⁹ “‘When the people of the land come before the Lord at the appointed festivals,^(A) whoever enters by the north gate to worship is to go out the south gate; and whoever enters by the south gate is to go out the north gate. No one is to return through the gate by which they entered, but each is to go out the opposite gate.

¹⁶ Three times a year all your men must appear^(A) before the Lord your God at the place he will choose: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread,^(B) the Festival of Weeks and the Festival of Tabernacles.^(C) No one should appear before the Lord empty-handed:^(D)

²⁰ If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing^(A) our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ^(B) and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.^{(C) 21} It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.^(D)

²³ Three times^(A) a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel.

The Three Annual Festivals

¹⁴ “Three times^(A) a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.

¹⁵ “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread;^(B) for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv,^(C) for in that month you came out of Egypt.

“No one is to appear before me empty-handed.^(D)

¹⁶ “Celebrate the Festival of Harvest^(E) with the firstfruits^(F) of the crops you sow in your field.

“Celebrate the Festival of Ingathering^(G) at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.^(H)

¹⁷ “Three times^(I) a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord.

³⁸ And,

¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind^(A) and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on^(B) toward the goal to win the prize^(C) for which God has called^(D) me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

⁴ “Remember the law^(A) of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb^(B) for all Israel.^(C)