Bible in 90 Days

8 You must carefully perform all of the commandment that I am commanding you right now so you can live and multiply and enter and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors. ² Remember the long road on which the Lord your God led you during these forty years in the desert so he could humble you, testing you to find out what was in your heart: whether you would keep his commandments or not. ³ He humbled you by making you hungry and then feeding you the manna that neither you nor your ancestors had ever experienced, so he could teach you that people don’t live on bread alone. No, they live based on whatever the Lord says.^{[a] 4} During these forty years, your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t swell up. ⁵ Know then in your heart that the Lord your God has been disciplining you just as a father disciplines his children. ⁶ Keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him, ⁷ because the Lord your God is bringing you to a wonderful land, a land with streams of water, springs, and wells that gush up in the valleys and on the hills; ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where you will eat food without any shortage—you won’t lack a thing there—a land where stone is hard as iron and where you will mine copper from the hills. ¹⁰ You will eat, you will be satisfied, and you will bless the Lord your God in the wonderful land that he’s given you.

Against wealth and overconfidence

¹¹ But watch yourself! Don’t forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commands or his case laws or his regulations that I am commanding you right now. ¹² When you eat, get full, build nice houses, and settle down, ¹³ and when your herds and your flocks are growing large, your silver and gold are multiplying, and everything you have is thriving, ¹⁴ don’t become arrogant, forgetting the Lord your God:

¹⁷ Don’t think to yourself, My own strength and abilities have produced all this prosperity for me. ¹⁸ Remember the Lord your God! He’s the one who gives you the strength to be prosperous in order to establish the covenant he made with your ancestors—and that’s how things stand right now. ¹⁹ But if you do, in fact, forget the Lord your God and follow other gods, serving and bowing down to them, I swear to you right now that you will be completely destroyed. ²⁰ Just like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, that’s exactly how you will be destroyed—all because you didn’t obey the Lord your God’s voice.

Against false piety and immodesty

9 Listen, Israel! Today you will cross the Jordan River to enter and take possession of nations larger and more powerful than you, along with huge cities with fortifications that reach to the sky. ² These people are large and tall—they are the Anakim. You know and have heard what people say: “Who can stand up to the Anakim?” ³ Know right now that the Lord your God, who is crossing over before you, is an all-consuming fire! He will wipe them out! He will subdue them before you! Then you will take possession of their land, eliminating them quickly, exactly as the Lord told you.

⁴ Once the Lord your God has driven them out before you, don’t think to yourself, It’s because I’m righteous that the Lord brought me in to possess this land. It is instead because of these nations’ wickedness that the Lord is removing them before you. ⁵ You aren’t entering and taking possession of their land because you are righteous or because your heart is especially virtuous; rather, it is because these nations are wicked—that’s why the Lord your God is removing them before you, and because he wishes to establish the promise he made to your ancestors: to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Gold calf

⁶ Know then that the Lord your God isn’t giving you this excellent land for you to possess on account of your righteousness—because you are a stubborn people! ⁷ Remember—don’t ever forget!—how you made the Lord your God furious in the wilderness. From the very first day you stepped out of Egypt until you arrived at this place, you have been rebels against the Lord. ⁸ Even at Horeb you angered the Lord! He was so enraged by you that he threatened to wipe you out. ⁹ When I went up on the mountain to get the stone tablets, the covenant tablets that the Lord made with you, I was up there forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread, drank no water. ¹⁰ The Lord gave me the two stone tablets, written by God’s finger, and on them were all the words that the Lord had said to you on the mountain, out of the very fire itself, on the day we assembled. ¹¹ At the end of those forty days and nights, the Lord gave me the two stone tablets—the covenant tablets. ¹² Then the Lord said to me, “Get going! Get down from here quickly because your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have ruined everything! They couldn’t wait to turn from the path I commanded them! They’ve made themselves an idol out of cast metal.”

¹³ The Lord said more to me: “I have seen this people. Look! What a stubborn people they are! ¹⁴ Now stand back. I am going to wipe them out. I will erase their name from under heaven, then I will make a nation out of you—one stronger and larger than they were.”

¹⁵ So I went down the mountain while it was blazing with fire. The two covenant tablets were in my two hands. ¹⁶ It was then that I saw how you sinned against the Lord your God: you made yourselves a calf, an idol made of cast metal! You couldn’t wait to turn from the path the Lord commanded you! ¹⁷ I grabbed the two tablets and threw them down with my own hands, shattering them while you watched. ¹⁸ Then I fell before the Lord as I had done the previous forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water, all because of the sin that you had committed by doing such evil in the Lord’s sight, infuriating him. ¹⁹ I was afraid of the massive anger and rage the Lord had for you—he was going to wipe you out! However, the Lord listened to me again in that moment.

²⁰ But the Lord was furious with Aaron—he was going to wipe him out! So I also prayed hard for Aaron at that time. ²¹ And as for that sinful thing you made, that calf, I took it and I burned it with fire. Then I smashed it, grinding it thoroughly until it was as fine as dust. Then I dumped the dust into the stream that ran down the mountain.

²² Also at Taberah, again at Massah, and then again at Kibroth-hattaavah, you have been the kind of people who make the Lord angry. ²³ And then, when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, telling you: “Go up and take possession of the land that I’m giving you,” you disobeyed the Lord your God’s command. You didn’t trust him. You didn’t obey God’s voice. ²⁴ You’ve been rebellious toward the Lord from the day I^[b] met you.

Moses’ intercessory prayer

²⁵ But I fell on my knees in the Lord’s presence forty days and forty nights, lying flat out, because the Lord planned on wiping you out. ²⁶ But I prayed to the Lord! I said: Lord, my Lord! Don’t destroy your people, your own possession, whom you saved by your own power, whom you brought out of Egypt with a strong hand! ²⁷ Remember your servants: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! Don’t focus on this people’s stubbornness, wickedness, and sin. ²⁸ Otherwise, that land out of which you brought us will say: The Lord wasn’t strong enough to bring them into the land he’d promised them. Because he didn’t care for them in the least, he brought them out to die in the desert. ²⁹ But these are your people! Your own possession! The people you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm!

New tablets

10 At that time the Lord told me: Carve two stone tablets, just like the first ones, and hike up the mountain to me. Construct a wooden chest as well. ² I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets—the ones you smashed—then you will place them in the chest.

³ So I built a chest out of acacia wood and carved two stone tablets just like the first ones. Then I hiked up the mountain holding the two tablets in my hands. ⁴ God wrote on the new tablets what had been written on the first set: the Ten Commandments that the Lord spoke to you on the mountain, from the very fire itself, on the day we assembled there. Then the Lord gave them to me.

⁵ So I came back down the mountain. I put the tablets in the chest that I’d made, and that’s where they are now, exactly as the Lord commanded me.

(⁶ Now, the Israelites had set out from Beeroth-bene-jaakan^[c] to Moserah. It was there that Aaron died and was buried. His son Eleazar succeeded him in the priestly role. ⁷ From there the Israelites traveled to Gudgodah, then from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, which is a land with flowing streams. ⁸ At that time, the Lord selected the tribe of Levi to carry the chest containing the Lord’s covenant, to minister before the Lord, to serve him, and to offer blessings in his name. That’s the way things are right now. ⁹ That’s why the Levites don’t have a stake or inheritance with the rest of their relatives. The Lord is the Levites’ inheritance, just as the Lord your God promised them.)

¹⁰ Just as the first time, I remained on the mountain forty days and nights. And the Lord listened to me again in this instance. The Lord wasn’t willing to destroy you. ¹¹ Then the Lord told me: Get going. Lead the people so they can enter and take possession of the land that I promised I’d give to their ancestors.

What the Lord requires

¹² Now in light of all that, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God by walking in all his ways, by loving him, by serving the Lord your God with all your heart and being, ¹³ and by keeping the Lord’s commandments and his regulations that I’m commanding you right now. It’s for your own good!

¹⁴ Clearly, the Lord owns the sky, the highest heavens, the earth, and everything in it. ¹⁵ But the Lord adored your ancestors, loving them and choosing the descendants that followed them—you!—from all other people. That’s how things still stand now. ¹⁶ So circumcise your hearts^[d] and stop being so stubborn, ¹⁷ because the Lord your God is the God of all gods and Lord of all lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who doesn’t play favorites and doesn’t take bribes. ¹⁸ He enacts justice for orphans and widows, and he loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing. ¹⁹ That means you must also love immigrants because you were immigrants in Egypt. ²⁰ Revere the Lord your God, serve him, cling to him, swear by his name alone! ²¹ He is your praise, and he is your God—the one who performed these great and awesome acts that you witnessed with your very own eyes. ²² Your ancestors went down to Egypt with a total of seventy people, but now look! The Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the nighttime sky!

11 So love the Lord your God and follow his instruction, his regulations, his case laws, and his commandments always. ² And know right now what your children haven’t known or yet witnessed:^[e]

⁷ Your own eyes witnessed each of these powerful acts the Lord performed. ⁸ So keep every part of the commandment that I am giving you today so that you stay strong to enter and take possession of the land that you are crossing over to possess, ⁹ and so that you might prolong your life on the fertile land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants—a land full of milk and honey.

¹⁰ The land you are about to enter and possess is definitely not like the land of Egypt, where you came from, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it by hand^[g] like a vegetable garden. ¹¹ No, the land you are entering to possess is a land of hills and valleys, where your drinking water will be rain from heaven. ¹² It’s a land that the Lord cares for: the Lord’s eyes are on it constantly from the first of the year until the very end of the year.

¹³ Now, if you completely obey God’s^[h] commandments that I am giving you right now, by loving the Lord your God and by serving him with all your heart and all your being, ¹⁴ then he^[i] will provide rain for your land at the right time—early rain and late rain—so you can stock up your grain, wine, and oil. ¹⁵ He^[j] will also make your fields lush for your livestock, and you will eat and be satisfied. ¹⁶ But watch yourselves! Otherwise, your heart might be led astray so you stray away, serving other gods and worshipping them. ¹⁷ Then the Lord’s anger would burn against you. He will close the sky up tight. There won’t be any rain, and the ground won’t yield any of its crops. You will quickly disappear off the wonderful land the Lord is giving to you.

¹⁸ Place these words I’m speaking on your heart and in your very being. Tie them on your hand as a sign. They should be on your forehead as a symbol.^{[k] 19} Teach them to your children, by talking about them when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up. ²⁰ Write them on your house’s doorframes and on your city’s gates. ²¹ Do all that so your days and your children’s days on the fertile land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors are many—indeed, as many as the number of days that the sky’s been over the earth!

²² It’s true: if you carefully keep all this commandment that I’m giving you, by doing it, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in all his ways, and by clinging to him, ²³ then the Lord will clear out all these nations before you. You will inherit what belonged to nations that are larger and stronger than you are. ²⁴ Every place you set foot on will be yours: your territory will run from the wilderness all the way to the Lebanon range, and from the Euphrates River all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. ²⁵ No one will be able to stand up to you. Just as he promised, the Lord your God will make the entire land deathly afraid of you wherever you advance in it.

Ceremony on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal

²⁶ Pay attention! I am setting blessing and curse before you right now: ²⁷ the blessing if you obey the Lord your God’s commandments that I am giving you right now, ²⁸ but the curse if you don’t obey the Lord your God’s commandments and stray from the path that I am giving you today by following other gods that you have not known. ²⁹ Now when the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of, put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. (³⁰ Aren’t both of these mountains across the Jordan River, down along the western road in the region of the Canaanites who live in the desert plain, across from Gilgal, next to the Moreh Oak Grove?)

³¹ So then, once you cross the Jordan River to enter and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you take possession of it, settling down in it, ³² you must carefully follow the regulations and the case laws that I am laying out before you right now.

Regulations and the case laws:

Worship at the location the Lord selects

12 These are the regulations and the case laws that you must carefully keep in the fertile land the Lord, your ancestors’ God, has given to you to possess for as long as you live on that land:

² You must completely destroy every place where the nations that you are displacing worshipped their gods—whether on high mountains or hills or under leafy green trees. ³ Rip down their altars and shatter their sacred stones. Burn their sacred poles^[l] with fire. Hack their gods’ idols into pieces. Wipe out their names from that place.

⁴ Don’t act like they did toward the Lord your God!

⁵ Instead, you must search for the location the Lord your God will select from all your tribes to put his name there, as his residence, and you must go there. ⁶ You must bring your entirely burned offerings, your sacrifices, your tenth-part gifts, your contributions,^[m] your payments for solemn promises, your spontaneous gifts, and the oldest offspring of your herds and flocks to that place. ⁷ You will have a feast there, each of you and your families, in the Lord your God’s presence, and you will celebrate all you have done because the Lord your God has blessed you. ⁸ Don’t act like we’ve been acting here lately—everyone doing what seems right to them— ⁹ because up to this point you haven’t yet reached the place of rest or the inheritance the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁰ But you are about to cross the Jordan River and will settle in the land the Lord your God is giving you as your inheritance. Then he will give you rest from all your enemies on every side so that you live safely and securely. ¹¹ At that point, you must bring all that I am commanding you, your entirely burned offerings, your sacrifices, your tenth-part gifts, your contributions, and all your best payments that you solemnly promised to the Lord, to the location the Lord your God selects for his name to reside. ¹² Then you will rejoice in the Lord your God’s presence: each of you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites who dwell in your cities because they have no designated inheritance.

¹³ But watch yourself! Make sure you don’t offer up your entirely burned offerings in just any place you see. ¹⁴ No, only at the location the Lord selects from one of your tribal areas—that’s where you must offer up your entirely burned offerings and that’s where you must perform everything I’m telling you. ¹⁵ However, whenever you wish, you may slaughter and eat meat, as the Lord your God sees fit to bless you with such in your cities. People who are polluted and people who are purified can join in the feast, as they would if they were eating gazelle or deer. ¹⁶ But you must not consume any of the animals’ blood. Pour it out on the ground, just like water.

¹⁷ Within your cities you are not allowed to eat any of the following: your tenth-part gifts of grain, wine, and oil; the oldest offspring of your herds and flocks; any of the payments you have solemnly promised; your spontaneous gifts or your contributions. ¹⁸ Only in the presence of the Lord your God, at the location the Lord your God selects, can you eat these things—that holds true for you, your son and daughter, your male and female servant, and the Levite who lives in your city. Then celebrate all you have done in the Lord your God’s presence. ¹⁹ But watch yourself: as long as you are on the land, don’t forget about the Levites.

²⁰ Once the Lord your God has enlarged your territory, as he promised you, and you think to yourself, I’d like to eat some meat (because you have the desire to do so), feel free to do so whenever you want. ²¹ But if the location that the Lord your God will choose to put his name is far away from where you live, then slaughter an animal from your herd or flock that the Lord has given you, just as I have commanded you, and eat it in your cities whenever you wish. ²² But be sure to eat it as if it were gazelle or deer. People who are polluted and people who are purified can feast on it together.

²³ Furthermore, make sure that you don’t consume any of the blood, because blood is life. You must not consume the life along with the meat. ²⁴ You must not consume any of it. Pour it out on the ground, just like water. ²⁵ You must not consume any of it so that things go well for you and for your children later because you did what was right in the Lord’s eyes.

²⁶ Note that you must bring your sacred offerings and your payments for solemn promises to the location the Lord selects, ²⁷ offering up your entirely burned sacrifices—both meat and blood—on the Lord your God’s altar. The blood from your sacrifices must be poured out on the Lord your God’s altar, but you are allowed to eat the meat. ²⁸ Observe and obey all these words that I am commanding you so that things always go well for you and your children later because you did what was good and right in the Lord your God’s eyes.

²⁹ Once the Lord your God has removed from before you all the nations that you are entering and taking possession of, and you have displaced them and are living in their land, ³⁰ then watch yourself! Don’t be trapped by following their practices after they’ve been wiped out before you. Don’t go investigating their gods, thinking, How did these nations worship their gods? I want to do the very same thing!

³¹ Don’t act like they did toward the Lord your God because they did things for their gods that are detestable to the Lord, which he hates. They even burned their own sons and daughters with fire for their gods!

^32 [n] Everything I’m commanding you, you must do it with utmost care! Don’t add anything to it or take anything away from it.

False prophets and false gods

13 ^[o] Now if a prophet or a dream interpreter appears among you and performs a sign or wonder for you, ² and the sign or wonder that was spoken actually occurs; if he says: “Come on! We should follow other gods”—ones you haven’t experienced—“and we should worship them,” ³ you must not listen to that prophet’s or dream interpreter’s words, because the Lord your God is testing you to see if you love the Lord your God with all your mind and all your being. ⁴ You must follow the Lord your God alone! Revere him! Follow his commandments! Obey his voice! Worship him! Cling to him—no other! ⁵ That prophet or dream interpreter must be executed because he encouraged you to turn away from the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, who redeemed you from the house of slavery; they tried to lead you away from the path the Lord your God commanded you to take. Remove^[p] such evil from your community!

⁶ Similarly, if one of your relatives—even one of your own siblings—or your own son or daughter or your dear spouse or best friend entices you secretly, if someone like that says: “Come on! We should follow and worship other gods”—ones that neither you nor your ancestors have experienced, ⁷ gods from all the neighboring peoples, whether nearby or far away, from one end of the earth to the other— ⁸ don’t give in to them! Don’t obey them! Don’t have any mercy on them! Don’t have compassion on them and don’t protect them! ⁹ Instead, you must execute them. Your own hand must be against them from the beginning of the execution; the hand of all the people will be involved at the end. ¹⁰ Stone them until they are dead because they desired to lead you away from the Lord your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ¹¹ All Israel will hear about this and be afraid. They won’t do that sort of evil thing among you again.

¹² Or if you hear about one of your towns the Lord your God is giving you to inhabit, that ¹³ certain wicked people have gone out from your community and they’ve led the citizens of their town astray by saying: “Come on! We should follow and worship other gods”—ones you haven’t experienced before; ¹⁴ at that point you must look into this situation very carefully to see if it’s true. And if it’s definitely true that this detestable thing was done in your community, ¹⁵ you must completely strike down the inhabitants of that city with the sword. Place it and all that is in it under the ban.^[q] Put its animals to the sword. ¹⁶ Gather all the plunder into the middle of the town’s square. Then burn the city and all of its plunder as an entirely burned offering to the Lord your God. It must remain a heap of rubble forever. It must not be rebuilt. ¹⁷ Don’t hold on to any of the banned items—this will ensure that the Lord turns from his great anger and is compassionate to you, showing you mercy and multiplying you just like he swore to your ancestors. ¹⁸ You must definitely obey the Lord your God’s voice, keeping all his commandments that I am giving you right now, by doing what is right in the Lord your God’s eyes!

Complete devotion to the Lord

14 You are the Lord’s children. Don’t cut yourselves and don’t shave your foreheads for the dead, ² because you are a people holy to the Lord your God. You are the ones whom the Lord selected to be his own, to be a treasured people out of all other people on earth.

Dietary laws

³ Don’t eat any detestable thing. ⁴ Here’s a list of animals you are allowed to eat: ox, sheep, goat, ⁵ deer, gazelle, roebuck, wild goat, ibex, antelope, and mountain sheep. ⁶ You are also allowed to eat any animal with a divided hoof—the hoof being divided into two parts—and that rechews food among the various kinds of animals. ⁷ However, here’s a list of animals that either rechew food or have hooves divided in two parts that you are not allowed to eat:

⁹ Here’s a list of the water animals you are allowed to eat: you can eat anything that has fins and scales. ¹⁰ But you aren’t allowed to eat anything that lacks scales or fins. These are off-limits for you.

¹¹ You are allowed to eat any clean bird. ¹² Here’s a list of those you are not allowed to eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, ¹³ the red kite, the black kite, and any kind of bird of prey, ¹⁴ any kind of raven, ¹⁵ the ostrich, the nighthawk, the seagull, any kind of hawk, ¹⁶ the small owl and the large owl, the water hen, ¹⁷ the desert owl, the carrion vulture, the cormorant, ¹⁸ the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe, and the bat.^[r]

¹⁹ Also, all winged insects are off-limits for you. They are not to be eaten. ²⁰ Any clean winged creature can be eaten, however.

²¹ You must not eat any decayed animal flesh because you are a people holy to the Lord your God. You can give decayed animal flesh to the immigrants who live in your cities, and they can eat it; or you can sell it to foreigners.

Don’t cook a lamb in its own mother’s milk.

Tenth part

²² You must reserve a tenth part of whatever your fields produce each year. ²³ Eat the tenth part of your grain, wine, oil, oldest offspring of your herds and flocks in the presence of the Lord your God in the location he selects for his name to reside so that you learn to fear the Lord your God at all times. ²⁴ But if the trip is too long, because the location the Lord your God has selected to put his name is far away from where you live so that you can’t transport the tenth part—because the Lord your God will certainly bless you— ²⁵ then you can convert it to money. Take the money with you and go to the location the Lord your God selects. ²⁶ Then you can use the money for anything you want: cattle, sheep, wine, beer, or whatever else you might like. Then you should feast there and celebrate in the presence of the Lord your God, along with your entire household. ²⁷ Only make sure not to neglect the Levites who are living in your cities because they don’t have a designated inheritance like you do.

²⁸ Every third year you must bring the tenth part of your produce from that year and leave it at your city gates. ²⁹ Then the Levites, who have no designated inheritance like you do, along with the immigrants, orphans, and widows who live in your cities, will come and feast until they are full. Do this so that the Lord your God might bless you in everything you do.

Year of canceled debts

15 Every seventh year you must cancel all debts. ² This is how the cancellation is to be handled: Creditors will forgive the loans of their fellow Israelites. They won’t demand repayment from their neighbors or their relatives because the Lord’s year of debt cancellation has been announced. ³ You are allowed to demand payment from foreigners, but whatever is owed you from your fellow Israelites you must forgive. ⁴ Of course there won’t be any poor persons among you because the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, ⁵ but only if you carefully obey the Lord your God’s voice, by carefully doing every bit of this commandment that I’m giving you right now. ⁶ Once the Lord your God has blessed you, exactly as he said he would, you will end up lending to many different peoples but won’t need to borrow a thing. You will dominate many different peoples, but they won’t dominate you.

⁷ Now if there are some poor persons among you, say one of your fellow Israelites in one of your cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, don’t be hard-hearted or tightfisted toward your poor fellow Israelites. ⁸ To the contrary! Open your hand wide to them. You must generously lend them whatever they need. ⁹ But watch yourself! Make sure no wicked thought crosses your mind, such as, The seventh year is coming—the year of debt cancellation—so that you resent your poor fellow Israelites and don’t give them anything. If you do that, they will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. ¹⁰ No, give generously to needy persons. Don’t resent giving to them because it is this very thing that will lead to the Lord your God’s blessing you in all you do and work at. ¹¹ Poor persons will never disappear from the earth. That’s why I’m giving you this command: you must open your hand generously to your fellow Israelites, to the needy among you, and to the poor who live with you in your land.

¹² If any of your fellow Hebrews, male or female, sell themselves into your service, they can work for you for six years, but in the seventh year you must set them free from your service. ¹³ Furthermore, when you set them free from your service, you must not let them go empty-handed. ¹⁴ Instead, provide for them fully from your flock, food, and wine. You must give to them from that with which the Lord your God has blessed you. ¹⁵ Remember how each of you was a slave in Egypt and how the Lord your God saved you. That’s why I am commanding you to do this right now. (¹⁶ Now if your male servant says to you: “I don’t want to leave your service” because he loves you and your family and because life is good for him in your service, ¹⁷ then you may take a needle and pierce his ear with it into the doorframe. From that point on, he will be your permanent servant. Do the same thing for female servants.) ¹⁸ Don’t consider it a hardship to set these servants free from your service, because they worked for you for six years—at a value double that of a paid worker. The Lord your God will bless you in everything that you do.

¹⁹ You must devote every oldest male animal from your herds or flocks to the Lord your God. Don’t plow with your oldest male ox and don’t shear your oldest male sheep. ²⁰ Year after year, you and your family are allowed to eat these animals in the presence of the Lord your God, in the location the Lord selects. ²¹ But if there is any defect in it, lameness, blindness, any flaw whatsoever, you must not sacrifice it to the Lord your God. ²² You are allowed to eat those in your own cities, whether you are polluted or purified, just as you would eat gazelle or deer. ²³ Even so, don’t consume any blood. Pour it out on the ground, like water.

Passover celebration

16 Wait for the month of Abib,^[s] at which time you must perform the Passover for the Lord your God, because the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt at nighttime during the month of Abib. ² Offer a Passover sacrifice from the flock or herd to the Lord your God at the location the Lord selects for his name to reside. ³ You must not eat anything containing yeast along with it.^[t] Instead, for seven days you must eat unleavened bread, bread symbolizing misery, along with it because you fled Egypt in a great hurry. Do this so you remember the day you fled Egypt for as long as you live. ⁴ No dough with yeast should appear in any of your territory for seven days. Furthermore, none of the meat that you sacrificed on the first night should remain until morning. ⁵ You are not permitted to offer the Passover sacrifice in any of the cities that the Lord your God is giving you. ⁶ Instead, you must offer the Passover sacrifice at the location the Lord your God selects for his name to reside, at evening time, when the sun sets, which was the time you fled Egypt. ⁷ Cook it and eat it in the location that the Lord your God selects. The next morning you can return to your tents. ⁸ For six days you will eat unleavened bread. The seventh day will be a celebration for the Lord your God. Don’t do any work.

Festival of Weeks

⁹ Count out seven weeks, starting the count from the beginning of the grain harvest. ¹⁰ At that point, perform the Festival of Weeks for the Lord your God. Offer a spontaneous gift in precise measure with the blessing the Lord your God gives you. ¹¹ Then celebrate in the presence of the Lord your God—you, your sons, your daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites who live in your cities, the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows who are among you—in the location the Lord your God selects for his name to reside. ¹² Remember how each of you was a slave in Egypt, so follow these regulations most carefully.

Festival of Booths

¹³ Once you have collected the food and drink you need, perform the Festival of Booths for seven days. ¹⁴ Celebrate your festival: you, your sons, your daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites, the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows who live in your cities. ¹⁵ Seven days you must perform the festival for the Lord your God in the location the Lord selects because the Lord your God will bless you in all you do and in all your work. You will be overjoyed.

¹⁶ Three times a year every male among you must appear before the presence of the Lord your God in the location he will select: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Booths. They must not appear before the Lord’s presence empty-handed. ¹⁷ Each one should have his gift in hand, in precise measure with the blessing the Lord your God gives you.

Judges and officials

¹⁸ Appoint judges and officials for each of your tribes in every city that the Lord your God gives you. They must judge the people fairly. ¹⁹ Don’t delay justice; don’t show favoritism. Don’t take bribes because bribery blinds the vision of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. ²⁰ Righteousness! Pursue righteousness so that you live long and take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Rules for worship

²¹ Don’t plant any tree to serve as a sacred pole^[u] next to the altar you make for the Lord your God. ²² Don’t set up any sacred stone either, because the Lord your God hates such things.

17 Don’t sacrifice to the Lord your God any oxen or sheep that have defects of any kind, because that is detestable to the Lord your God.

Capital punishment

² If someone, whether male or female, is found in your community—in one of the cities the Lord your God is giving you—who does evil in the Lord your God’s eyes, by breaking God’s covenant, ³ by following and serving other gods, and by bowing down to them, to the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly bodies that I haven’t permitted— ⁴ and you hear news about it, then you must look into this situation very carefully. And if it’s definitely true that this detestable thing was done in Israel, ⁵ then you must bring out the man or woman who has done this evil thing to the gates of the city. Stone that person until he or she is dead.

⁶ Capital punishment must be decided by two or three witnesses. No one may be executed on the basis of only one testimony. ⁷ In the execution, the hands of the witnesses must be against the guilty person from the start; the hand of all the people will be involved at the end. Remove^[v] such evil from your community!

Legal disputes

⁸ If some legal dispute in your cities is too difficult for you to decide—say, between different kinds of bloodshed, different kinds of legal ruling, or different kinds of injury—then take it to the location the Lord your God selects. ⁹ Go to the levitical priests and to the head judge in office at that time and look into things there. They will announce to you the correct ruling. ¹⁰ You must then act according to the ruling they announced to you from that location, the one the Lord selects. You must follow very carefully everything they instruct you to do. ¹¹ Act precisely according to the instruction they give you and the ruling they announce to you. Don’t deviate even a bit from the word they announce. ¹² And whoever acts rashly by not listening to the priest who is in office serving the Lord your God or to the head judge will die. Remove^[w] such evil from Israel! ¹³ All the people will hear about this and be afraid. They won’t act arrogantly anymore.

Law of the king

¹⁴ Once you have entered the land the Lord your God is giving you and you have taken possession of it and settled down in it, you might say: “Let’s appoint a king over us, as all our neighboring nations have done.” ¹⁵ You can indeed appoint over you a king that the Lord your God selects. You can appoint over you a king who is one of your fellow Israelites. You are not allowed to appoint over you a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites. ¹⁶ That granted, the king must not acquire too many horses, and he must not return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, because the Lord told you: “You will never go back by that road again.” ¹⁷ The king must not take numerous wives so that his heart doesn’t go astray. Nor can the king acquire too much silver and gold. ¹⁸ Instead, when he sits on his royal throne, he himself must write a copy of this Instruction on a scroll in the presence of the levitical priests. ¹⁹ That Instruction must remain with him, and he must read in it every day of his life so that he learns to revere the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this Instruction and these regulations, by doing them, ²⁰ by not being overbearing toward his fellow Israelites, and by not deviating even a bit from the commandment. If the king does all that, he will ensure lasting rule in Israel for himself and for his successors.

Priests and Levites

18 Neither the levitical priests nor any Levite tribe member will have a designated inheritance in Israel. They can eat the sacrifices offered to the Lord, which are the Lord’s portion,^{[x] 2} but they won’t share an inheritance with their fellow Israelites. The Lord alone is the Levites’ inheritance—just as God promised them.

³ Now this is what the priests may keep from the people’s sacrifices of oxen or sheep: They must give the priest the shoulder, the jaws, and the stomach. ⁴ You must also give the priest the first portions of your grain, wine, and oil, and the first of your sheep’s shearing ⁵ because the Lord your God selected Levi from all of your tribes to stand and minister in the Lord’s name—both him and his descendants for all time.

⁶ Now if a Levite leaves one of your cities or departs from any location in Israel where he’s been living and, because he wants to, comes to the location the Lord selects ⁷ and ministers in the Lord his God’s name, just like his relatives—the other Levites serving there in the Lord’s presence— ⁸ he is allowed to eat equal portions, despite the finances he has from his family.^[y]

Communicating with God

⁹ Once you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you, don’t try to imitate the detestable things those nations do. ¹⁰ There must not be anyone among you who passes his son or daughter through fire; who practices divination, is a sign reader, fortune-teller, sorcerer, ¹¹ or spell caster; who converses with ghosts or spirits or communicates with the dead. ¹² All who do these things are detestable to the Lord! It is on account of these detestable practices that the Lord your God is driving these nations^[z] out before you.

¹³ Instead, you must be perfect before the Lord your God. ¹⁴ These nations you are displacing listened to sign readers and diviners, but the Lord your God doesn’t permit you to do the same! ¹⁵ The Lord your God will raise up a prophet like me from your community, from your fellow Israelites. He’s the one you must listen to. ¹⁶ That’s exactly what you requested from the Lord your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, when you said, “I can’t listen to the Lord my God’s voice anymore or look at this great fire any longer. I don’t want to die!”

¹⁷ The Lord said to me: What they’ve said is right. ¹⁸ I’ll raise up a prophet for them from among their fellow Israelites—one just like you. I’ll put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. ¹⁹ I myself will hold accountable anyone who doesn’t listen to my words, which that prophet will speak in my name. ²⁰ However, any prophet who arrogantly speaks a word in my name that I haven’t commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods—that prophet must die.

²¹ Now, you might be wondering, How will we know which word God hasn’t spoken? ²² Here’s the answer: The prophet who speaks in the Lord’s name and the thing doesn’t happen or come about—that’s the word the Lord hasn’t spoken. That prophet spoke arrogantly. Don’t be afraid of him.^[aa]

Cities of refuge

19 Once the Lord your God has eliminated those nations—whose land the Lord your God is giving you—and you displace them, settling into their cities and their houses, ² you must designate three cities for your use in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess. ³ Mark out the roads to them^[ab] and divide the regions of the land the Lord your God is apportioning to you into three parts. These cities are the places to which a person who has killed can escape. ⁴ Here is the rule concerning a person who killed someone and is permitted to escape to one of these cities and live:

If it is someone who killed his neighbor accidentally, without having hated that person previously; ⁵ or if someone goes into the forest with a neighbor to chop some wood, and while swinging an ax to cut down the tree, the axhead flies off its handle and hits the neighbor, who subsequently dies—these kinds of killers may escape to one of these cities and live. ⁶ Otherwise, the blood avenger will chase after the killer out of rage and—especially if the distance to one of these cities^[ac] is too far—might catch and kill him, even though a death sentence was not in order because the killer didn’t have prior malice toward the other. ⁷ This is why I am commanding you as follows: Designate three cities for your use.

⁸ Now if the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he swore to your ancestors—and he will give you all the land he swore to give to them ⁹ as long as you keep all this commandment that I am giving you right now by doing it, by loving the Lord your God, and by always walking in his ways—you can add three more cities for your use along with the first three. ¹⁰ Innocent blood must not be spilled in the land the Lord your God is giving to you as an inheritance, or it will be bloodshed that will be required of you.

¹¹ But if someone does hate a neighbor and ambushes him, rising up against him and attacking him so he dies, and then escapes to one of these cities, ¹² elders from the killer’s hometown will send word, and the killer will be sent back from there. They will then hand him over to the blood avenger, and he will be executed. ¹³ Show no mercy to such killers. Remove^[ad] innocent bloodshed from Israel so that things go well for you.

Property laws

¹⁴ Now in the land the Lord your God is giving you, in your allotted property that you will receive there, you must not tamper with your neighbor’s property line, which has been previously established.

Rules for testimony

¹⁵ A solitary witness against someone in any crime, wrongdoing, or in any sort of misdeed that might be done is not sufficient. The decision must stand by two or three witnesses. ¹⁶ Now if a spiteful witness comes forward against someone, so as to testify against them falsely, ¹⁷ the two persons who have a legal suit must stand before the Lord, before the priests, and before the judges that are in office at that time. ¹⁸ The judges will look into the situation very carefully. If it turns out that the witness is a liar—that the witness has given false testimony against his fellow Israelite— ¹⁹ then you must do to him what he had planned to do to his fellow Israelite. Remove^[ae] such evil from your community! ²⁰ The rest of the people will hear about this and be afraid. They won’t do that sort of evil thing among you again. ²¹ Show no mercy on this point: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Rules for warfare

20 When you march out to battle your enemies and you see horses, chariots, and a fighting force larger than yours, don’t be afraid of them, because the Lord your God, the one who brought you up from Egypt, is with you. ² As you advance toward the war, the priest will come forward and will address the troops. ³ He will say to them: “Listen, Israel: Right now you are advancing to wage war against your enemies. Don’t be discouraged! Don’t be afraid! Don’t panic! Don’t shake in fear on account of them, ⁴ because the Lord your God is going with you to fight your enemies for you and to save you.”

⁵ The officials will also say to the troops: “Is there anyone here who has just built a new house but hasn’t yet dedicated it? He can leave and go back to his house; otherwise, he might die in the war and someone else would dedicate the house. ⁶ Or is there anyone here who has planted a vineyard but hasn’t yet put it to good use? He can leave and go back to his house; otherwise, he might die in the battle and someone else would use the vineyard. ⁷ Or is there anyone here who is engaged but not yet married? He may leave and go back to his house; otherwise, he might die in the battle and someone else would marry his fiancée.”

⁸ The officials will continue to address the troops, stating: “Is there anyone here who is afraid and discouraged? He can leave and go back to his house; otherwise, his comrades might lose courage just as he has.” ⁹ Once the officials have completed their speech to the troops, the army commanders will assume leadership of the forces.

¹⁰ When you approach a city to fight against it, you should first extend peaceful terms to it. ¹¹ If the city responds with peaceful terms and surrenders to you, then all the people in the city will serve you as forced laborers. ¹² However, if the city does not negotiate peacefully with you but makes war against you, you may attack it. ¹³ The Lord your God will hand it over to you; you must kill all the city’s males with the sword. ¹⁴ However, you can take for yourselves the women, the children, the animals, and all that is in the city—all its plunder. You can then enjoy your enemies’ plunder, which the Lord your God has given you.

¹⁵ That’s what you must do to all the cities that are located far away from you—specifically, those cities that don’t belong to these nations here. ¹⁶ But in the case of any of the cities of these peoples—the ones the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance—you must not spare any living thing. ¹⁷ Instead, you must place these under the ban:^[af] Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—just as the Lord your God commanded you. ¹⁸ Then they can’t teach you to do all the detestable things they did for their gods, with the result that you end up sinning against the Lord your God.

¹⁹ Now if you have been attacking a city for some time, fighting against it and trying to conquer it, don’t destroy its trees by cutting them down with axes. You can eat from those trees; don’t cut them down! Do you think a tree of the field is some sort of warrior to be attacked by you in battle? ²⁰ That said, if you know that a tree is not a food-producing tree, you are allowed to destroy it, cutting it down and using it in the siege against the city that is fighting against you until it falls.

Unsolved homicides

21 If a corpse is found on the ground the Lord your God is giving you to possess, lying in a field, and the identity of the killer is unknown, ² your elders and judges must come out and measure the distances to the cities nearest the body. ³ Once it is determined which city is closest to the dead body, its elders must take a young cow that hasn’t been used or yet pulled a plow, ⁴ and those elders will take the cow down to a ravine with a flowing stream—one that has not been plowed or planted—and they will break the cow’s neck right there in the river valley. ⁵ Then the priests, the descendants of Levi, will step forward because the Lord your God selected them to minister for him and to bless in the Lord’s name, and because every legal dispute and case of assault is decided by them. ⁶ All the elders of the city closest to the corpse will wash their hands over the cow whose neck was broken in the river valley. ⁷ They will then solemnly state: “Our hands did not shed this blood. Our eyes did not see it happen. ⁸ Lord, please forgive your people Israel, whom you saved. Don’t put the guilt of innocent bloodshed on your people Israel.”

Then the bloodguilt will be forgiven them.

⁹ But you must remove^[ag] innocent bloodshed from your community; do only what is right in the Lord’s eyes.

Foreign wives

¹⁰ When you wage war against your enemies and the Lord hands them over to you and you take prisoners, ¹¹ if you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you fall in love with her and take her as your wife, ¹² bringing her into your home, she must shave her head, cut her nails, ¹³ remove her prisoner’s clothing, and live in your house, mourning her father and her mother for one month. After that, you may consummate the marriage. You will be her husband, and she will be your wife. ¹⁴ But if you aren’t pleased with her, you must send her away as she wishes. You are not allowed to sell her for money or treat her as a slave because you have humiliated her.

Right of the oldest son

¹⁵ Now suppose a man has two wives—one of them loved and the other unloved. Both wives bear children, but the oldest male is the unloved wife’s child. ¹⁶ On the day when the man decides what will go to each of his children as an inheritance, he isn’t allowed to treat his loved wife’s son as the oldest male rather than his unloved wife’s son, who is the real oldest male. ¹⁷ Instead, he must acknowledge the unloved wife’s son as the oldest male, giving to him two-thirds of everything that he owns, because that son is the earliest produce of his physical power. The oldest male’s rights belong to that son.

Rebellious children

¹⁸ Now if someone has a consistently stubborn and rebellious child, who refuses to listen to their father and mother—even when the parents discipline him, he won’t listen to them— ¹⁹ the father and mother will take the son before the elders of that city at its gates. ²⁰ Then they will inform the city’s elders: “This son of ours is consistently stubborn and rebellious, refusing to listen to us. What’s more, he’s wild and a drunkard.”

²¹ Then all the people of that town will stone him until he dies.

Remove^[ah] such evil from your community! All Israel will hear about this and be afraid.

Hanging

²² Now if someone is guilty of a capital crime, and they are executed, and you then hang them on a tree, ²³ you must not leave the body hanging on the tree but must bury it the same day because God’s curse is on those who are hanged.^[ai] Furthermore, you must not pollute the ground that the Lord your God is giving to you as an inheritance.

Rules for property and mixtures

22 Don’t just watch your fellow Israelite’s ox or sheep wandering around and do nothing about it. You must return the animal to its owner. ² If the owner doesn’t live nearby, or you don’t know who owns the animal, then you must take care of it. It should stay with you until your fellow Israelite comes looking for it, at which point you must return it to him.

³ Do the same thing in the case of a donkey. Do the same thing in the case of a piece of clothing. Do the same thing in the case of anything that your fellow Israelite loses and you end up finding. You are not allowed to sit back and do nothing about it.

⁴ Don’t just watch your fellow Israelite’s donkey or ox fall down in the road and do nothing about it. You must help your fellow Israelite get the animal up again.

⁵ Women must not wear men’s clothes, and men must not wear women’s clothes. Everyone who does such things is detestable to the Lord your God.

⁶ If you come across a bird’s nest along your way, whether in a tree or on the ground, with baby birds or eggs, and the mother is sitting on the baby birds or eggs, do not remove the mother from her young. ⁷ You must let the mother go, though you may take the young for yourself so that things go well for you and so you can prolong your life.

⁸ Whenever you build a new house, you must build a railing for the roof so that you don’t end up with innocent blood on your hands because someone fell off of it.

⁹ Don’t plant your vineyards with two types of seed; otherwise, the entire crop that you have planted and the produce of the vineyard will be unusable.^[aj]

¹⁰ Don’t plow with an ox and a donkey together.

¹¹ Don’t wear clothes that mix wool and linen together.

¹² Make tassels for the four corners of the coat you wear.

Virgin bride

¹³ Suppose a man gets married and consummates the marriage but subsequently despises his wife. ¹⁴ He then spreads false claims about her to the point that she has a bad reputation, because he said such things as, “I married this woman, but when I went to have sex with her, I couldn’t find any proof that she was a virgin.”

¹⁵ At that point, the young woman’s father and mother will bring proof of her virginity to the city’s elders at the city gate. ¹⁶ The young woman’s father will say to the elders: “I gave my daughter to this man to be his wife, but he doesn’t like her anymore. ¹⁷ That’s why he has spread false claims about her, saying, ‘I couldn’t find any proof that your daughter was a virgin.’ But look! Here’s proof of my daughter’s virginity.” At that point they will spread out the blanket in front of the city’s elders. ¹⁸ The city’s elders must then take that husband and punish him. ¹⁹ They will fine him one hundred silver shekels, giving that to the young woman’s father, because that husband gave one of Israel’s virgin daughters a bad reputation. Moreover, she must remain his wife; he is never allowed to divorce her.

²⁰ However, if the claim is true and proof of the young woman’s virginity can’t be produced, ²¹ then the city’s elders will bring the young woman to the door of her father’s house. The citizens of that city must stone her until she dies because she acted so sinfully in Israel by having extramarital sex while still in her father’s house.

Remove^[ak] such evil from your community!

Inappropriate sexual behavior

²² If a man is found having sex with a woman who is married to someone else, both of them must die—the man who was having sex with the woman and the woman herself.

Remove such evil from Israel!

²³ If a young woman who is a virgin is engaged to one man and another man meets up with her in a town and has sex with her, ²⁴ you must bring both of them to the city gates there and stone them until they die—the young woman because she didn’t call for help in the city, and the man because of the fact that he humiliated his neighbor’s wife.

Remove such evil from your community!

²⁵ But if the man met up with the engaged woman in a field, grabbing her and having sex with her there, only the man will die. ²⁶ Don’t do anything whatsoever to the young woman. She hasn’t committed any capital crime—rather, this situation is exactly like the one where someone attacks his neighbor and kills him.^{[al] 27} Since the man met up with her in a field, the engaged woman may well have called out for help, but there was no one to rescue her.

²⁸ If a man meets up with a young woman who is a virgin and not engaged, grabs her and has sex with her, and they are caught in the act, ²⁹ the man who had sex with her must give fifty silver shekels to the young woman’s father. She will also become his wife because he has humiliated her. He is never allowed to divorce her.

^30 [am] A man cannot marry his father’s former wife so that his father’s private matters are not exposed.^[an]

The Lord’s assembly

23 ^[ao] No man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off can belong to the Lord’s assembly. ² No one born of an illegitimate marriage^[ap] can belong to the Lord’s assembly either. Not even the tenth generation of such children can belong to the Lord’s assembly. ³ Ammonites and Moabites can’t belong to the Lord’s assembly. Not even the tenth generation of such people can belong to the Lord’s assembly, as a rule, ⁴ because they didn’t help you with food or water on your journey out of Egypt, and because they hired Balaam, Beor’s son, from Pethor of Mesopotamia to curse you. ⁵ But the Lord your God wasn’t interested in listening to Balaam. The Lord your God turned that curse into a blessing because the Lord your God loves you. ⁶ So don’t be concerned with their health and well-being as long as you live.

⁷ Don’t detest Edomites, because they are your relatives. Don’t detest Egyptians because you were immigrants in their land. ⁸ Children born to them are permitted to belong to the Lord’s assembly starting with the third generation.

Rules for the war camp

⁹ When you are camped in battle against your enemies, guard yourself from every possible evil. ¹⁰ If an individual in the camp becomes polluted due to a nighttime emission, he must exit the camp area and not reenter. ¹¹ When the next evening arrives, he must wash with water; and when the sun sets, he can come back to the camp.