False prophets and false gods

13 ^[a] Now if a prophet or a dream interpreter appears among you and performs a sign or wonder for you, ² and the sign or wonder that was spoken actually occurs; if he says: “Come on! We should follow other gods”—ones you haven’t experienced—“and we should worship them,” ³ you must not listen to that prophet’s or dream interpreter’s words, because the Lord your God is testing you to see if you love the Lord your God with all your mind and all your being. ⁴ You must follow the Lord your God alone! Revere him! Follow his commandments! Obey his voice! Worship him! Cling to him—no other! ⁵ That prophet or dream interpreter must be executed because he encouraged you to turn away from the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, who redeemed you from the house of slavery; they tried to lead you away from the path the Lord your God commanded you to take. Remove^[b] such evil from your community!

⁶ Similarly, if one of your relatives—even one of your own siblings—or your own son or daughter or your dear spouse or best friend entices you secretly, if someone like that says: “Come on! We should follow and worship other gods”—ones that neither you nor your ancestors have experienced, ⁷ gods from all the neighboring peoples, whether nearby or far away, from one end of the earth to the other— ⁸ don’t give in to them! Don’t obey them! Don’t have any mercy on them! Don’t have compassion on them and don’t protect them! ⁹ Instead, you must execute them. Your own hand must be against them from the beginning of the execution; the hand of all the people will be involved at the end. ¹⁰ Stone them until they are dead because they desired to lead you away from the Lord your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ¹¹ All Israel will hear about this and be afraid. They won’t do that sort of evil thing among you again.

¹² Or if you hear about one of your towns the Lord your God is giving you to inhabit, that ¹³ certain wicked people have gone out from your community and they’ve led the citizens of their town astray by saying: “Come on! We should follow and worship other gods”—ones you haven’t experienced before; ¹⁴ at that point you must look into this situation very carefully to see if it’s true. And if it’s definitely true that this detestable thing was done in your community, ¹⁵ you must completely strike down the inhabitants of that city with the sword. Place it and all that is in it under the ban.^[c] Put its animals to the sword. ¹⁶ Gather all the plunder into the middle of the town’s square. Then burn the city and all of its plunder as an entirely burned offering to the Lord your God. It must remain a heap of rubble forever. It must not be rebuilt. ¹⁷ Don’t hold on to any of the banned items—this will ensure that the Lord turns from his great anger and is compassionate to you, showing you mercy and multiplying you just like he swore to your ancestors. ¹⁸ You must definitely obey the Lord your God’s voice, keeping all his commandments that I am giving you right now, by doing what is right in the Lord your God’s eyes!

Complete devotion to the Lord

14 You are the Lord’s children. Don’t cut yourselves and don’t shave your foreheads for the dead, ² because you are a people holy to the Lord your God. You are the ones whom the Lord selected to be his own, to be a treasured people out of all other people on earth.

Dietary laws

³ Don’t eat any detestable thing. ⁴ Here’s a list of animals you are allowed to eat: ox, sheep, goat, ⁵ deer, gazelle, roebuck, wild goat, ibex, antelope, and mountain sheep. ⁶ You are also allowed to eat any animal with a divided hoof—the hoof being divided into two parts—and that rechews food among the various kinds of animals. ⁷ However, here’s a list of animals that either rechew food or have hooves divided in two parts that you are not allowed to eat:

⁹ Here’s a list of the water animals you are allowed to eat: you can eat anything that has fins and scales. ¹⁰ But you aren’t allowed to eat anything that lacks scales or fins. These are off-limits for you.

¹¹ You are allowed to eat any clean bird. ¹² Here’s a list of those you are not allowed to eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, ¹³ the red kite, the black kite, and any kind of bird of prey, ¹⁴ any kind of raven, ¹⁵ the ostrich, the nighthawk, the seagull, any kind of hawk, ¹⁶ the small owl and the large owl, the water hen, ¹⁷ the desert owl, the carrion vulture, the cormorant, ¹⁸ the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe, and the bat.^[d]

¹⁹ Also, all winged insects are off-limits for you. They are not to be eaten. ²⁰ Any clean winged creature can be eaten, however.

²¹ You must not eat any decayed animal flesh because you are a people holy to the Lord your God. You can give decayed animal flesh to the immigrants who live in your cities, and they can eat it; or you can sell it to foreigners.

Don’t cook a lamb in its own mother’s milk.

Tenth part

²² You must reserve a tenth part of whatever your fields produce each year. ²³ Eat the tenth part of your grain, wine, oil, oldest offspring of your herds and flocks in the presence of the Lord your God in the location he selects for his name to reside so that you learn to fear the Lord your God at all times. ²⁴ But if the trip is too long, because the location the Lord your God has selected to put his name is far away from where you live so that you can’t transport the tenth part—because the Lord your God will certainly bless you— ²⁵ then you can convert it to money. Take the money with you and go to the location the Lord your God selects. ²⁶ Then you can use the money for anything you want: cattle, sheep, wine, beer, or whatever else you might like. Then you should feast there and celebrate in the presence of the Lord your God, along with your entire household. ²⁷ Only make sure not to neglect the Levites who are living in your cities because they don’t have a designated inheritance like you do.

²⁸ Every third year you must bring the tenth part of your produce from that year and leave it at your city gates. ²⁹ Then the Levites, who have no designated inheritance like you do, along with the immigrants, orphans, and widows who live in your cities, will come and feast until they are full. Do this so that the Lord your God might bless you in everything you do.

Year of canceled debts

15 Every seventh year you must cancel all debts. ² This is how the cancellation is to be handled: Creditors will forgive the loans of their fellow Israelites. They won’t demand repayment from their neighbors or their relatives because the Lord’s year of debt cancellation has been announced. ³ You are allowed to demand payment from foreigners, but whatever is owed you from your fellow Israelites you must forgive. ⁴ Of course there won’t be any poor persons among you because the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, ⁵ but only if you carefully obey the Lord your God’s voice, by carefully doing every bit of this commandment that I’m giving you right now. ⁶ Once the Lord your God has blessed you, exactly as he said he would, you will end up lending to many different peoples but won’t need to borrow a thing. You will dominate many different peoples, but they won’t dominate you.

⁷ Now if there are some poor persons among you, say one of your fellow Israelites in one of your cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, don’t be hard-hearted or tightfisted toward your poor fellow Israelites. ⁸ To the contrary! Open your hand wide to them. You must generously lend them whatever they need. ⁹ But watch yourself! Make sure no wicked thought crosses your mind, such as, The seventh year is coming—the year of debt cancellation—so that you resent your poor fellow Israelites and don’t give them anything. If you do that, they will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. ¹⁰ No, give generously to needy persons. Don’t resent giving to them because it is this very thing that will lead to the Lord your God’s blessing you in all you do and work at. ¹¹ Poor persons will never disappear from the earth. That’s why I’m giving you this command: you must open your hand generously to your fellow Israelites, to the needy among you, and to the poor who live with you in your land.

¹² If any of your fellow Hebrews, male or female, sell themselves into your service, they can work for you for six years, but in the seventh year you must set them free from your service. ¹³ Furthermore, when you set them free from your service, you must not let them go empty-handed. ¹⁴ Instead, provide for them fully from your flock, food, and wine. You must give to them from that with which the Lord your God has blessed you. ¹⁵ Remember how each of you was a slave in Egypt and how the Lord your God saved you. That’s why I am commanding you to do this right now. (¹⁶ Now if your male servant says to you: “I don’t want to leave your service” because he loves you and your family and because life is good for him in your service, ¹⁷ then you may take a needle and pierce his ear with it into the doorframe. From that point on, he will be your permanent servant. Do the same thing for female servants.) ¹⁸ Don’t consider it a hardship to set these servants free from your service, because they worked for you for six years—at a value double that of a paid worker. The Lord your God will bless you in everything that you do.

¹⁹ You must devote every oldest male animal from your herds or flocks to the Lord your God. Don’t plow with your oldest male ox and don’t shear your oldest male sheep. ²⁰ Year after year, you and your family are allowed to eat these animals in the presence of the Lord your God, in the location the Lord selects. ²¹ But if there is any defect in it, lameness, blindness, any flaw whatsoever, you must not sacrifice it to the Lord your God. ²² You are allowed to eat those in your own cities, whether you are polluted or purified, just as you would eat gazelle or deer. ²³ Even so, don’t consume any blood. Pour it out on the ground, like water.