⁸ And Moses quickly bowed his head towards the earth, and worshipped. ⁹ He said, ‘If now I have found favour in your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.’

The Covenant Renewed

¹⁰ He said: I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see the work of the Lord; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

¹¹ Observe what I command you today. See, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ¹² Take care not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, or it will become a snare among you. ¹³ You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles^{[a] 14} (for you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God). ¹⁵ You shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to their gods, someone among them will invite you, and you will eat of the sacrifice. ¹⁶ And you will take wives from among their daughters for your sons, and their daughters who prostitute themselves to their gods will make your sons also prostitute themselves to their gods.

¹⁷ You shall not make cast idols.

¹⁸ You shall keep the festival of unleavened bread. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.

¹⁹ All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male^[b] livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. ²⁰ The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem.

No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

²¹ For six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in ploughing time and in harvest time you shall rest. ²² You shall observe the festival of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the turn of the year. ²³ Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. ²⁴ For I will cast out nations before you, and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year.

²⁵ You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, and the sacrifice of the festival of the passover shall not be left until the morning.

²⁶ The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God.

You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

²⁷ The Lord said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. ²⁸ He was there with the Lord for forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.^[c]

Psalm 15

Who Shall Abide in God’s Sanctuary?

A Psalm of David.

Jesus before Pilate

²⁸ Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters.^[a] It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters,^[b] so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover. ²⁹ So Pilate went out to them and said, ‘What accusation do you bring against this man?’ ³⁰ They answered, ‘If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.’ ³¹ Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law.’ The Jews replied, ‘We are not permitted to put anyone to death.’ ³² (This was to fulfil what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die.)