“Then you replied to me, ‘We have sinned against the Lord; we ourselves will go up and fight, just as the Lord our God commanded us.’ And every man of you strapped on his weapons of war, and you viewed it as easy to go up into the hill country.

“So be very careful yourselves, since you did not see any form on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire,

“Indeed, ask now about the earlier days that were before your time, since the day that God created mankind on the earth, and inquire from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything been done like this great thing, or has anything been heard like it?

“The Lord did not make you His beloved nor choose you because you were greater in number than any of the peoples, since you were the fewest of all peoples,

And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a cast metal image of a calf; you had quickly turned aside from the way that the Lord had commanded you.

Then I fell down before the Lord like the first time, for forty days and nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you had committed by doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger.

And I took your sinful thing which you had made, the calf, and burned it in the fire and crushed it, grinding it thoroughly until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the stream that came down from the mountain.

You have been rebellious toward the Lord since the day I knew you.

Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not turn Your attention to the stubbornness of this people, or to their wickedness, or their sin.

Otherwise, the people of the land from which You brought us will say, “Since the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which He had promised them, and since He hated them, He has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness!”

At that time the Lord singled out the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to serve Him and to bless in His name, until this day.

And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and daughters, your male and female slaves, and the Levite who is within your gates, since he has no portion or inheritance with you.

You shall not eat it, so that it may go well for you and your sons after you, since you will be doing what is right in the sight of the Lord.

But if the distance is so great for you that you are not able to bring the tithe, since the place where the Lord your God chooses to set His name is too far away from you when the Lord your God blesses you,

However, there will be no poor among you, since the Lord will certainly bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess,

Be careful that there is no mean-spirited thought in your heart, such as, ‘The seventh year, the year of release of debts, is near,’ and your eye is malicious toward your poor brother, and you give him nothing; then he may cry out to the Lord against you, and it will be a sin in you.

But it shall come about, if he says to you, ‘I will not leave you,’ because he loves you and your household, since he is doing well with you,

In any case, he is not to acquire many horses for himself, nor shall he make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’

Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue him in the heat of his anger, and overtake him because the way is long, and take his life, though he was not sentenced to death since he had not hated him previously.

“A single witness shall not rise up against a person regarding any wrongdoing or any sin that he commits; on the testimony of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed.

so that they will not teach you to do all the same detestable practices of theirs which they have done for their gods, by which you would sin against the Lord your God.

But it shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; and you certainly shall not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as merchandise, since you have humiliated her.

“Now if a person has committed a sin carrying a sentence of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,

then they shall bring the girl out to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death, because she has committed a disgraceful sin in Israel by playing the prostitute in her father’s house; so you shall eliminate the evil from among you.

And you are not to do anything to the girl; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case.