Bible in 90 Days

8 Be conscientious about carrying out the entire body of commands that I am giving you today so that you may thrive and increase and you may go in and possess the land that the Lord promised by oath to give to your fathers. ² Remember the whole journey on which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you and to test you, in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. ³ So he humbled you and allowed you to be hungry. Then he fed you manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known before, in order to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ The clothes you wore did not wear out, and your feet did not swell these forty years. ⁵ So know in your heart that just as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. ⁶ Therefore you are to keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by revering him.

⁷ For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of gullies filled with water, a land with springs and groundwater that flows out into the valleys and down the mountains, ⁸ a land with wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees for oil, and honey,^{[a] 9} a land where you can eat bread and not be poor, where you will not lack anything, a land whose rocks are iron and from whose mountains you can mine copper.

¹⁰ Then you will eat, and you will be filled, and you will praise the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you. ¹¹ Be very careful so that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and ordinances and his statutes that I am commanding you today. ¹² When you eat and are satisfied, and you build nice houses and move into them, ¹³ and your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold increase, and everything that you have prospers, ¹⁴ watch out so that your heart does not become arrogant and forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, where you were slaves. ¹⁵ Do not forget the Lord, who led you in the great and terrifying wilderness, where there were venomous snakes and scorpions, where the thirsty ground had no water, but the Lord made water come out of a flint rock for you. ¹⁶ Do not forget the Lord, who in the wilderness fed you manna, which your fathers had not known before, to humble you and to test you so that it would be good for you later on.

¹⁷ You might say in your heart, “My ability and the power of my hand have earned this wealth for me.” ¹⁸ But then you are to remember that the Lord your God is the one who gives you the ability to produce wealth, to confirm his covenant that he promised to your fathers with an oath, as he does to this day.

¹⁹ But if you ever do forget the Lord your God and you follow other gods, and if you serve them and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will certainly perish. ²⁰ Just like the nations that the Lord is about to destroy in front of you, you also will perish, because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God.

9 Listen, Israel, today you are about to cross the Jordan to go in and to take possession of nations larger and stronger than you, nations with large cities that have fortified walls reaching up to the skies, ² with people strong and tall, the Anakites, whom you know and about whom you have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the descendants of Anak?”

³ So know today that the Lord your God himself is crossing over in front of you. Like a consuming fire he will destroy them, and he will subdue them before you. You will take possession of their land and destroy them quickly, just as the Lord promised you.

⁴ When the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say in your heart, “Because of my righteousness the Lord brought me in to take possession of this land,” when actually it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is handing over their land to you.

⁵ You are not entering to take possession of their land because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart, but because of the wickedness of these nations. The Lord your God is handing over their land to you, in order to confirm the promise that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

⁶ Know, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, because a stiff-necked people^[b] is what you are. ⁷ Remember and do not forget how you made the Lord your God angry in the wilderness. From the day that you went out of the land of Egypt until your arrival at this place, you have been rebels against the Lord. ⁸ Even at Horeb you made the Lord angry. Yes, the Lord was angry enough at you to destroy you.

⁹ When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I did not eat bread and I did not drink water. ¹⁰ Then the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken with you from the middle of the fire on the mountain, on the day of the assembly. ¹¹ At the end of the forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.

¹² Then the Lord said to me, “Get moving and go down quickly from here because your people, whom you led out of Egypt, have acted corruptly. They have turned away quickly from the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a thing of molten metal.”

¹³ The Lord also said to me, “I have seen these people, and what a stiff-necked people they are! ¹⁴ Leave me alone, and I will destroy them. I will blot out their name from under the heavens, and I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.”

¹⁵ So I turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in my two hands, while the mountain was burning with fire.

¹⁶ I saw how you were sinning against the Lord your God by making for yourselves a calf from molten metal and by quickly turning aside from the way that the Lord your God had commanded you to go.

¹⁷ I grabbed the two tablets and I threw them from my two hands^[c] and I shattered them right before your eyes.

¹⁸ Then I lay facedown before the Lord forty days and forty nights like the first time. I did not eat bread and I did not drink water, because of all the sin that you committed by doing evil in the eyes of the Lord and making him angry.

¹⁹ I was afraid of the heated anger of the Lord, who was angry enough at you to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me again at that time.

²⁰ The Lord was even angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. So I prayed also for Aaron at that time.

²¹ Then I took that wicked thing that you had made, the calf. I burned it with fire and crushed it by grinding it until it was as fine as dust. Then I threw its dust into the gully that goes down from the mountain.

²² Again and again, at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth Hatta’avah, you made the Lord angry.

²³ Then, when the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea, and he said, “Go up and take possession of the land that I have given to you,” you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You did not put your faith in him, and you did not obey him. ²⁴ You have been rebels against the Lord ever since I have known you.

²⁵ So I lay facedown before the Lord for forty days and forty nights. I lay facedown because the Lord said he would destroy you. ²⁶ So I prayed to the Lord and said, “Lord God, do not destroy your people, your inheritance that you have redeemed by your greatness, whom you brought out of Egypt with a strong hand.

²⁷ “Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of these people and at their wickedness and their sin. ²⁸ Otherwise the land out of which you brought us will say, ‘This happened because the Lord did not have the power to bring them to the land that he had promised to them, or this happened because he hated them and brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.’

²⁹ “But they are your people and your possession, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.”

10 At that time the Lord said to me, “Cut out two tablets of stone like the first ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark^[d] out of wood. ² Then I will write on the tablets the same words that were on the first ones that you shattered, and you are to put them in the ark.”

³ So I made an ark of acacia wood and I cut out two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. ⁴ He wrote on the tablets the same writing as on the first tablets, the Ten Commandments^[e] that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the middle of the fire, on the day of the assembly. Then the Lord gave them to me. ⁵ I turned and came back down the mountain, and I put the tablets in the ark that I had made. There they are kept, as the Lord commanded me to do.

⁶ The people of Israel traveled from Be’eroth Bene Ja’akan to Moserah. Aaron died there, and he was buried there, and Eleazar his son served as priest in his place. ⁷ From there they traveled to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land of gullies filled with water.

⁸ At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord and to serve him, and to pronounce a blessing in his name, as they do to this day. ⁹ That is why Levi did not have an allotment of land and an inheritance with his brothers. The Lord himself is their inheritance, as the Lord your God promised him.

¹⁰ I had stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights like the first time, and the Lord listened to me again on this second occasion. The Lord agreed not to destroy you. ¹¹ So the Lord said to me, “Set out and continue the journey at the head of the people, and they will enter and take possession of the land that I promised to give them with an oath to their fathers.”

¹² So now, Israel, what is the Lord your God asking of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹³ to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes that I am commanding you today for your own good.

¹⁴ Indeed, the heavens and the heaven of heavens,^[f] the earth and everything that is on it—these belong to the Lord your God. ¹⁵ Still, the Lord attached himself to your fathers, loved them, and he chose their descendants after them (that’s you!) from all peoples, as it is today.

¹⁶ So cut away the tough shell of your sinful nature,^[g] and do not be stubborn any longer.

¹⁷ The Lord your God is God of Gods and Lord of Lords, the great God, the mighty one and the awesome one, who does not show favoritism and does not take a bribe. ¹⁸ He carries out justice for the fatherless and widows. He loves the alien who dwells among you and gives him food and clothing. ¹⁹ So you are to love the alien, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

²⁰ Fear the Lord your God, serve him, cling to him, and take your oaths in his name.

²¹ He is your glory. He is your God, who performed for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.

²² When your fathers went down to Egypt, they numbered seventy people, but now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of the sky.

11 Love the Lord your God and always carry out his requirements, his statutes, his ordinances, and his commandments.

² Know this today! I am not addressing your children, who have not known and seen all these things:

⁷ Know today it is your own eyes that have seen every deed that the Lord your God performed.

⁸ Therefore, keep the whole set of commands that I am giving you today so that you may have the strength to enter and take possession of the land that you are about to cross into and possess, ⁹ and so that you may live for a long time on the land that the Lord your God swore to give to your fathers and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.

¹⁰ The land that you are about to enter and possess is not like that land of Egypt that you left, where you were accustomed to sow your seed and water it by hand^[h] like a vegetable garden. ¹¹ But the land you are entering to possess is a land of mountains and valleys. It drinks water provided by rain from the heavens. ¹² It is a land that the Lord your God takes care of. The eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it, from the start to the end of the year.

¹³ If you faithfully listen to my commandments that I am giving you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹⁴ then I will provide rain for your land in season, early fall rain and late spring rain, and you will gather your grain and your new wine and your fresh oil. ¹⁵ I will provide grass in your field for your livestock, and you will eat and be satisfied.

¹⁶ Be careful, or your heart will be deceived and you will turn away and serve other gods and bow down to them. ¹⁷ Then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and he will close up the heavens. There will be no rain, the ground will not produce crops, and you will perish quickly from the good land that the Lord is giving you.

¹⁸ Put these words of mine in your hearts and in your soul, and tie them on your wrists as signs and as symbols on your forehead. ¹⁹ Teach them to your children by talking about them when you sit in your house and when you travel on the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ²⁰ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, ²¹ so that your days and the days of your children may be many on the land that the Lord promised to your fathers with an oath, as many as the days that the heavens remain over the earth.

²² If you carefully keep the whole set of commandments that I am giving you, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and clinging to him, ²³ then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will take possession of nations larger and stronger than you.

²⁴ Every place where the sole of your foot walks will be yours. From the Wilderness to Lebanon, from the River—the River Euphrates—to the Mediterranean Sea,^[i] all of it will be your territory.

²⁵ No one will be able to stand up to you. The Lord your God will put the fear and dread of you over the whole land on which you walk, just as he promised you.

²⁶ You see, I am placing before you today a blessing and a curse: ²⁷ the blessing, if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, ²⁸ or the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of the Lord your God and you turn away from the path that I am commanding you today by walking after other gods whom you did not know.

²⁹ When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and possess, you are to pronounce the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. ³⁰ As you know, they are on the other side of the Jordan, beyond the west road,^[j] toward the setting sun, in the land of the Canaanites that live in the Arabah, opposite Gilgal, by the oaks of Moreh.

³¹ You are about to cross over the Jordan to go in and take the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You will take it and live in it. ³² But be careful to carry out all the statutes and the ordinances that I am giving you today.

12 These are the statutes and the ordinances that you are to be conscientious about keeping in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given to you to possess all the days that you live in the land:

² Completely destroy all the places where the nations that you are driving out serve their gods, whether on the high mountains or on the hills or under every beautiful green tree. ³ Tear down their altars! Smash their sacred memorial stones! Burn their Asherah poles^[k] with fire, and cut down the carved images of their gods! In this way you will destroy their names from those places.

⁴ Do not serve the Lord your God in the way that they worship, ⁵ but seek out and go to the site that the Lord your God will choose from within all your tribes to place his name and his dwelling place. ⁶ There you are to bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the elevated offerings from your hands, your offerings to fulfill a vow, your voluntary offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and your flock. ⁷ Eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, and rejoice in everything you do, you and your household, because the Lord your God has blessed you.

⁸ Do not in any way do what we are doing here today, that is, each person doing whatever is right in his own eyes, ⁹ because you have not yet come to your place of rest, the inheritance that the Lord your God is giving to you.

¹⁰ But you will cross over the Jordan and settle in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies all around you, so that you will live in safety. ¹¹ Then go to the place that the Lord your God chooses as the place to establish his name. There you are to bring everything that I am commanding you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes, the offerings from your hands, and all the best voluntary offerings that you vow to the Lord.

¹² You will rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and your daughters, and your male servants and your female servants, and the Levites who live within the gates of your cities, because they do not have an allotted inheritance among you.

¹³ Be careful that you do not offer up your burnt offering in just any place that you see fit, ¹⁴ but only in the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes. That is where you are to offer up your burnt offerings and where you are to do everything that I am commanding you.

¹⁵ But in any town you may butcher and eat meat to your heart’s content, as the Lord your God has blessed you. The unclean and the clean person alike may eat it as they would a gazelle or a deer, ¹⁶ but you must never eat the blood. Pour it on the ground like water.

¹⁷ You are not to eat the tithe from your grain, your new wine, or your fresh oil in your towns. The same applies to the firstborn of your herd and your flock, or anything you vow, or your voluntary offerings, or your special elevated offerings. ¹⁸ Eat those things before the Lord your God in the place that the Lord your God will choose—you and your sons and your daughters, your male servants and your female servants, and the Levites within your cities. Rejoice before the Lord your God in everything that you are doing.

¹⁹ Be careful that you do not neglect the Levites as long as you live on your land.

²⁰ When the Lord your God expands your territory as he promised you, and you say, “I would like to eat meat,” because you are hungry for meat, then you may eat it to your heart’s content. ²¹ If the place that the Lord your God will choose to establish his name is too far away for you, then you may slaughter^[l] animals from your herd and flock which the Lord has given you, just as I commanded you, and you may eat within your cities as you desire. ²² Yes, just as gazelle and deer are eaten, you may eat it. The unclean and the clean person alike may eat it. ²³ Only be very sure not to eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life together with the flesh. ²⁴ Do not eat it. Pour it out on the ground like water. ²⁵ Do not eat it, so that it may go well for you and for your children after you when you do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.

²⁶ But as for the holy things that you have and your voluntary offerings, gather them up and take them to the place that the Lord will choose. ²⁷ Offer your burnt offerings, both the flesh and the blood, on the altar of the Lord your God. The blood of the sacrifice is to be poured out on the altar of the Lord your God, but the meat you may eat.

²⁸ Be careful that you obey all these words that I am commanding you so that it may go well for you and for your children after you in the distant future when you do what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God.

²⁹ When the Lord your God cuts off the nations where you are going and drives them out before you, and when you take possession of their land and settle in it, ³⁰ be careful that you are not snared after they have been destroyed before you. Do not inquire about their gods and ask, “How did these people serve their gods? I also want to do the same thing.”

³¹ Do not serve the Lord your God in the way that they worship, because they do for their gods every detestable thing that the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in fire for their gods.

³² Be careful to do everything that I am commanding you. Do not add to it, and do not subtract from it.

False Prophets and Fortune Tellers

13 If a prophet or an interpreter of dreams arises among you, and he predicts a sign or wonder for you,^{[m] 2} and the sign or wonder that he promised you comes true, and he says, “Let’s go after other gods that you do not know, and let’s serve them,” ³ do not listen to the words of that prophet or that interpreter of dreams, because the Lord your God is testing you to see whether you really love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

⁴ Follow the Lord your God, fear him, keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him, and cling to him.

⁵ That prophet or that interpreter of dreams is to be put to death because he advised you to turn against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, in order to draw you away from the path on which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. Purge the evil from among you.

The Penalty for Idolatry

⁶ If your full brother or your mother’s son, your son or your daughter, the wife you embrace, or your closest friend tempts you by saying secretly, “Let’s go and serve other gods,”—gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, ⁷ from among the gods of the peoples around you, either near or far from you, anywhere from one end of the land to the other— ⁸ do not be influenced by him and do not listen to him. Your eye is not to look on him with compassion. Do not spare him and do not pardon him, ⁹ but kill him. Your hand is to be the first one on him when putting him to death, and afterward the hands of all the other people. ¹⁰ Stone him to death, because he tried to pull you away from the Lord your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt, where you were slaves. ¹¹ Then all of Israel will hear and fear, and such an evil thing as this will not be done among you again.

¹² If you hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you so that you can live in them, ¹³ men of worthless character have gone out from among you and have pulled the inhabitants of their city away from the Lord, saying, “Let’s go and serve other gods,” gods whom you have not known, ¹⁴ then investigate, search out the truth, and inquire diligently. If it becomes established truth that this abomination has been done among you, ¹⁵ you are to strike down the inhabitants of that city with the blade of the sword. Devote it and everything in it to complete destruction by the blade of the sword, including its cattle. ¹⁶ Gather all its plunder at the center of its town square. Then burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It is to be a permanent mound of ruins, never to be rebuilt.

¹⁷ Let nothing that has been devoted to destruction stick to your hands, so that the Lord will turn away from his anger and show you compassion. In his compassion he will increase your population, as he swore to your fathers, ¹⁸ if you obey the voice of the Lord your God by keeping all of his commandments that I am commanding you today, by doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord your God.

14 You are the children of the Lord your God.

Do not cut yourselves or make a bald spot on your forehead for a dead person, ² because you are set apart as holy people for the Lord your God, and the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the people that are on the face of the earth, to be his people that are his treasured possession.

Clean and Unclean Foods

³ Do not eat any detestable thing.

⁴ These are the animals that you may eat: cattle, sheep, and goats; ⁵ deer, gazelle, roebuck, wild goat, ibex, antelope, and mountain sheep. ⁶ Every animal that has divided hoofs with splits in the middle and that rechews its food^[n] among the animals—you may eat them.

⁷ But these you are not to eat from among those that either rechew their food or have divided hoofs with splits in the middle: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because even though they rechew their food, their hoofs are not divided. They are unclean for you. ⁸ The pig, because it has divided hoofs but does not rechew its food, is unclean for you. You are not to eat their flesh and you are not to touch their carcasses.

⁹ These you may eat of all the creatures that live in the water: Any that have fins and scales you may eat. ¹⁰ Any that do not have fins and scales you are not to eat. They are unclean for you.

¹¹ Any clean bird you may eat. ¹² But you are not to eat the following: the eagle, the black vulture, and the bearded vulture, ¹³ the red kite, the black kite, and falcons of every kind, ¹⁴ ravens and crows of every kind, ¹⁵ the eagle owl, the short-eared owl, the long-eared owl, all species of hawks, ¹⁶ the tawny owl, the fisher owl, the screech owl, ¹⁷ the white owl, and the scops owl, the osprey, ¹⁸ the stork and herons of every kind, the hoopoe, and the bat.^{[o] 19} Any swarming insect that flies is unclean for you. None of them are to be eaten. ²⁰ Any clean winged creature you may eat.

²¹ Do not eat the carcass of any animal that is found dead. You may give it to the alien who resides in your town, and he may eat it or sell it to a foreigner, but you are a people who are set apart as holy for the Lord your God.

Do not boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk.

Tithes

²² Give a tenth of all the yield from your seed that comes out of the field every year.

²³ Eat the tithe in the presence of the Lord your God in the place that he will choose to establish his name—the tenth of your grain, your new wine, and your fresh oil, as well as the firstborn of your herd and flock, so that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always.

²⁴ When the Lord your God blesses you, if the distance of your journey is so long that you cannot carry the tithe with you, because the place that the Lord your God will choose to establish his name is far away from you, ²⁵ then you may exchange the tithe for silver and take the silver in your hand and travel to the place that the Lord your God will choose for himself. ²⁶ There exchange the silver for anything that you desire—animals from the herd or the flock, or wine or beer, or anything that you may want. Then eat it there before the Lord your God and rejoice, both you and your household.

²⁷ But you must not neglect the Levites who reside within the gates of your cities, because they do not have an allotted inheritance among you. ²⁸ At the end of every third year, bring out the entire tithe of your produce from that year and store it in your towns. ²⁹ Then the Levites may come, because they do not have an allotted inheritance among you, and also the aliens and the fatherless and the widows within your towns, and they may eat and be satisfied, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work that your hands perform.

The Sabbatical Year

15 At the end of seven years grant a release.^[p]

² This is how the release is to be done: Every creditor is to release^[q] what he has loaned to his neighbor. He must not exact it from his neighbor or from his brother Israelite, because the Lord’s release has been proclaimed. ³ You may exact it from a foreigner, but your hand is to release whatever your brother Israelite owes you.^[r]

⁴ However, there should be no poor people among you, because the Lord will greatly bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance for you to possess, ⁵ if you obey the voice of the Lord your God by carefully carrying out all of this command that I am giving you today. ⁶ For the Lord your God will bless you, just as he has promised you, and you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow; you will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you.

⁷ However, if there is a poor person among you, any one of your fellow Israelites within the gates of your towns in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your poor brother. ⁸ Rather, open up your hand to him and freely lend him enough of whatever he needs for himself. ⁹ Be careful that you do not harbor this wicked thought: Year seven, the year of release, is near! So as a result you have a harsh attitude toward your poor brother and do not give him anything. Then he will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. ¹⁰ Give freely to him, and do not feel resentful about giving to him, because on account of your giving, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and whatever you put your hand to. ¹¹ Since there will never cease to be poor people in the land, I command you, open up your hand to your brother in your land, to the afflicted and the poor among you.

The Release of Servants

¹² If your brother, that is, a Hebrew man or woman, sells himself to you, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year you are to set him free. ¹³ When you set him free, do not send him out empty-handed. ¹⁴ Provide for him generously from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your winepress. Give to him from the blessings that the Lord your God has given to you. ¹⁵ You should remember that you yourself were a slave in the land of Egypt, but the Lord your God redeemed you. Therefore I am commanding this procedure to you today.

¹⁶ But he might say to you, “I don’t want to leave you,” because he loves you and your household, and he is well off with you. ¹⁷ In that case you are to take an awl and bore through his ear into the door, and he will be a slave to you permanently. Do the same in the case of your female slave. ¹⁸ When you do set a servant free, it should not seem like a hardship to you, because for six years he has earned for you double the income that a hired worker would. The Lord your God will bless you in everything that you do.

The Firstborn

¹⁹ Set apart for the Lord your God every firstborn male from your herd and your flock. Do not work the firstborn of your oxen, and do not shear the firstborn of your flock. ²⁰ You and your household are to eat the firstborn in the presence of the Lord each year, in the place that the Lord will choose. ²¹ But if it has a defect (if it is lame or blind, or if it has any other serious defect), you must not sacrifice it to the Lord your God. ²² You may eat it within the gates of your towns. The unclean and the clean person alike may eat it, as you would a gazelle or a deer. ²³ But you must not eat its blood. You are to pour it out on the ground like water.

The Festivals
The Passover

16 Observe the month of Abib^[s] and keep the Passover for the Lord your God, because it was in the month of Abib that the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt at night.

² As a Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, slaughter an animal from the flock or herd at the place where the Lord will choose to establish his name. ³ Do not eat leavened bread with it. For seven days eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you went out of the land of Egypt in a hurry. Do this so that you may remember the day that you went out from the land of Egypt for all the days of your life.

⁴ No yeast or leaven is to be found among you for seven days, and none of the meat that you sacrifice on the evening of the first day is to be left until morning.

⁵ You are not allowed to sacrifice the Passover inside the gates of any of the cities that the Lord your God is giving you. ⁶ Rather, it is at the place where the Lord your God will choose to establish his name that you are to sacrifice the Passover, in the evening at the setting of the sun, the time of day that you went out of Egypt.

⁷ Cook it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose. In the morning return to your tents.

⁸ Six days you are to eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there is to be a special convocation to the Lord your God. Do not do any regular work.

The Festival of Weeks

⁹ Count off seven weeks. As the starting point of the seven weeks, mark the time that the sickle first strikes the standing grain.

¹⁰ Then observe the Festival of Weeks^[t] for the Lord your God and give a voluntary offering of as much as you can afford, in keeping with how much the Lord has blessed you.

¹¹ Rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within the gates of your city, and the alien and the fatherless and the widow who are among you. Do this in the place where the Lord your God will choose to establish his name.

¹² Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, so you are to be careful to carry out these statutes.

The Festival of Shelters

¹³ After you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your winepress, celebrate the Festival of Shelters^[u] for seven days.

¹⁴ Rejoice in your festival, you and your son and your daughter, and your male servant and your female servant, and the alien and the orphan and the widow within your gates.

¹⁵ For seven days celebrate to the Lord your God in the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all of your crops and in all the work of your hands, and you will most certainly be joyful.

¹⁶ Three times a year all of your males are to present themselves before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread, at the Festival of Weeks, and at the Festival of Shelters. They are not to present themselves before the Lord empty-handed, ¹⁷ but each person is to have in his hand a gift that is in keeping with the blessing that the Lord your God has given you.

Judges

¹⁸ Appoint judges and officers for your tribes to serve at the gates of all the cities that the Lord your God is giving you. They are to judge the people with righteous judgment.

¹⁹ Do not distort justice. Do not show partiality. Do not take a bribe, because a bribe blinds the eyes of wise people and twists the actions of righteous people.

²⁰ Justice! You are to pursue justice, so that you may live and possess the land that the Lord your God is giving you!

The Penalty for Idolatry

²¹ Do not set up any kind of wooden Asherah pole beside the altar of the Lord your God that you have made for yourself. ²² Do not set up for yourself a sacred memorial stone, which is something that the Lord your God hates.

17 Do not sacrifice to the Lord your God any ox or sheep that has any kind of defect or serious flaw, because that is something detestable to the Lord your God.

² If there is found among you (within the gates of one of your cities that the Lord your God is giving you) a man or a woman who is doing something that is evil in the eyes of the Lord your God by transgressing his covenant, ³ or a man or a woman who is going and serving other gods and bowing down to them or to the sun or to the moon or to any of the army of the heavens, something that I have not commanded, ⁴ and you are told about it and you listen and investigate diligently, and it is established that the charge is true and that this abomination has been committed in Israel, ⁵ then you are to bring that man or that woman who has committed this evil out to your city gate, and you are to stone that person to death, whether man or woman.

⁶ A person is to be put to death on the basis of the testimony of two or three witnesses. No one is to be put to death based on the testimony of one witness. ⁷ The hands of the witnesses are to be the first ones raised against him when putting him to death, and after that the hands of all the other people. In that way you are to purge the evil from among you.

⁸ If a case is too difficult for you to make a decision, whether it involves a homicide, a lawsuit, or an assault, or any matters of controversy within the gates of your cities, then proceed by going up to the place that the Lord your God will choose. ⁹ Go to the priests, who are from the tribe of Levi, and to the presiding judge at that time and lay out the case. They will declare the verdict to you. ¹⁰ Then you are to act according to the verdict that they will declare to you from the place that the Lord will choose, and you are to be careful to carry out everything that they instruct you to do.

¹¹ Act according to the instructions they give you and according to the judgment that they speak to you. Do not turn to the right or to the left from the word that they declare to you.

¹² Any man who acts presumptuously by not listening to the priest, who presides and serves the Lord your God there, or by not listening to the judge, that man is condemned to die. In that way you will purge the evil from Israel. ¹³ Then all the people will hear and fear and not act presumptuously anymore.

The King

¹⁴ When you have entered the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I am determined to set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” ¹⁵ you may set a king over yourself, one whom the Lord your God will choose. You may set over yourself a king who is from among your brother Israelites. You must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your brother.

¹⁶ But the king must not accumulate more and more horses for himself, and he must not send people back to Egypt in order to accumulate more horses, because the Lord has said to you, “You must not go back that way again.” ¹⁷ He must not accumulate more and more wives for himself, or his heart may go astray. He must not accumulate excessive silver and gold for himself.

¹⁸ When he sits on his royal throne, he is to have a copy of this law written for him on a scroll in the presence of the priests, who are from the tribe of Levi. ¹⁹ It is to remain with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he learns to fear the Lord his God by being careful to carry out all the words of this law and these statutes, ²⁰ so that his heart does not grow haughty toward his brothers and turn away from this set of commands, either to the right or the left, so that the days of his royal reign in Israel, as well as that of his sons, may be many.

The Inheritance of the Levites

18 The priests, who are Levites, as well as the whole tribe of Levi, will not have any allotted inheritance with Israel. They will eat from the offerings made to the Lord by fire,^[v] which is their inheritance.

² So they will not have an inheritance among their brothers. The Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them.

³ This then will be the prescribed allotment for the priests from the people who offer sacrifices, whether an ox or a sheep: They are to give to the priests the shoulder, both cheeks, and the stomach. ⁴ You are also to give them the firstfruits from your grain, your new wine, your fresh oil, and the first fleece from your flock. ⁵ For the Lord your God has chosen them from all of your tribes to stand in service in the name of the Lord—them and their sons for all time.

⁶ When a Levite comes from any of your towns throughout Israel where he resides, and whenever he follows his heart’s desire and comes to the place that the Lord will choose, ⁷ and he serves in the name of the Lord your God, standing there before the Lord like all of his fellow Levites, ⁸ then he may eat the same portion, regardless of any income he received from selling family property.

⁹ When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to practice anything like the abominations of those nations. ¹⁰ Let no one be found among you who makes his son or his daughter pass through fire, or who uses divination, or who engages in fortune telling, or who observes omens, or who practices witchcraft, ¹¹ or who casts a magic spell, or who consults a ghost or a familiar spirit, or who inquires of the dead.^[w]

¹² Anyone doing these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

¹³ You are to be blameless with the Lord your God.

¹⁴ It is true that those nations whose land you are taking listen to fortune tellers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not permitted you to do things like that.

The Prophet

¹⁵ The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brother Israelites. Listen to him.

¹⁶ That is exactly what you asked from the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly. You said, “Do not let me hear the voice of the Lord my God anymore, and do not let me see this great fire again, or I will die.”

¹⁷ Then the Lord said to me, “They have done well by saying what they said. ¹⁸ I will raise up a prophet for them from among their brothers, like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he will speak to them everything that I command him. ¹⁹ Anyone who will not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. ²⁰ Any prophet who presumes to speak something in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks something in the name of other gods—that prophet shall die.”

²¹ What if you ask yourselves, “How can we know that the Lord has not spoken that word?” ²² If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the thing does not come about and does not come true, the Lord has not spoken that word. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.^[x]

Cities of Refuge

19 When the Lord your God has cut down the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, and you have taken possession of their land and settled in their cities and houses, ² set aside three cities within the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. ³ Prepare roads^[y] for yourselves, and divide the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance into three parts, so that anyone who has killed a person will be able to flee to one of these cities.

⁴ Now this is an example of a person who has killed someone who may flee there and live: someone who has struck down his friend unintentionally, without being hateful toward him beforehand. ⁵ For instance, someone goes with his friend into the forest to cut down trees, and when his hand swings the ax to cut down the tree, the iron ax head slips off the wooden handle and strikes his friend, who then dies—that person may flee to one of these cities and live.

⁶ Otherwise, the avenger of blood might pursue the one who has killed someone, because the avenger is hot with anger. Then because of the long distance to the city of refuge, the avenger may overtake the man and strike him down fatally. His death would not be just, because he had not been hateful toward the other one beforehand. ⁷ Therefore I am commanding you this: Set aside for yourselves three cities.

⁸ When the Lord your God expands your territory, as he swore to your fathers, and he gives you the entire land that he promised to give your fathers, ⁹ if you carefully keep this whole set of commands that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God and by walking in his ways always, then add for yourselves three more cities in addition to these three. ¹⁰ Then innocent blood will not be poured out within your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, nor will you be guilty of bloodshed.

¹¹ But if there is a person who is hateful toward another, and he lies in ambush for him and springs up on him and strikes him so he dies, and the killer flees to one of the cities of God, ¹² then the elders of his home city are to send for him and take him from there. They are to hand him over to the avenger of blood, and he is to be put to death.

¹³ Your eye is not to look with compassion on him. You are to purge the blood of the innocent person from Israel so that it may go well for you.

Miscellaneous Laws

¹⁴ Do not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, which the first generation of occupants set up as a boundary for your inherited property in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

¹⁵ A single witness does not have legal standing to convict a person of any guilt or sin in connection with any wrongful action he may have committed. A case is to have standing only on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

¹⁶ If a malicious witness rises up against a person to testify against him about a legal offense, ¹⁷ and if the two people involved in the dispute stand before the Lord and before the priests and the judges who preside at that time, ¹⁸ the judges are to investigate diligently. If the person is a dishonest witness because he has falsely accused his brother, ¹⁹ then you are to do to him just as he had plotted to do to his brother. So you will purge the evil from among you. ²⁰ The rest of the people will hear, and they will fear, and they will not do an evil thing like this among you again. ²¹ Your eye is not to look with compassion. The principle is life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Conduct During War

20 When you go out for battle against your enemies, and you see the horses and chariots of a people more numerous than you are, do not be afraid of them, because the Lord your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, is with you.

² When you are approaching the battle, the priest is to come forward and speak to the people. ³ He will say to them, “Listen, Israel, you are approaching the battle against your enemies. Do not let your heart become weak. Do not be afraid. Do not tremble. Do not dread them, ⁴ because the Lord your God is going with you to do battle for you against your enemies, to save you.”

⁵ The officers also are to speak to the people and say, “Whoever has built a new house but has not dedicated it, let him go and return to his house so that he does not die in the battle and another man dedicates it.

⁶ “Whoever has planted a vineyard but has not yet removed it from sacred status,^[z] let him go and return to his house so that he does not die in the battle and another man is the first to eat from it.

⁷ “Whoever is pledged in marriage to a woman but has not consummated the marriage, let him go and return to his house so that he does not die in the battle and another man takes her in marriage.”

⁸ Then the officers are to speak again to the people and say, “Whoever is afraid and fainthearted may go and return to his house, so that the hearts of his brother Israelites do not melt in cowardice like his heart.”

⁹ When the officers finish speaking to the people, they are to appoint army commanders at the head of the people.

¹⁰ When you approach a city to fight against it, call out to it, asking for a peaceful surrender. ¹¹ If the city answers you, “Peace,” and it opens up its gates for you, then all the people found in it will become forced labor for you and they will serve you.

¹² But if it does not make peace with you, and it makes war against you, then lay siege against it. ¹³ The Lord your God will deliver it into your hands, and you will strike down all the males with the edge of the sword.

¹⁴ But the women and the children, and the cattle and everything that is in the city—all its plunder—take as spoils of war for yourself. You may make use of the plunder of your enemies that the Lord your God gives you.

¹⁵ Do this to all the cities that are very far away from you, which are not cities of the nations around here.

¹⁶ However, from the cities of these people that the Lord your God is giving to you as your inheritance, do not keep alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Devote them completely to destruction—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded you, ¹⁸ so that they do not teach you to commit all of the abominations that they commit for their gods, with the result that you sin against the Lord your God.

¹⁹ When you lay siege against a city for a long time, as you fight against it in order to capture it, do not destroy its trees by swinging axes against them, because you will be able to eat what the trees bear, so do not cut them down. For is a tree in the field something human that you should besiege it? ²⁰ Only trees that you know are not food-producing trees may be destroyed. You may cut them down to build siege works against the city that makes war against you, until it falls.

Unsolved Murders

21 In the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess, if a person who has been killed is found lying in the open country and it is not known who struck him down, ² then your elders and your judges are to go out and measure the distance from the person who was killed to each of the surrounding towns.

³ The elders of the city that is closest to the person who was killed are to take a heifer that has not been worked and has not pulled with a yoke. ⁴ The elders of that city are to bring the heifer down to a gully that has a flowing stream and that has not been plowed and sown, and they are to break the neck of the heifer there in the gully.

⁵ Then the priests, the descendants of Levi, are to come near, because the Lord your God has chosen them to serve and to bless you in the name of the Lord, and every dispute and every case of assault is to be decided according to their ruling. ⁶ Then all the elders of the city closest to the person who was killed are to wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the gully.

⁷ Then they are to testify by saying, “Our hands did not pour out this blood, and our eyes did not observe it. ⁸ Atone, Lord, for your people whom you have redeemed, and do not charge us with taking innocent life among your people Israel.” Then their bloodguilt will be atoned for.

⁹ In this way you will purge away from among you the guilt of shedding the blood of an innocent person by doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord.

Captive Wives

¹⁰ When you go out for battle against your enemies and the Lord your God gives them into your hands, if you take some of them as captives, ¹¹ and you see in that group of captives a beautiful woman, and you are attracted to her and would like to take her as your wife, ¹² then you will bring her into your house. She is to shave her head and trim her nails. ¹³ She also is to remove the clothing she wore when she was captured and to stay in your house and weep for her father and her mother for a month. After that you may come to her and become her husband and she will become your wife.

¹⁴ Then if you are no longer pleased with her, you are to let her go as she desires. You must not sell her for money. You are not to deal with her as a slave,^[aa] because you have humiliated her.

Family Law

¹⁵ If a man has two wives, and one is loved and one is not loved, and both the loved one and the unloved one have borne children for him, and the firstborn son belongs to the unloved wife, ¹⁶ then on the day that he bequeaths what he owns to his sons, he cannot declare the son of the loved wife as his firstborn in preference to the son of the unloved wife, who is the true firstborn. ¹⁷ He must acknowledge the son of the unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double portion of everything that is recognized as his. Because that son is the beginning of his father’s virility, the legal right of the firstborn belongs to him.

¹⁸ If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey the voice of his father and his mother, and they discipline him, but he will not listen to them, ¹⁹ then his father and his mother are to take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city and to the gate of his hometown. ²⁰ Then they will say to the elders of his city, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He does not obey us. He is a worthless glutton and a drunkard.” ²¹ Then all the men of his city are to stone him to death, and so you will purge the evil from among you, and all Israel will hear and fear.

Miscellaneous Laws

²² If there is a man whose sin justly deserves a death sentence, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,^{[ab] 23} his dead body is not to remain on the tree overnight. You must bury him on the same day, because a person left hanging on a tree is cursed by God. You are not to defile your ground that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

22 If you see an ox or a sheep that belongs to your brother Israelite going astray, do not ignore it. Return it to your brother. ² If your brother Israelite does not live nearby and you are not acquainted with him, bring it to your own house and keep it with you until your brother comes looking for it. Then return it to him. ³ Do the same with his donkey, the same with his clothing, and the same with anything your brother has lost and you have found. You are not allowed to do nothing.^[ac]

⁴ If you see the donkey or ox that belongs to your brother Israelite and it has fallen on the road, do not ignore it. Help him lift it up.

⁵ A woman must not wear the attire of a man, and a man is not to put on the clothing of a woman, because anyone doing these things is detestable to the Lord your God.

⁶ If you happen to see a bird’s nest along the road, whether in a tree or on the ground, and it has young ones or eggs in it, and the mother is sitting over the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother along with the young birds. ⁷ You may take the young birds for yourself, but be sure to set the mother free, so that it may go well for you and you may have a long life.

⁸ When you build a new house, you are to make a railing for your roof so you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if someone should fall from it.

⁹ Do not plant your vineyard with two kinds of seed. If you do, the whole yield becomes unusable^[ad]—both the seed that you sow and the produce from the vineyard.

¹⁰ Do not plow with an ox and a donkey together.

¹¹ Do not wear fabric that is a mixture of wool and linen.

¹² Make tassels on the four corners of your clothing that you use to cover yourself.

Issues Concerning Marriage

¹³ If a man marries a woman and goes to her, and afterward he hates her ¹⁴ and accuses her with unfounded charges and defames her and says, “I married this woman, but when I approached her I found that she did not have evidence of virginity,” ¹⁵ then the father and mother of the girl are to produce evidence of the girl’s virginity and bring it to the elders of the city at the gate.

¹⁶ The father of the girl shall say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man as a wife, and afterward he hated her, ¹⁷ so he has accused her with unfounded charges by saying, ‘I have found that your daughter does not have evidence of virginity,’ but here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” Then they are to spread out the bed covering in front of the elders of the city.

¹⁸ Then the elders of that city will take the man and discipline him. ¹⁹ They will fine him a hundred pieces of silver and give them to the father of the girl because the man defamed a virgin of Israel. She shall continue to be his wife. He is not allowed to divorce her as long as he lives.

²⁰ But if the accusation proves to be the truth because evidence of the girl’s virginity was not found, ²¹ then they will bring the girl out to the entrance of her father’s house, and the men of her city will pelt her with stones until she dies, because she did a disgraceful thing in Israel by shaming the house of her father with her sexual immorality. In this way you will purge the evil from among you.

²² If a man is found lying down with a married woman, both of them are to die: the man lying with the woman, and also the woman. In that way you will purge the evil from Israel.

²³ If there is a virgin pledged in marriage to a man, and another man comes upon her in the city and lies down with her, ²⁴ take both of them out to the gate of that city and pelt them with stones until they die—the girl, because she did not cry out for help in the city, and the man, because he violated the wife of another man. In that way you will purge the evil from your midst.

²⁵ But if a man comes upon a girl who has been pledged in marriage and they are out in the countryside, and he grabs her and lies down with her, then only the man that lay with her must die. ²⁶ Do not do anything to the girl. There is no sin worthy of death on her part, because this is like a case in which a man attacks another person and kills him. ²⁷ He came upon her in the open country, and the girl who was pledged in marriage cried out for help, but she had no one to rescue her.

²⁸ If a man finds a virgin who is not pledged in marriage and he grabs her and lies down with her and they are caught, ²⁹ the man lying down with her must give the father of the girl fifty pieces of silver, and she will become his wife. Because he violated her, he is not allowed to divorce her as long as he lives.

³⁰ A man must not marry the wife of his father; that is, he is not to remove the skirt that is reserved for his father.

Exclusion From the Assembly

23 No man whose testicles are crushed or who has a severed penis is to come within the assembly of the Lord.^[ae]

² A child born of an incestuous relationship^[af] is not to come within the assembly of the Lord. Even in the tenth generation his descendant is not to come within the assembly of the Lord.

³ An Ammonite or a Moabite is not to come within the assembly. Even in the tenth generation their descendants may never come within the assembly of the Lord, ⁴ because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey after you came out of Egypt, and because they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor of Aram Naharaim^[ag] to curse you. ⁵ But the Lord your God was not willing to listen to Balaam, and the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you. ⁶ Do not seek their peace and prosperity as long as you live.

⁷ Do not detest an Edomite, because he is your brother. Do not detest an Egyptian, because you were an alien in his land. ⁸ Their children may come within the assembly of the Lord in the third generation.

Miscellaneous Laws

⁹ When you go out on a campaign against your enemies, you must guard yourselves against anything evil.

¹⁰ If there is a man among you who is unclean because of an emission during the night, he must go outside the camp. He must not come inside the camp. ¹¹ Toward evening he is to bathe himself in water, and when the sun sets, he may re-enter the camp.