and John, ^(P)who seemed to be ^(Q)pillars, perceived the ^(R)grace that was given to me, they ^(S)gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. ¹⁰ Only, they asked us to remember the poor, ^(T)the very thing I was eager to do.

Paul Opposes Peter

¹¹ But ^(U)when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him ^(V)to his face, because he stood condemned. ¹² For before certain men came from James, ^(W)he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing ^(X)the circumcision party.^{[a] 13} And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴ But when I saw that their ^(Y)conduct was not in step with ^(Z)the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas ^(AA)before them all, “If you, though a Jew, ^(AB)live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Justified by Faith

¹⁵ We ourselves are Jews by birth and not ^(AC)Gentile sinners; ¹⁶ yet we know that ^(AD)a person is not justified^[b] by works of the law ^(AE)but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, ^(AF)because by works of the law no one will be justified.

¹⁷ But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found ^(AG)to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! ¹⁸ For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. ¹⁹ For through the law I ^(AH)died to the law, so that I might ^(AI)live to God. ²⁰ I have been ^(AJ)crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives ^(AK)in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, ^(AL)who loved me and ^(AM)gave himself for me. ²¹ I do not nullify the grace of God, for ^(AN)if righteousness^[c] were through the law, ^(AO)then Christ died for no purpose.