Three Harvest Festivals

16 “Observe the month of Aviv and keep the Passover to Adonai your God, for in the month of Aviv^[a] Adonai your God brought you out from Egypt by night. ² You are to sacrifice the Passover offering to Adonai your God, from the flock and the herd, in the place Adonai chooses to make His Name dwell. ³ You are not to eat hametz with it. For seven days you are to eat matzot with it, the bread of affliction—for you came out from the land of Egypt in haste. Do this so that all the days of your life you will remember the day when you came out from the land of Egypt. ⁴ No hametz should be seen with you in all your territory for seven days, and none of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day may be left overnight until the morning. ⁵ You may not sacrifice the Passover offering within any of your gates that Adonai your God is giving you. ⁶ Rather, at the place Adonai your God chooses to make His Name dwell, there you will sacrifice the Passover offering in the evening at sunset—the time of your coming out from Egypt. ⁷ You are to cook and eat it at the place Adonai your God chooses, then you will turn around in the morning and journey home. ⁸ For six days you are to eat matzot. On the seventh day there is to be a solemn gathering for Adonai your God—on it you are to do no work.

⁹ Seven weeks you are to count for yourself—from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain you will begin to count seven weeks. ¹⁰ Then you will keep the Feast of Shavuot^[b] to Adonai your God with a measure of a freewill offering from your hand, which you are to give according to how Adonai your God blesses you. ¹¹ So you will rejoice before Adonai your God in the place Adonai your God chooses to make His Name dwell—you, your son and daughter, slave and maid, Levite and outsider, orphan and widow in your midst. ¹² You will remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you are to take care and do these statutes.

¹³ “You are to keep the Feast of Sukkot for seven days,^[c] after gathering in the produce from your threshing floor and winepress.” ¹⁴ So you will rejoice in your feast—you, your son and daughter, slave and maid, Levite and outsider, orphan and widow within your gates. ¹⁵ Seven days you will feast to Adonai your God in the place He chooses, because Adonai your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hand, and you will be completely filled with joy. ¹⁶ Three times a year all your males are to appear before Adonai your God in the place He chooses—at the Feast of Matzot, the Feast of Shavuot, and the Feast of Sukkot. No one should appear before Adonai empty-handed— ¹⁷ the gift of each man’s hand according to the blessing Adonai your God has given you.

Parashat Shoftim

Judges Appointed

¹⁸ “Judges and officers you are to appoint within all your gates that Adonai your God is giving you, according to your tribes; and they are to judge the people with righteous judgment. ¹⁹ You are not to twist justice—you must not show partiality or take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and distorts the words of the righteous. ²⁰ Justice, justice you must pursue, so that you may live and possess the land that Adonai your God is giving you. ²¹ You are not to plant for yourself an Asherah pole of any kind of wood beside the altar of Adonai your God that you make for yourself. ²² Nor are you to set up a pillar for yourself—Adonai your God hates this.

Investigations and Witnesses

17 “You are not to sacrifice to Adonai your God a bull or a sheep that has a defect or anything bad—for that would be an abomination to Adonai your God. ² Suppose there is found in your midst—within one of your gates that Adonai your God is giving you—a man or woman who does what is evil in the eyes of Adonai your God by transgressing His covenant. ³ This person goes and serves other gods and worships them—the sun or moon or any of the heavenly host, which I have not commanded. ⁴ It is told to you and you have heard about it, and you investigate thoroughly and indeed it is true and the thing certain—this abomination has been done in Israel. ⁵ Then you are to bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and stone that man or woman with stones to death. ⁶ By the word of two or three witnesses,^[d] the one who is to die is to be put to death. No one is to be put to death by the word of one witness. ⁷ The hand of the witnesses is to be first to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you are to purge the evil from your midst.

⁸ “Suppose a matter arises that is too hard for you to judge—over bloodshed, legal claims or assault—matters of controversy within your gates. Then you should go up to the place Adonai your God chooses, ⁹ and come to the Levitical kohanim and the judge in charge at that time. And you will inquire, and they will tell you the sentence of judgment. ¹⁰ You are to act according to the sentence they tell you from that place Adonai chooses, and take care to do all that they instruct you. ¹¹ You are to act according to the instruction they teach you and the judgment they tell you—you must not turn aside from the sentence they tell you, to the right or to the left. ¹² The man who acts presumptuously by not listening to the kohen who stands to serve there before Adonai your God, or to the judge, that man must die. So you are to purge the evil from Israel. ¹³ Then all the people will hear and be afraid, and not act presumptuously again.

Torah for Kings

¹⁴ “When you come to the land that Adonai your God is giving you, possess it and dwell in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations around me,’ ¹⁵ you will indeed set over yourselves a king, whom Adonai your God chooses. One from among your brothers will be appointed as king over you—you may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. ¹⁶ Only he should not multiply horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to multiply horses, because Adonai has said to you, “You must never go back that way again.” ¹⁷ Nor should he multiply wives for himself, so that his heart does not turn aside, nor multiply much silver and gold for himself.

¹⁸ “Now when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself a copy of this Torah on a scroll, from what is before the Levitical kohanim. ¹⁹ It will remain with him, and he will read in it all the days of his life, in order to learn to fear Adonai his God and keep all the words of this Torah and these statutes. ²⁰ Then his heart will not be exalted above his brothers, and he will not turn from the commandment to the right or to the left—so that he may prolong his days in his kingship, he and his sons, in the midst of Israel.

⁷ Now Herod the tetrarch heard all that was happening. He was very confused, because some were saying that John had been raised from the dead, ⁸ but others that Elijah had appeared, and others that some prophet from among the ancients had arisen. ⁹ But Herod said, “I beheaded John, but who is this about whom I hear such things?” And he kept trying to see Him.

A Hungry Crowd in a Desolate Place

¹⁰ When the emissaries returned, they described to Yeshua all they had done. Then He took them along and withdrew privately to a city named Bethsaida. ¹¹ But the crowds found out and followed Him. So Yeshua welcomed them and began speaking to them about the kingdom of God and curing those in need of healing.

¹² Now the day began to wind down, and the twelve came and said to Yeshua, “Send the crowd away, so they might go into the nearby villages and countryside and find food and lodging; for we are in a desolate place here.”

¹³ But Yeshua said to them, “You give them something to eat!”

But they said, “We have no more than five loaves of bread and two fish, unless we go to buy food for all these people.” ¹⁴ For there were about five thousand men.

Then Yeshua said to His disciples, “Have the people recline in groups of about fifty each.” ¹⁵ They did so, and all reclined. ¹⁶ And He took the five loaves and the two fish; and looking up to heaven, He offered the bracha and broke them. And He kept giving them to the disciples to set before the crowd. ¹⁷ Then they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of the fragments.

Secrets Revealed to the Disciples Alone

¹⁸ Once when Yeshua was praying alone and His disciples were near, He put a question to them, saying, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”

¹⁹ They replied, “John the Immerser, but others Elijah, and others that some prophet from among the ancients has arisen.”

²⁰ Then He said to them, “But who do you that say I am?”

Then Peter answered and said, “The Messiah of God.”

²¹ But Yeshua warned them, and He ordered them not to tell this to anyone, ²² saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and ruling kohanim and Torah scholars, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

²³ Then Yeshua was saying to everyone, “If anyone wants to follow Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross every day, and follow Me. ²⁴ For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.

²⁵ “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses or forfeits himself? ²⁶ For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and the holy angels. ^{[a] 27} But I tell you truthfully, there are some standing here who will never taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

A Powerful King for the Poor

Psalm 72

²⁰ The prayers of David son of Jesse are complete.