Responsibility of Priests and Levites

18 So the Lord said to Aaron, “You and your sons and your fathers’ house with you shall bear iniquity in connection with the sanctuary; and you and your sons with you shall bear iniquity in connection with your priesthood. ² And with you bring your brethren also, the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, that they may join you, and minister to you while you and your sons with you are before the tent of the testimony. ³ They shall attend you and attend to all duties of the tent; but shall not come near to the vessels of the sanctuary or to the altar, lest they, and you, die. ⁴ They shall join you, and attend to the tent of meeting, for all the service of the tent; and no one else shall come near you. ⁵ And you shall attend to the duties of the sanctuary and the duties of the altar, that there be wrath no more upon the people of Israel. ⁶ And behold, I have taken your brethren the Levites from among the people of Israel; they are a gift to you, given to the Lord, to do the service of the tent of meeting. ⁷ And you and your sons with you shall attend to your priesthood for all that concerns the altar and that is within the veil; and you shall serve. I give your priesthood as a gift,^[a] and any one else who comes near shall be put to death.”

The Priests’ Portion

⁸ Then the Lord said to Aaron, “And behold, I have given you whatever is kept of the offerings made to me, all the consecrated things of the people of Israel; I have given them to you as a portion, and to your sons as a perpetual due. ⁹ This shall be yours of the most holy things, reserved from the fire; every offering of theirs, every cereal offering of theirs and every sin offering of theirs and every guilt offering of theirs, which they render to me, shall be most holy to you and to your sons. ¹⁰ In a most holy place shall you eat of it; every male may eat of it; it is holy to you. ¹¹ This also is yours, the offering of their gift, all the wave offerings of the people of Israel; I have given them to you, and to your sons and daughters with you, as a perpetual due; every one who is clean in your house may eat of it. ¹² All the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine and of the grain, the first fruits of what they give to the Lord, I give to you. ¹³ The first ripe fruits of all that is in their land, which they bring to the Lord, shall be yours; every one who is clean in your house may eat of it. ¹⁴ Every devoted thing in Israel shall be yours. ¹⁵ Everything that opens the womb of all flesh, whether man or beast, which they offer to the Lord, shall be yours; nevertheless the first-born of man you shall redeem, and the firstling of unclean beasts you shall redeem. ¹⁶ And their redemption price (at a month old you shall redeem them) you shall fix at five shekels in silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, which is twenty gerahs. ¹⁷ But the firstling of a cow, or the firstling of a sheep, or the firstling of a goat, you shall not redeem; they are holy. You shall sprinkle their blood upon the altar, and shall burn their fat as an offering by fire, a pleasing odor to the Lord; ¹⁸ but their flesh shall be yours, as the breast that is waved and as the right thigh are yours. ¹⁹ All the holy offerings which the people of Israel present to the Lord I give to you, and to your sons and daughters with you, as a perpetual due; it is a covenant of salt for ever before the Lord for you and for your offspring with you.” ²⁰ And the Lord said to Aaron, “You shall have no inheritance in their land, neither shall you have any portion among them; I am your portion and your inheritance among the people of Israel.

²¹ “To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service which they serve, their service in the tent of meeting. ²² And henceforth the people of Israel shall not come near the tent of meeting, lest they bear sin and die. ²³ But the Levites shall do the service of the tent of meeting, and they shall bear their iniquity; it shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations; and among the people of Israel they shall have no inheritance. ²⁴ For the tithe of the people of Israel, which they present as an offering to the Lord, I have given to the Levites for an inheritance; therefore I have said of them that they shall have no inheritance among the people of Israel.”

²⁵ And the Lord said to Moses, ²⁶ “Moreover you shall say to the Levites, ‘When you take from the people of Israel the tithe which I have given you from them for your inheritance, then you shall present an offering from it to the Lord, a tithe of the tithe. ²⁷ And your offering shall be reckoned to you as though it were the grain of the threshing floor, and as the fulness of the wine press. ²⁸ So shall you also present an offering to the Lord from all your tithes, which you receive from the people of Israel; and from it you shall give the Lord’s offering to Aaron the priest. ²⁹ Out of all the gifts to you, you shall present every offering due to the Lord, from all the best of them, giving the hallowed part from them.’ ³⁰ Therefore you shall say to them, ‘When you have offered from it the best of it, then the rest shall be reckoned to the Levites as produce of the threshing floor, and as produce of the wine press; ³¹ and you may eat it in any place, you and your households; for it is your reward in return for your service in the tent of meeting. ³² And you shall bear no sin by reason of it, when you have offered the best of it. And you shall not profane the holy things of the people of Israel, lest you die.’”

Laws concerning the Cities of Refuge

19 “When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God gives you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, ² you shall set apart three cities for you in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess. ³ You shall prepare the roads, and divide into three parts the area of the land which the Lord your God gives you as a possession, so that any manslayer can flee to them.

⁴ “This is the provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life. If any one kills his neighbor unintentionally without having been at enmity with him in time past— ⁵ as when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to one of these cities and save his life; ⁶ lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue the manslayer and overtake him, because the way is long, and wound him mortally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he was not at enmity with his neighbor in time past. ⁷ Therefore I command you, You shall set apart three cities. ⁸ And if the Lord your God enlarges your border, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which he promised to give to your fathers— ⁹ provided you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I command you this day, by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in his ways—then you shall add three other cities to these three, ¹⁰ lest innocent blood be shed in your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed be upon you.

¹¹ “But if any man hates his neighbor, and lies in wait for him, and attacks him, and wounds him mortally so that he dies, and the man flees into one of these cities, ¹² then the elders of his city shall send and fetch him from there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may die. ¹³ Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood^[a] from Israel, so that it may be well with you.

Property Boundaries

¹⁴ “In the inheritance which you will hold in the land that the Lord your God gives you to possess, you shall not remove your neighbor’s landmark, which the men of old have set.

Law concerning Witnesses

¹⁵ “A single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed; only on the evidence of two witnesses, or of three witnesses, shall a charge be sustained. ¹⁶ If a malicious witness rises against any man to accuse him of wrongdoing, ¹⁷ then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days; ¹⁸ the judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, ¹⁹ then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you. ²⁰ And the rest shall hear, and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. ²¹ Your eye shall not pity; it shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Rules of Warfare

20 “When you go forth to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them; for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. ² And when you draw near to the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people, ³ and shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel, you draw near this day to battle against your enemies: let not your heart faint; do not fear, or tremble, or be in dread of them; ⁴ for the Lord your God is he that goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.’ ⁵ Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying, ‘What man is there that has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it. ⁶ And what man is there that has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed its fruit? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man enjoy its fruit. ⁷ And what man is there that has betrothed a wife and has not taken her? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man take her.’ ⁸ And the officers shall speak further to the people, and say, ‘What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go back to his house, lest the heart of his fellows melt as his heart.’ ⁹ And when the officers have made an end of speaking to the people, then commanders shall be appointed at the head of the people.

¹⁰ “When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. ¹¹ And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. ¹² But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; ¹³ and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, ¹⁴ but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. ¹⁵ Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. ¹⁶ But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, ¹⁷ but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Per′izzites, the Hivites and the Jeb′usites, as the Lord your God has commanded; ¹⁸ that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the Lord your God.

¹⁹ “When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them; for you may eat of them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field men that they should be besieged by you? ²⁰ Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down that you may build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.

Praise to God for His Holiness