Bible in 90 Days
8 Moses: You must obey very carefully all of the law, which I’m commanding you today. If you do, you’ll live and thrive, and you’ll go in and take possession of the land He promised to your ancestors. 2 Remember how the Eternal, your True God, led you through the wilderness these past 40 years. He did this to humble you, to test you, to uncover your motivations, to see if you would obey His commands. 3 He humbled you by making you hungry when there was no food in the desert. Then He fed you with manna, a food you and your ancestors had never heard of. He did this because He wanted you to understand that what makes you truly alive is not the bread you eat but following every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One.[a] 4 Your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t swell throughout your 40 years of wandering. 5 I want you to know in your hearts that the Eternal your God has been training you just as a parent trains a child. 6 So obey His commands! Live as He has instructed, and fear Him. 7 The Eternal your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with torrents of rushing water, with springs and underground streams flowing out into the valleys and hills. 8 It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of oil-rich olive trees and date honey. 9 In that land, you’ll always have plenty to eat—you won’t lack anything! There’s iron in the rocks, and you can dig copper from the hills. 10 You’ll eat and be satisfied, and then you’ll humbly thank the Eternal your God for the good land He’s given you.
11 But then be very careful! Don’t forget the Eternal your God and disobey the commands and decrees and rules I’m giving you today. 12 When your stomachs are full, when you’ve built comfortable houses to live in, 13 when you have large herds and flocks, when you possess plenty of silver and gold, and when you have more things than you imagined possible; 14 then don’t become proud and puffed up and forget Him. He brought you out of the land of Egypt where you were slaves; 15 and He led you through that awful, vast wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, through that desert where there was no water. He made water come out of a hard rock; 16 and He fed you in the wilderness with manna, a food your ancestors had never heard of. He did all this to humble you and test you, but it was all intended for your good in the end. 17 If He hadn’t, you might have believed, “I’ve gotten all this wealth by my own power and strength!” 18 Remember the Eternal One your God. He’s the One who gives you the power to get wealth, so He can keep the covenant promises He made to your ancestors, as He is doing now. 19 I testify against you today that if you do forget Him and pursue other gods, if you worship them and bow down to them; then you will certainly be destroyed. 20 Just like the nations the Eternal is now destroying ahead of you, you’ll be destroyed yourselves because you wouldn’t listen to His voice.
Throughout the Bible, God challenges His people to make sure the poor and needy are well cared for. Grinding poverty and deprivation destroy the wholeness of life that God intends for all people. However, as Moses warns here, achieving prosperity can lead people to be complacent and self-sufficient and to forget that God has been the One who has provided for them.
Perhaps no warning is more urgently needed for God’s people in our own wealthy and comfortable society. Prosperity can tempt us to forget about God and to act as if we can take care of everything through our own means. But with prosperity often comes poverty. These humbling, testing experiences are meant to build the qualities of gratitude and trust into our lives, and they keep us from forgetting God even when we do enjoy prosperity.
9 Moses: Listen to me, Israel! Today you’re going to cross the Jordan and enter the land you’ll take away from nations that are bigger and stronger than you. They live in huge cities that have defense walls as high as the sky. 2 They’re big and tall, giants descended from the Anakim. You know all about them from the 12 spies I sent into the land—you’ve heard the saying, “Who can ever fight with the descendants of Anak?” 3 So I want you to know today that it will be the Eternal your God who will go across the Jordan ahead of you. A blazing fire, He’ll destroy those nations. He’ll subdue them so you can destroy them quickly and take their place, as He has promised you will. 4 When the Eternal your God has driven them out ahead of you, then don’t begin to believe He gave you this land because you’re so good and righteous! It’s just the opposite; He is giving you their land because those other nations are so bad! 5 It’s not because you’ve conducted yourselves so well or because you have such pure hearts that you’re going to take the land; the Eternal your God is driving out those other nations ahead of you because they’re so wicked. He’s keeping His word, the promise He made to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 6 I’ll say it again: the Eternal One your God isn’t giving you this good land because you’re so good. You’re stubborn, obstinate people. 7 Remember—don’t forget—how you kept infuriating Him in the wilderness. From the day you came out of Egypt until the day you arrived here, you’ve been rebelling against Him.
8 Even at Horeb, you infuriated Him. The Eternal got so angry with you He was ready to destroy you! 9 When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets—the tablets of the covenant He made with you—I stayed on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. I didn’t eat or drink anything all that time, preparing myself to receive these holy words. 10-11 At the end of those 40 days and nights, the Eternal gave me those two stone tablets of the covenant. On them He’d engraved with His own finger everything He told you on the day you gathered at the mountain, when He spoke to you from inside the fire. 12 The Eternal told me, “Get up, and go back down the mountain as fast as you can! While you’ve been up here surrounded by My holiness, the people you led out of Egypt have become corrupt! How quickly they’ve left the path I commanded them to stay on. They’ve melted gold and poured it into a mold and made themselves an idol! 13 I’ve seen how stubborn and obstinate these people are. 14 Don’t try to stop Me—I’m going to destroy them! I’ll wipe out every last trace of them under the sky, and I’ll make a bigger and stronger nation out of just you.”
15 The mountain was still blazing with fire as I hurried back down it, carrying the two covenant tablets in my hands. 16 I saw with my own eyes how you had sinned against the Eternal, your True God: you’d cast an idol in the shape of a young bull!
This young bull is made in imitation of the Canaanite fertility gods. The bull is a prominent symbol of Baal. Creating this idol requires a long, intentional process of collecting enough precious metal for a statue, melting it down and purifying it, pouring it into a mold that also has to be designed and crafted, and making sure the statue cools evenly so that it doesn’t break apart. (Perhaps the Israelites learned these crafts by observation or practice in Egypt.) This was no casual slip into an unintentional religious compromise. This is a deliberate embrace of a god other than the Lord, right at the moment when He is drawing up His covenant of love with Israel. They are as unfaithful to the Lord as a person who has an affair while on his honeymoon!
Moses: How quickly you left the path the Eternal commanded you to stay on. 17 Right before your eyes I took the two tablets, hurled them onto the ground, and smashed them to pieces. 18 I went back up the mountain, and for another 40 days and nights I prostrated myself before Him, lying face down on the ground in grief and petition, not eating or drinking anything as before. You had sinned so seriously—you did what the Eternal had just told you was wrong, and this made Him furious! 19 I was afraid[b] He was so violently angry with you that He’d destroy you, as He said He would. But one more time, the Eternal One listened to me, and He spared you. 20 I had to pray particularly for Aaron because the Eternal was furious with him for making the idol—He would have killed my brother! 21 I took the calf idol you made, that embodiment of your sin, and I burned it up. Then I crushed what was left, ground it into tiny pieces until it was as fine as dust, and threw the dust into the riverbed that rushes down the mountain.
22 You and your parents were always making the Eternal furious! At Taberah, you whined and complained;[c] at Massah, you were sure the Lord was going to let you die of thirst;[d] at Kibroth-hattaavah, you said you were sick of the food He provided![e] 23 At Kadesh-barnea, when you finally reached the promised land,[f] the Eternal sent you in: “Go and take possession of the land—I’ve given it to you!” But you defied this direct order from the Eternal, your True God! You didn’t trust Him, and you didn’t listen to His voice. 24 You’ve been rebelling against Him from the day I met you!
25 That’s why, at Horeb, I lay face down before the Eternal for 40 days and nights, praying for you: He said He was going to destroy you, and I knew He had every reason to! 26 I prayed to Him, “Eternal Lord, please don’t destroy Your people! They’re Your own possession: You liberated them from another master—You brought them out of Egypt with overwhelming power. 27 Remember Your loyal servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; please forget about how stubborn and wicked and sinful these people are. Don’t let their actions spoil Your greater plan. 28 Otherwise, the people back in the land You brought us out of will be saying, “The Eternal couldn’t really bring them into that land He promised them. He actually hated those people, and He brought them out into the desert in order to kill them off.” 29 Remember they are Your people, Your own possession, the ones You brought out of Egypt Yourself with such overwhelming power!
10 Moses: Then the Eternal answered my prayer: “Cut out two stone tablets like the first ones, come back up the mountain to Me, and make a wooden chest. 2 I’ll write on those tablets the same words that were on the first ones, the ones you smashed into pieces, and you can put the new tablets in the chest you make.”
3 So I made a chest of acacia wood and cut out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I went back up the mountain carrying the two tablets. 4 The Eternal engraved on them what He had engraved on the first ones: the Ten Directives the Eternal gave you on the day you gathered at the mountain when He spoke to you from inside the fire. He gave the new tablets to me, 5 and I came back down the mountain and put them in the chest I’d made, as the Eternal had commanded me. And they’re still there today.
When they make and worship the young bull idol, the people are breaking the first covenant at Horeb, the one the Lord makes with them when He speaks to them from inside the fire and gives them the Ten Directives. Moses signifies that this first covenant is null and void when he smashes the two stone tablets that are the official copies of the covenant terms. That covenant has been conditional on the people maintaining an exclusive allegiance to the Lord, and they have violated this essential requirement. Now, however, through the intercession of Moses, the people are accepted into a second, new covenant on the basis of His forgiveness and mercy. Its continuation is also conditional on their obedience, but its deepest foundation is a grace anticipating the new covenant God ultimately makes with us through Jesus.
6 The children of Israel had been staying by the wells that belong to the descendants of Jaakan. They moved from there to Moserah. There, Aaron died and was buried. His son, Eleazar, succeeded him as high priest. 7 The people then moved to Gudgodah, and then to Jotbathah where the land is watered by streams. 8 There the Eternal set apart the tribe of Levi under Eleazar’s new leadership to carry the covenant chest of the Eternal One to serve Him in His presence and to bless the people in His name, as they still do today. 9 That’s why the tribe of Levi doesn’t have any familial hereditary territory alongside the other tribes: the Eternal Himself is Levi’s inheritance, just as the Eternal your God told Levi He would be.
Moses: 10 I stayed on the mountain just as long as I had before, for 40 days and nights. The Eternal listened to my prayers once again and agreed not to destroy you. 11 He told me, “Stand up again—I’ve granted your request. Now go and lead the people the rest of the way, so they can enter and take possession of the land I promised their ancestors I’d give them.”
12 And now, Israel, what is the Eternal your God asking of you? Only that you fear Him, live as He wants you to, and love Him; serve Him with every part of you, heart and soul; 13 and obey His commands and rules, which I’m giving you today for your good.
14 Think of it—everything already belongs to the Eternal your God: the sky and His own dwelling place beyond the sky, the earth and everything on it. 15 Nevertheless He devotedly loved your ancestors; and out of all the peoples He chose you, their descendants, to be His own, as you still are today. 16 Cut away that hard covering around your heart, and do not harden your neck against me, 17 because the Eternal your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great and mighty and amazing God! He doesn’t favor the powerful, and He can’t be bribed.
The imagery of cutting the foreskin of one’s heart and not hardening the neck are graphic depictions of how God desires internal devotion to reflect external obedience.
18 He enforces His justice for the powerless, such as orphans and widows, and He loves foreigners, making sure they have food and clothing. 19 You must love those foreigners living with you in the same way. Remember how you were foreigners in the land of Egypt! 20 So fear the Eternal your God; serve Him, and be devoted to Him. Show your loyalty by swearing oaths only in His name. 21 He’s the One you must praise—He’s your God who has done such great and amazing things for you, as you’ve seen with your own eyes. 22 When your ancestors went into Egypt, there were only 70 people in their whole clan.[g] But He kept increasing your numbers, and now there are as many of you as there are stars in the sky!
11 Moses: So love the Eternal your God and always obey His requirements, regulations, judgments, and commands. 2 Now keep this in mind: it was you, not your children, who saw and experienced firsthand all the lessons the Eternal your God taught you. You saw how He demonstrated His majesty and His overwhelming power. 3 You saw the signs He performed in Egypt[h] and everything He sent against Pharaoh the king and everyone in the country. 4 You saw what He did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and its chariots, right when they were chasing you: He drowned them in the Red Sea![i] The Eternal destroyed them all,[j] and the Egyptian army still hasn’t recovered. 5 You saw how He took care of you in the wilderness and brought you safely to this place. 6 But remember what happened when people rebelled against Him: you saw what He did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab from the tribe of Reuben—how the earth opened up, right in our midst, and swallowed them, their families, their tents, and their livestock![k]
7 Therefore, as eyewitnesses of all the great things the Eternal did, 8 carefully obey all the commands I’m giving you today. Then you’ll be strong enough to go and take possession of the land you’re about to enter, 9 and you’ll live long, healthy lives there. This is what the Eternal promised your ancestors: He’d give this land flowing with milk and honey to them and to their descendants. 10 The land where you’re going to live when you cross the Jordan isn’t like the land of Egypt where you came from. When you sowed seeds there, you could water all of your land as if it were nothing more than a small vegetable garden, transporting the water yourselves. 11 But in the land where you’re going to live, the hills and valleys drink water right out of the sky! 12 He takes care of this land; He’s always looking after it, all throughout the year.
Eternal One: 13 If you carefully obey My commands which I’m giving you today, and if you love Me and serve Me with your whole heart and soul, 14 then I’ll send rain on your land when it’s needed, in the autumn and the spring. You’ll have an abundant harvest of grain and wine and olive oil. 15 I’ll make grass grow in the fields for your cattle. You’ll eat all you need and be totally satisfied.
Moses: 16 But watch out! Don’t be seduced, so that you turn away from the Lord. Don’t abandon Him to worship other gods or bow down to them! 17 If you do, the Eternal’s fiery anger will result in a deadly drought. He won’t let any rain fall from the sky, and the ground won’t produce any crops. Then you won’t last very long in the good land the Eternal One is giving you.
18-20 So let what I’m saying sink deeply into your hearts and souls. Do whatever it takes to remember what I’m telling you: tie a reminder on your hand or put a reminder on your forehead where you’ll see it all the time, and on the doorpost where you cross the threshold or on the city gate.
Teach these things to your children. Talk about them when you’re sitting together in your home and when you’re walking together down the road. Make them the last thing you talk about before you go to bed and the first thing you talk about the next morning. 21 That way you and your children will be blessed with long life and abundant crops upon the ground the Eternal promised to your ancestors, for as long as there’s a sky above the earth.
Eventually people begin to take these instructions literally. They put abbreviated reminders of the law called mezuzot—scrolls of parchment inscribed with a prayer rolled into a decorative case—on their doorposts. They even wear tefillin—small leather boxes containing the same prayer—on their arms and foreheads with straps. Any discipline that reminds us effectively to live as God intends is helpful. But Moses’ goal here is not to create new rituals. It is to encourage God’s people to be intentional about learning and remembering God’s ways.
Moses: 22 If you carefully obey all these things I’m commanding you—if you really do love the Eternal your God and live as He wants you to and devote yourselves to Him— 23 then He will drive out all of these nations ahead of you. You’ll conquer nations that are bigger and stronger than you are. 24 Every place you walk will become yours: your territory will extend from the wilderness in the south to Lebanon in the north, and from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. 25 No one will be able to resist you. The Eternal your God will make everyone throughout the whole land you’re going into terrified of you, just as He said He would.
26 Look, you’ve got two choices: you can be blessed, or you can be cursed. 27 If you obey His commands, which I’m giving you today, you’ll be blessed. 28 If you don’t obey His commands—if you leave the path I’m showing you today so you can worship other gods who are foreign to you, then you’ll be cursed.
The ancient treaty form, which is similar to what is found in Deuteronomy, always includes blessings for keeping the agreement (covenant) and curses for breaking it. Calling these out is a crucial part of the process of adopting the covenant (chapters 27–28). Moses makes a preliminary mention of the blessings-and-curses ceremony.
It’s not an absolute rule that those who obey God will directly receive blessings in this life, and that those who disobey will suffer immediate consequences as a result. However, this is still generally true. His people should obey simply because the Lord is entitled to their unswerving loyalty and devotion (not because of any promised rewards). God delights to reward obedience, and His people should embrace His generosity gratefully whenever they receive it.
Moses: 29 When the Eternal your God brings you into the land where you’re going to live when you cross the Jordan, half of you are going to stand on Mount Gerizim and shout out the blessings that will come to those who obey the Lord. The other half of you will stand on Mount Ebal on the other side of the valley and shout out the curses that will fall on those who disobey Him. 30 You’ll find these two mountains on the other side of the Jordan River, as you head west of your current path, in the territory of the Canaanites who live in the arid Jordan Valley[l] around Gilgal, near the great trees at Moreh. 31 I tell you this now because you’re just about to cross the Jordan into the land where you’re going to live. The Eternal your God will give it to you; you’ll take possession of it and settle there. 32 And when you do, you must be very careful to obey all the regulations and judgments I’m giving you today.
12 Moses: These are the regulations and judgments you must carefully obey in the land the Eternal, the God of your ancestors, is giving you to live in, for as long as you are alive. 2 Completely destroy all the places where the nations you’re going to conquer worshiped their gods—on the mountain heights and hilltops, and under every leafy tree.
Commanding heights are recognized as positions of power and advantage. They are also closer to the sky on mountains and hills, which are thought to be the home of the gods. Nations chose heights and hilltops as places of worship. Leafy trees are also a favored location because of the shelter and shade they provided in a hot climate, and because they reach all realms of creation—the underworld, the physical world, and the heavens. In the absence of trees, carved poles serve as portable tree shrines honoring the goddess Asherah.
Moses: 3 Tear down their altars, smash their monoliths, burn their sacred poles,[m] and shatter their idols! Wipe out every trace of the names of their gods in those places. 4 The Eternal your God doesn’t want you to worship Him in the way these nations worshiped their gods, setting up shrines and altars all over the land. 5 He will choose a place within the territory of one of your tribes to be His home; He will put His Name there. Go there to worship Him. 6 Whenever you have something to offer, take it there: burnt offerings and sacrifices, tithes, uplifted offerings, freewill gifts, payments to fulfill vows, and firstborn animals from your herds and flocks. 7 Eat your sacred meals there in His presence, and celebrate with your whole household how the Eternal your God has blessed everything you’ve done. 8 Right now we’re letting everyone do as he or she sees fit here with unregulated sacrifices, 9 because you aren’t yet living in peace on the land He is going to give you. 10 When you’ve crossed the Jordan River and have settled in the land He is giving you to live in and pass on to your descendants, and you’re living in safety because He’s defeated the enemies all around you and they’re no longer a threat, 11 then bring everything I command you to the place the Eternal, your True God, will choose as a sanctuary, as a place for His name. Bring your burnt offerings and other sacrifices there; bring your tithes, uplifted offerings, and the special gifts you choose to dedicate along with your vow to the Eternal. 12 Celebrate in His presence with your sons and daughters and with your male and female slaves. And be sure to invite any Levites who live in your town, because their tribe won’t have any property as yours does. 13 Be careful! Don’t offer burnt sacrifices just anywhere that you find suitable. 14 Offer your burnt sacrifices only in the place He will choose in the territory of one of your tribes. And that’s the only place you should make any of the burnt offerings and execute everything else I’m telling you.
15 However, if you just want to have meat for a meal, if the Eternal your God has blessed you and you can afford it, you can do that in your own towns. Slaughter the animals and eat them there. It’s not a sacred meal, so people don’t need to be ritually pure to eat it, and it can be a gazelle or a deer. 16 But don’t consume any of the blood; pour it out on the ground like water as you would for any slaughter or sacrifice. 17 And remember you still can’t eat any of the special offerings in your own towns: tithes of grain, new wine, and olive oil; firstborn animals from your herds and flocks, any payments to fulfill vows, or freewill gifts and uplifted offerings. 18 Eat these special offerings in His presence in the place He chooses. Bring your sons, your daughters, and your male and female slaves, and remember to invite the Levites who live in your town. Celebrate together, in His presence, everything you’ve been able to accomplish. 19 (Don’t ever neglect the Levites! Make sharing with them a part of your lifestyle the whole time you’re living in that land.)
20-21 You see, the Eternal your God is going to give you an extensive territory as He’s promised. You may be living at some distance from the place where He chooses to put His name. And there will be times when you say to yourself, “I’m going to have some meat—that’s what I’m craving!” Go right ahead—as often as you wish. If you take from one of the domesticated animals the Eternal has given you from your herd or your flock and eat it in your own town, I’m telling you it’s all right to do that. 22 It’s just like eating a gazelle or a deer. People don’t need to be ritually pure to eat this meat. 23 But discipline yourselves not to eat the blood because the blood is the soul, and you mustn’t eat the soul along with the meat. 24 Don’t eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water. 25 If you don’t eat it, you’ll be doing what the Eternal considers right, and everything will go well for you and your descendants.
26 But bring anything that will be a sacred meal and any sacrifice that will be offered to pay a vow to the place He will choose. 27 There you will offer both the meat and the blood of your burnt sacrifices on His altar. You must pour out the blood of your sacrifices on the altar, but you will eat the meat. 28 Be very careful to obey all these words I’m telling you. Then you’ll be doing what the Eternal your God considers good and right, and everything will go well for you and your descendants forever.
The people are required to make certain offerings and are invited to make others. All of these offerings are to be handled with special care and not treated as ordinary food. Here Moses is warning specifically against pagan magical practice. It is believed by them that the life force, qualities, and powers of an animal can be taken over by consuming its blood, particularly as it flows from its body. The pagan nations look for power within the created order, and they try to tap into that power through fertility rites and other magical acts. All the blessings of life, fertility, and abundance are to be found in obedient relationship to the Lord. They can’t be obtained by trying to manipulate the forces of the natural world.
Moses: 29 When the Eternal your God has destroyed the nations whose land you’re going to occupy, when you’ve displaced them and settled there, 30 then be very careful! Don’t fall into a deadly trap by doing what those nations did, since they were destroyed when you came into their land! Don’t try to find out about their gods. Don’t ask, “How did these nations worship their gods? I’m going to do the same thing!” 31 Don’t worship the Eternal your God the way those nations worshiped their gods! They did every horrible thing He hates. They even burned up their sons and daughters as sacrifices to those gods. 32 Be very careful to do everything I’m commanding you. Don’t add anything to your worship, and don’t take anything away from it.
13 Moses: 1-2 Suppose someone who claims to be a prophet, or to have inspired dreams, stands up and tells all of you that some unusual, significant sign or wonder is going to happen, and also says, “I’m here to let you know about some other gods you should be worshiping.” What if the thing that person has predicted actually happens? 3 Don’t listen to what that prophet or dreamer says! The Eternal your God is testing you to see whether you really do love Him completely, with your whole heart and soul. 4 Remain loyal to Him! Fear Him and obey His commands. Listen to His voice. Worship Him alone. Be fervently devoted to Him. 5 But as for that prophet or dreamer, put him to death! He’s tried to turn you away from the Eternal your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and liberated you from slavery. He’s tried to entice you off the path God commanded you to follow. Expel the evil from your community.
6-7 What if someone close to you whispers secretly, “Let’s go worship other gods”? It doesn’t matter if it’s your brother or half-brother, your own son or daughter, your beloved wife or closest friend. Whether they’re gods of the people who live around you or gods of people who live far away—the gods of anyone on the face of the earth! You’ve never worshiped any of these gods before, and neither did your ancestors, because you’re in a covenant relationship with the Eternal. 8-10 So don’t listen to this person. Don’t agree to go worship other gods with him or her. Anyone who entices you like this must be executed! Don’t feel sorry for him, or have mercy on him, or try to hide what he’s done. Stone him to death because he tried to entice you away from the Eternal, your True God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and rescued you from slavery. As the witness to what he said, and as the person he tried to corrupt, you must throw the first deadly stone, and then everyone else will join in. 11 All the rest of the Israelites will hear about this and be afraid, and none of them will dare to do such an evil thing again in your land.
Stoning has been chosen as the method of execution in these cases for several likely reasons: (1) The person who advocates worshiping other gods is like a contagious disease in the midst of Israel. Stoning, killing from a distance, expresses a horror of even touching such a person, for fear of being infected; (2) Stoning is also a community method of execution. Each and every person in the community has to express one’s own loyalty to the Lord and rejection of other gods by participating in this elimination of false worship; (3) Anyone who accuses a person falsely would incur bloodguilt when throwing the first stone of the execution. This would have been a deterrent against false testimony.
Moses: 12 You may hear a report in one of the cities the Eternal your God is giving you to live in: 13 “Some wicked people have abandoned our faith, and they’ve convinced everyone else in their own city to worship other gods we’ve never had anything to do with!” 14 If you ever hear a report like this, conduct a careful, thorough investigation. If you establish conclusively that the report is true, that such a horrible thing has been done within your nation, 15 then bring your swords and execute everyone who lives in that city! Destroy it completely with everything in it—even the livestock. 16 Pile all the city’s goods in the middle of the public square, and then burn down the whole city and everything in it. This will be a burnt offering showing your complete loyalty to the Eternal your God. That city must never be rebuilt; let it remain a ruin forever. 17 Don’t take any of the goods for yourself because they have been banned; destroy everything. Then the Eternal will stop being so furiously angry. He’ll show you mercy and compassion; and you’ll have many descendants, just as He promised your ancestors, 18 if you’ll listen to the voice of the Eternal, your True God, obey all the commands I’m giving you today, and do what He decides is right.
14 Moses: You’re the children of the Eternal, your True God, so don’t cut yourselves or shave off the front of your hair to honor those who die. 2 Remember you are people who have been set apart for Him; He has chosen you to be His own possession out of all the peoples on the earth.
3 Don’t eat anything that’s forbidden. 4 Here are some examples of land animals you can eat: oxen from your herds; sheep and goats from your flocks; 5 deer, gazelles, roebucks, wild goats, ibexes, antelopes, and mountain sheep, all from the wild. 6 The rule is, you can eat any of the animals that has a divided hoof (that is, a hoof separated into two sections) and chews cud. 7 You can’t eat an animal just because it chews cud or just because it has a divided hoof; both things have to be true. So, for example, the camel, the rabbit, and the rock badger are impure and can’t be eaten because even though they chew cud, they don’t have a divided hoof. 8 The pig is also unclean and can’t be eaten because even though it has a divided hoof, it doesn’t chew cud. Don’t eat the meat of any ritually unclean animals. Don’t even touch their carcasses when they die.
9 You can eat anything that lives in the water if it has fins and scales, 10 but if it doesn’t have fins and scales, then don’t eat it; it’s unclean to you.
11 You can eat any clean bird. 12-18 But here are some examples of birds you shouldn’t eat: birds that hunt and kill, such as the eagle, the falcon, and all kinds of hawks; birds that eat dead flesh, such as the red kite and any other kind of kite, the vulture, the buzzard, and any kind of raven; things that fly around in the night instead of during the day, such as the horned owl, screech owl, little owl, great owl, white owl, and the bat; birds that feed in the water, such as the seagull, pelican, carrion vulture, cormorant, stork, and every kind of heron; and birds that dig in the ground for their food, such as the hoopoe. 19 And don’t eat anything that flies in swarms, such as insects, because they are unclean. 20 But you can eat anything that flies if it is ritually clean.
21 Don’t eat any meat from an animal you find dead of natural causes because its blood remains in the meat. You may give it to the foreigners in your city, and they may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreign merchant. But don’t eat it yourself; you are people who have been set apart for the Eternal your God. Don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Behind these dietary restrictions there’s a moral ideal. The people are being told to set up their community life exactly as the Lord instructs, so that all the other nations will take notice and acknowledge Him (4:6). To do this, they must recognize their own special place in the world, stick to their own proper realms, and not deviate from the way they should live within it. This is another way the people are to express their exclusive loyalty to the Lord. In other words, the sacrificial food for God encompasses the daily food for the people. And the Israelites can only eat animals, birds, and insects that exemplify and support life and do not have characteristics and locomotive ability that blur them between these three habitations of land, sea, and sky.
Moses: 22 Every year, when the seeds you’ve sown in your fields have grown into crops, make sure you set aside a tenth of the produce. 23 Bring this tenth of the grain, oil, and new wine from that year’s crop, as well as all firstborn animals from your herds and flocks, to the place the Eternal your God will choose as a place for His name, and have a feast there in His presence. If you do this each year, you’ll learn to fear the Eternal your God always. 24 If the place where He chooses to put His name is far from where you live, and the distance is too great for you to carry a tenth of that year’s produce there—particularly if He has blessed you— 25 then sell everything you would have carried and bring the money yourself to the place the Eternal your God will choose. 26 When you get there, you can still have a celebration. Use some of the money to buy whatever you crave: cattle or sheep, wine or strong drink, or any other special thing you’d really like. You and your household can have a feast in His presence. 27 Be sure to invite any Levites who live in your city. Be especially generous to them because they won’t have any territory and property of their own to pass down to their children as you do.
28-29 But at the end of every third year, keep a tenth of the year’s produce in your own town instead and give it to the needy people there: the Levites—whose tribe won’t have any territory and property of its own to pass down—the foreigners, the orphans, and the widows. Let them come and take as much as they want to eat for as long as these supplies last. If you do this, the Eternal your God will bless you in everything you do.
15 Moses: At the end of every seventh year, cancel all debts. 2 This is how it will work: anyone who has made a loan to someone else will just let the debtor keep whatever he’s borrowed. That is, if the loan was made to a fellow citizen, to another Israelite, the lender won’t demand repayment because it has been announced that the Eternal is canceling all the debts of His servants. 3 If you’ve made a loan to a foreigner, you can still demand repayment, but let your fellow Israelites keep whatever they’ve borrowed from you. 4-5 However, ideally, there shouldn’t be any poor people among you. If you listen attentively to the voice of the Eternal your God and carefully obey all the commands I’m giving you today, then the Eternal will bless you with great prosperity in the land He’s giving you to live in and pass down within your family. 6 Because the Eternal your God will bless you as He promised, you will lend to many nations, but you won’t borrow; you will rule over many nations, but they won’t rule over you.
7 If, in one of the towns in the land the Eternal your God is giving you, a fellow Israelite does become poor, don’t ignore him and limit your generosity just because the debt will be forgiven. 8 Open your hand willingly, and generously lend as much as is needed at the time. 9 Don’t think like this: “It’s almost the seventh year when debts are canceled. If I lend anything to this other person now, I’ll never get it back!” If you think this way, you’ll be hostile toward your neighbors and you won’t give them anything. They’ll cry out to the Eternal against you, and He’ll consider what you’ve done a sin. 10 So give generously to the person in need. Don’t feel badly about this when you’re doing it; because of your generosity, the Eternal your God will bless you in everything you do, in every project you begin. 11 Unfortunately, there will always be poor people throughout the country. That’s why I’m giving you this command: give generously to your fellow Israelite, to the poor and needy in the land.
12 If a fellow Israelite, a Hebrew man or woman, is sold to you as a slave, only make that person serve you for six years. In the seventh year, set him free from your service. 13 And don’t send him away destitute! 14 Provide generously: give sheep and goats, grain and wine. Give some of what the Eternal your God has blessed you with. 15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and He liberated you from another master so you could serve Him. That’s why I’m commanding you today to do this. 16-18 Don’t feel you’ve been cheated when you set your slave free. It would have cost you twice as much to hire someone to do the same work over those six years, and He will bless you in everything you do because of your generosity. But perhaps your slave will say to you at the end of the six years, “I don’t want to be set free! I love you and your whole family. It’s really good for me to be here with you.” You can accept a slave like this into lifetime service. Perform a special ceremony to mark his new status. Have the slave stand right next to the door of your house, take an awl, and drive it through the slave’s ear lobe into the door. Then pull it out. This will make marks in the ear lobe and in the door that will symbolize the slave. Either a male or a female slave can enter lifetime service this way with this physical mark.
19 If the firstborn of any animal in your herd or flock is a male, set it apart or consecrate it for the Eternal your God. Don’t put the firstborn of any ox to work, and don’t shear your firstborn sheep. These animals already belong to the Eternal One, so their labor and products belong to Him too. 20 Bring them every year to the place the Eternal will choose, and make them part of the feast you and your household eat in the presence of the Eternal your God. 21 But if the firstborn has some defect such as lameness or blindness—any serious problem—don’t offer it as a sacrifice to Him. 22 Instead eat it as a regular meal in your own city. This is not a sacred meal, so people don’t need to be ritually pure to eat it. It will be like eating a gazelle or a deer. 23 But don’t eat its blood; pour it out on the ground like water.
16 Moses: During the month of Abib at the beginning of spring, celebrate Passover in honor of the Eternal, your True God. In that month, He brought you out of Egypt at night. 2 Take an animal from your herd or flock, go to the place He will choose for His name, and offer a Passover sacrifice to the Eternal your God. 3 Don’t eat any leavened bread with it. Eat unleavened bread during the seven days of this celebration because “suffering bread” is what you made when you quickly left your suffering in Egypt. If you eat it again each year, you’ll always remember the day you left Egypt. 4 For these seven days, no one in the whole country should have any yeast. And none of the meat from the sacrifice you offer on the first night of the celebration should be left over on the next day. 5 Don’t offer the Passover sacrifice in any of the other cities the Eternal your God is giving you. 6 Even if it’s some distance, make the journey to the place He will choose for His name. Offer the Passover sacrifice in that place, in the evening, at sunset—the time when you left Egypt. 7 Cook it, and eat it in the place He chooses. In the morning, you can return to your tents, 8 but you must still only eat unleavened bread for the next six days. On the seventh day, the last day of the celebration, soberly gather together to worship Him. Don’t do any work on that day.
There are a number of celebrations found in the Hebrew Scriptures, but only three great feasts are part of the Mosaic law. They retell the story of their covenant relationship with the Lord and provide occasions to share generously with those in need. They give the people the opportunity to acknowledge publicly that He is the source of their abundance, so they won’t be tempted to think they’ve prospered on their own and forget Him.
Each of the three great celebrations are reminders of the servitude in Egypt. Passover, followed by the week of unleavened bread, is a reminder of God redeeming His people from Egypt and falls within March or April each year. The Feast of Weeks, known as Pentecost to Christians, is 50 days after firstfruits or the beginning of the barley harvest and comes in May or June. They are told to remember that they were once slaves in Egypt. The last of the great celebrations, the Feast of Shelters, comes in September or October. It is a reminder of the provision of God when the nation lived in temporary shelters while wandering in the wilderness.
9-10 Another celebration the Eternal your God wants you to have is the Feast of Weeks. Hold this celebration seven weeks after you first begin to cut and harvest the barley in your fields. Each of you will choose something to contribute out of what He has blessed you with. 11 Go to the place He chooses for His name; and have a celebration there in His presence with your sons and daughters, your male and female slaves, and the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows who live in your city. 12 Remember you were slaves in Egypt, and obey these regulations carefully.
13 Later in the year, at the end of the harvest after you’ve finished threshing all your grain and making all your wine, celebrate the Feast of Shelters for seven days.
The Israelites are to make temporary shelters and live in them for a week to remember how they lived in temporary shelters when they left Egypt.
14 Celebrate with your sons and daughters, your male and female slaves, and the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows who live in your city. 15 Celebrate for seven days in honor of the Eternal your God, in the place the Eternal will choose. The Eternal your God will bless you with abundant produce; He will bless everything you do, and you’ll have a lot to celebrate! 16 Three times each year, every male Israelite must appear before Him in the place He chooses for the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover), for the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), and for the Feast of Shelters (Tabernacles). Don’t come empty-handed! 17 Decide what amount you want to contribute voluntarily out of what He has blessed you with, and bring that as a gift.
This next group of laws describes the rights and responsibilities of community leaders in Israel: the judges who will settle disputes, a king who may be chosen to rule the nation, the Levites who will serve at the central sanctuary, and the prophets who will bring the Lord’s word to the people. All of these offices create a balance of power in Israel.
Moses: 18 In each of the cities the Eternal your God is giving you, appoint tribal judges and representatives who will decide cases for the people honestly and fairly.
(to these future judges) 19 Don’t bend the rules for anyone. Don’t favor the rich and powerful, and never take a bribe! A bribe makes people who would decide cases wisely overlook injustice, and it makes people who would be honest give false testimony. 20 Justice! Justice! That’s what you’re after. Then you’ll keep living in the land He is giving you.
21 When you build an altar to the Eternal your God, don’t ever put any kind of sacred wooden pole[n] next to it, 22 and don’t ever set up a monolith or stone pillar. He hates these things!
17 Moses: Don’t sacrifice an ox or a sheep to the Eternal your God if it has any defect or problem. He would be deeply offended by such an offering!
2 What if, in one of the towns the Eternal your God is giving you, a man or a woman does what He considers wrong and breaks His covenant 3 by going and worshiping other gods, bowing down to them or the sun or moon or stars (which I’ve never commanded you to do)? 4 If you discover this, if someone tells you about it, or if you hear about it; then conduct a careful investigation. If you establish conclusively that the report is true, that such a horrible thing has been done within Israel, 5 then bring the man or woman who has done this evil thing out to the gates of your town, and stone that man or woman to death. 6 But for someone to be executed on a charge such as this, there must be testimony from at least two or three witnesses. No one is to be executed on the testimony of just one witness. 7 The witnesses must throw the first deadly stones, and then everyone else must join in. Expel the wicked from your own community.[o]
8 If one person in your town brings a complaint against another to be judged at the city gate, and it’s just too difficult for you to decide what a fair resolution would be—if you can’t determine whether a killing was premeditated, or if you can’t decide who in a dispute makes the best argument, or if you can’t tell whether someone was injured accidentally or intentionally—then adjourn your proceedings and go to the place the Eternal your God will choose. 9 Bring your case to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is serving at the time, and they will give you a verdict. 10 You must carry out their verdict exactly as they stated it because it was delivered in the place the Eternal chose, and it has His authority behind it. 11 Follow each word of the law as they interpret it for you; do everything they’ve told you to do, as they’ve explained it, without deviating from it at all. 12 If anyone is so arrogant that he won’t listen to the priest who serves right there in the presence of the Eternal your God or to the judge of the tribunal, that person must be executed to expel this kind of wickedness from Israel. 13 Everyone will hear about it, and no one will dare to be so arrogant, for they will be afraid.
Having a king is part of God’s plan for Israel. This king is supposed to be someone who depends faithfully on the Lord, not on wealth or power, and who would study God’s laws and follow them. A king like that will be a blessing to everyone in the country. But when the people ask for this king around 1000 b.c., their motives are wrong. They want to depend on this king instead of on God (1 Samuel 8:7). In the years that follow, many ungodly kings bring trouble to the nation and oppress the people. Their political maneuvering and policies of appeasement even lead them to set up altars to foreign gods. The people are ultimately punished for deserting the Lord by being taken into exile away from the promised land.
Moses: 14 Once you’ve gotten into the land the Eternal your God is giving you, and you’ve conquered it and settled there, you may say to yourselves, “Let’s appoint a king to rule our country, just as all the nations around us have!” 15 If you do have a king, remember you must enthrone the king He chooses. It must be a fellow Israelite whom you enthrone; you must not enthrone a foreigner who is not a fellow Israelite. 16 Although an Israelite, he must not try to build a strong army by collecting large herds of horses for his cavalry troops and a chariot corps. The king must certainly not send people back to Egypt to get large herds of horses, because the Lord has commanded you, “Don’t ever go back that way again!” 17 This king must not have many wives. If he takes foreign wives in marriage alliances, they could turn his heart away from the Lord and lead him to worship foreign gods. And the king must not accumulate great quantities of silver and gold for himself.
18 As soon as this king takes the royal throne, he must write out a copy of this law for himself on a scroll with the Levitical priests looking on. 19 He must keep this copy with him and read it every day, so that he will learn to fear the Eternal his God and to obey everything in the law and remember all these regulations very carefully in order to do them. 20 That way he won’t think he’s privileged and oppress and exploit his fellow Israelites. He won’t deviate at all from what the Eternal has commanded, and he and his descendants will rule over Israel in a long dynasty.
18 Moses: The Levitical priests and the whole tribe of Levi will not have any inherited property within Israel. They will be supported by the sacrifices and other offerings that are burnt and set aside for the Eternal. 2 They won’t have any share in the land, as the other Israelites do, but the Eternal Himself will be their share as He promised.
This is a special arrangement between God and the Levites; He’ll provide for them and give them their distinct identity so they can focus on serving Him instead of serving their families.
3 Whenever someone sacrifices an ox or a sheep, the priests are entitled to these portions: one shank (a thigh and shoulder), the cheeks (those tender delicacies), and the fourth compartment of the stomach so they can have rennet to make cheese curds. 4 You must also give the priests the first grain, wine, and olive oil you produce each year, and the first wool you shear from your sheep 5 because the Eternal your God chose Levi and his descendants, out of all of your tribes, to stand in His presence and to serve in His name at all times.
6 If a Levite who’s living in one of your cities anywhere in Israel decides he really wants to go and live in the place the Eternal will choose, 7 he must be allowed to serve in the name of the Eternal his God, like all of the other Levites who are already serving there in the Eternal’s presence. 8 He must be given an equal share of the contributions to eat, apart from anything he earns for performing priestly services.[p]
9 When you’ve settled in the land the Eternal your God is giving you, don’t imitate the horrible practices of the other nations. 10 Don’t ever burn any of your sons or daughters alive as a sacrifice! And don’t ever get involved in any divining, such as predicting fortunes, interpreting omens, sorcery, 11 casting spells, or trying to contact ghosts, spirits, or the dead. 12 The Eternal is horrified when anyone does these things. It’s because of these horrible practices that the Eternal your God is driving those nations out ahead of you. 13 You shall be complete in your obedience and devotion to Him.
The pagan nations around them share the belief that absolute immanent power comes from within creation. They engage in many activities designed to tap into that power so that they can gain knowledge of the future or have influence over others. “Drawing lots” is often done by writing possibilities on pottery shards, putting them in a bag, and then drawing out an answer. Other ways of trying to predict the future or choose the best course include watching the shapes of clouds or listening for natural omens such as bird cries. It is commonly believed that spirits and the dead can also provide guidance and special information. Whatever specific practices are being described here, however, the general principle is once again that the people should trust the Lord, transcendent above creation, as their source of guidance and protection.
Moses: 14 The nations you’re going to displace seek guidance from people who practice divination and predicting. But the Eternal your God doesn’t want you to do that. 15 He will raise up from among your own people a prophet who will be like me.[q] Listen to him. 16 This is just what you asked Him for on the day you gathered at Mount Horeb: “Don’t make me listen to the voice of the Eternal my God anymore! And don’t make me look at that blazing fire! I’ll die!”[r] 17 The Eternal told me, “They’re right. 18 I’ll send them another prophet like you from among their own people. I’ll put My words in the mouth of this prophet who will tell them everything I command him to say. 19 I, Myself, will punish whoever doesn’t listen to his words[s] when the prophet speaks in My name. 20 But a prophet who dares to say anything in My name that I haven’t commanded, or who says anything in the name of another god, will die.” 21 Now you may be wondering, “How will we recognize something He hasn’t commanded a prophet to say?” 22 If a prophet speaks in the Eternal One’s name, but the words turn out not to be true or the prediction doesn’t happen, then He wasn’t actually speaking. That prophet arrogantly spoke in the Lord’s name, but he didn’t really have a message from Him. And so you don’t need to be afraid of what the prophet said.
The next group of laws in Deuteronomy is concerned with making sure people in Israel treat one another honestly and fairly. Safeguards are to be put in place to protect the lives and property of the innocent and to make sure the guilty are caught and punished. These will include the cities of refuge, property markers, and the court system. Each law in this group seeks specifically to prevent people from abusing or manipulating one these safeguards.
19 Moses: When the Eternal your God has destroyed the nations whose land He’s going to give you, when you’ve driven them out and have settled in their cities and are living in their houses, 2-3 then designate three cities of refuge for yourselves in the land He is giving you to live in. Divide your territory into three parts, locate one city centrally in each part, and measure the roads to each of them. That way a person who kills someone accidentally can escape to one of these cities and be safe from revenge.
4 This is the kind of person I’m talking about: someone who kills a friend unintentionally, when there was no grudge between them, 5 such as when two friends go into the forest together to chop wood, and one of them swings an ax to cut a tree, and the ax head slips off the handle, hits his friend, and kills him. A person such as he can flee to one of these cities and be safe from revenge. 6 Otherwise, if the distance to the nearest city of refuge is too great, one of the relatives of the friend who was killed is going to feel honor-bound to avenge the dead man’s blood, and he’ll catch up with him and kill him while he’s still furious about his relative’s death. This wouldn’t be right because the man slaughterer didn’t deserve the death sentence. There was no grudge between these friends—the death was accidental. 7 That’s why I’m commanding you to designate these three cities for yourselves. 8-9 Now if you carefully obey the command I’m giving you today, to love the Eternal your God and always do as He wishes, then He will expand your territory as He promised your ancestors; He’ll give you all the land He told your ancestors He’d give them. If that happens, then designate three more cities for yourselves, besides the first three. 10 That way no innocent blood will be shed in the land He is giving you to live in, and as a nation you won’t have any bloodguilt just because a city of refuge was too far away.
11 But someone who does hate another person, who ambushes and kills that person can’t escape revenge by fleeing to one of these cities. 12 The elders of his city must send representatives to bring the killer back and turn him over to the blood-avenger, the relative of the murder victim who will kill him. 13 Don’t show any pity! You must remove the stain of innocent blood from Israel, so that everything will go well for you.
14 Don’t steal land from your neighbor by moving the boundary marker your ancestors put in place. Each person’s property is an inheritance from the Eternal, who’s giving you this land to live in.
These potential “property disputes” are a divine reflection. When you steal land from another person, you’re taking away what God has given—that’s like stealing from the Lord Himself!
15 The testimony of a single witness is not sufficient to convict a person of a crime or to find someone guilty of doing something wrong. Every charge must be confirmed by two or three witnesses.[t] 16 If one person accuses another of some crime, and you suspect it’s being done out of malice, 17 bring the two people involved into the Eternal’s presence at the sanctuary. Present their case to the priests and the judges who are serving on the tribunal at the time. 18 The judges will conduct a careful investigation. If it turns out that the witness was lying and accused the other Israelite maliciously, 19-21 then do to the witness exactly what he wanted done to the other person. Don’t show any pity! If he wanted the other person killed, then kill him; if he wanted his eye put out or a tooth knocked out or a hand or foot cut off, then do that to him.[u] This will expel the wicked from your own community. Everyone else will hear what happens and be afraid to do the same thing themselves, so none of you will ever do such an evil thing to each other again.
20 Moses: This is how you should act during wartime: When you go to battle against your enemies, if you see their army is larger than yours and they have horses and chariots, don’t be afraid of them! The Eternal your God is with you—the same God who defeated Pharaoh and brought you out of Egypt. 2 As you are approaching the battlefield, your priest will come over to you and address you: 3 “Listen, Israel! Today you’re going to fight a battle against your enemies. Don’t be intimidated by them! Don’t be afraid! Don’t run away! Don’t let them terrify you! 4 The Eternal, your True God, has come out here with you, and He’ll fight for you against your enemies and save you.” 5 Then the officials will say to the people who are eligible for a deferment, “Has anyone just built a new house but hasn’t begun to use it yet? Go back to your house, because if you died in this battle, someone else would dedicate it. 6 Has anyone planted a vineyard but hasn’t enjoyed its fruit yet? Go back to your house, because if you died in this battle, someone else would be the first to enjoy its fruit. 7 Has anyone become engaged to a woman but hasn’t consummated the marriage? Go back to your house, because if you died in this battle, someone else would take her.” 8 They’ll continue, “Is anyone here afraid or intimidated? You can go back home too! We don’t want you to make everyone else as scared as you are!” 9 When the officials have finished speaking to the troops, they’ll appoint commanders to lead each section of the army.
10 When you first approach a city you’re going to fight against, shout out, “Peace!” 11 If they shout back, “Peace!” and open their gates to you, then you must let them surrender. Make everyone in the city your slaves, and put them to work for you. 12 But if the city doesn’t surrender, if it resists you instead, then lay siege to it. 13 When the Eternal your God enables you to capture the city, kill all the men who are left in it with your swords. 14 But you can take the women, children, livestock, all the other goods in the city, and all of its spoils as your plunder for your use. The Eternal your God has given you these spoils from your enemies.
15 This is what you’re to do with cities that are a great distance from you that don’t belong to the nations living here. 16 But when you conquer one of the cities the Eternal, your True God, is giving you to live in and pass on to your children, don’t spare anything that breathes! 17 If it’s a city that belongs to the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, or the Jebusites, then completely destroy the inhabitants as He has commanded you. 18 If you don’t, they’ll teach you to do all the horrible things they do for their gods, and you’ll sin against Him.
19 When you’re fighting against a city, and it hasn’t fallen to you even after a long siege, don’t chop down all the trees around it. You can eat the fruit and nuts they produce, so don’t cut them down. Are these trees humans who are resisting your siege? Of course not! 20 Only cut down the trees you know don’t produce any food. You can use them to build siege machines against the city you’re fighting with until it falls.
Israelite teachers and scribes are fond of organizing material using mnemonic devices. If two writings share a key word, phrase, or idea, it is considered clever and attractive to put them next to one another. This principle is applied often as the first law in Deuteronomy 21:1 begins by using some Hebrew words similar to those at the end of the last law in the previous group. Even though the second law in 21:10 is really about marriage, it begins, “When you go to battle against your enemies,” transitioning from the warfare laws. The third law follows because it starts by talking about marriage, even though it’s really about the inheritance rights of sons. And the next law also talks about sons—except that they’re so disobedient, they need to be executed. So the final law in the group is about executions. These language techniques are intended to help the Israelites memorize the laws.
21 Moses: If a murder victim is found lying on the ground in the open field, anywhere in the territory the Eternal your God is giving you to live in, and no one knows who the killer was, then perform a special ceremony to remove the bloodguilt from your land. 5 Send for the priests, the descendants of Levi, the ones the Eternal your God chose to serve Him and to bless His name, because they’re the ones who settle disputes and handle cases of injury like this.[v] 2 Have your elders and judges measure the distance from the body to the nearby cities. 3 The elders of the city that’s closest to the body will have jurisdiction and offer a special sacrifice. Have them take a heifer that has never been put to work pulling a yoke, 4 bring it down by a flowing stream onto land where no crops have ever been planted or grown, and break its neck in that stream. 6 Then in the presence of the priests, have those city elders wash their hands over the heifer’s corpse and take an oath: 7 “Our hands didn’t shed this blood, and our eyes never saw who did. 8 Eternal, please cover the wickedness of Your people Israel, the ones You delivered from slavery. Please don’t consider your people Israel guilty of shedding innocent blood!” If this ceremony is performed, that city will be forgiven for the blood that was shed near it. 9 You will remove the bloodguilt from your nation because you’ve done what the Eternal considers right.
The Hebrew practice of kipper is when one party makes a gift to another in order to reestablish a good relationship between two parties and remove bloodguilt. The emphasis is not so much on the gift itself (although it should be a worthy one), but on the first party’s desire for reconciliation. When the kipper is a sacrificial animal resolving an offense that would otherwise be settled according to the principle of “a life for a life,” the death of the animal is a substitution for what should have been the death of the murderer. This situation helps Christians understand what the sacrificial system provides for Israel before the Lord and what Jesus does for us on the cross. His death is a substitutionary sacrifice, but it is also a kipper, a gift that reestablishes our relationship with God.
Moses: 10 When you go to battle against your enemies and the Eternal, your True God, enables you to defeat them and take them captive, 11 you may see a beautiful woman among the captives and be attracted to her and want to marry her. 12 Bring her back to your house, and then have her shave her head and cut her nails 13 and exchange her old clothes she was wearing when she was captured for new ones. Let her stay in your house and mourn for her father and mother for a month. Only after that may you, as her husband, have sexual relations with her. She will be your fully legal wife and you her husband. 14 If you are ever displeased with her and divorce her, you must give her freedom and send her anywhere she wants to go. You’re not allowed to sell her into slavery, and you can’t turn her into your own slave because you humiliated her.
15 Suppose a man has two wives, and he favors one over the other, loving one and not loving the other. If they’ve both borne him sons, but the firstborn doesn’t belong to his favorite wife, 16-17 he can’t designate the eldest son of his favorite wife as the firstborn instead. When he divides his property and gives his sons their inheritances, he must recognize his true firstborn, the eldest son of the other wife, and give him a double portion of all his property as is customary for all men. That son was the first one created by the man’s generative power, so the rights of the firstborn belong to him.
18 If anyone has a stubborn and rebellious son who refuses to obey his father and mother, who won’t even listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his parents may bring him to the city gate and formally accuse him in court, 20 telling the city elders what wicked things he has done. For example, “This is our son. He’s stubborn and rebellious! He won’t obey us. He’s a glutton and a drunk!” 21 Then all the people of the city will stone him to death. You must expel the wicked from your own community.[w] Everyone else in Israel will hear about it and fear the consequences of such rebellion.
22 If someone does something so wicked that it’s punishable by death, and if you execute that person and then hang the body on a pole, 23 don’t leave the body up there overnight. Bury it that same day because everyone who hangs is cursed by God.[x] Otherwise you will defile the ground the Eternal your God is giving you to live on.
The next group of laws deals generally with the theme of property: what to do with livestock (whether it’s yours or someone else’s), what kind of clothes to make and wear, how to build a house, how to grow crops. But this theme is defined so broadly to embrace all these laws that they are likely also gathered together by the same mnemonic principle as the previous group.
22 Moses: If you see your neighbor’s ox or sheep wandering away, don’t ignore it. Bring the animal back to its owner. 2 If the owner lives far from you, or if you don’t know whose animal it is, bring it back to your house and take care of it until the owner comes looking for it, and then return it to the Israelite. 3 Do the same thing with a donkey or a garment or anything else a neighbor might lose. If you find it, don’t ignore it; take care of it until the owner comes looking for it. 4 If you see your neighbor’s donkey or ox has fallen down in the roadway, don’t ignore it. Help that person get the animal back on its feet.
5 A woman must not wear men’s clothing, and men must not put on women’s garments. The Eternal your God is horrified when anyone does this.
6 If you come across a bird’s nest by the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and there are baby chicks or eggs in the nest and the mother bird is keeping them warm, don’t take the mother with them. 7 You must let the mother go, but you may take the chicks or eggs for yourself. If you do this, God will bless you; everything will go well with you, and you’ll live a long time.
8 When you build a new house, make sure you put a low wall around the edge of the roof so that no one will fall off and be killed. That way there will be no bloodguilt on your house as a result of your negligence.
Whether it be home construction, dietary practices and food preparation, or farming and livestock, Israelite customs should reflect the correct order and division of humans, animals, and plants. Further, all practice should encourage life, and not death.
Moses: 9 Don’t plant your vineyard with two kinds of seed. If you do, everything that grows there will not be pure, both what grows from the seeds and what grows on the vines. 10 Don’t plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together. 11 Don’t wear any material made of both wool and linen.
12 Make tassels for the four corners of the cloak you wear, as a reminder of God’s instructions.
The laws in the next group all address cases where sexual relations may have taken place outside of lawful marriage. This is considered not just immoral but also a threat to a foundational institution of Israelite society—the family. Sexual indiscretion is therefore punished with execution, in order to remove the threat from the midst of the community. In a context where a rival pagan value system exerts a constant push away from the pattern of life God outlined, such bold consequences are necessary to keep the nation on track while forming this new type of society.
Moses: 13 What if a man marries a woman and has sexual relations with her, but he ends up hating her, 14 falsely accuses her of shameful things, and slanders her publicly, saying, “I married this woman, but then I discovered she wasn’t a virgin”? 15 If this happens, the girl’s father and mother can clear her name by providing evidence of her virginity to the elders in a legal proceeding at the city gate. 16 The girl’s father may tell the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man as his wife. But now he dislikes her 17 and has falsely accused her, telling me, ‘I found out your daughter wasn’t a virgin!’ But here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” If the parents can provide the evidence by spreading out the cloth for the elders to see, 18 the city elders must punish the husband. He is to be beaten 19 and then fined two and a half pounds of silver, twice the amount of the bride price he paid before the marriage, which will be given to the girl’s father because this man publicly slandered one of Israel’s virgins. He can’t ever divorce her after this; he has to keep her as his wife. 20 But if the charge is true, and the girl wasn’t a virgin, 21 then bring her to the door of her father’s house. There the people of her city will stone her to death because she did something no Israelite should ever do: she was a fornicator while she was living in her father’s house! Expel the wicked from your own community.[y]
22 If it’s discovered that a man has been having sexual relations with a married woman, both the man and the woman must be put to death. Expel the wicked from Israel this way.
23 What if a man meets a girl who’s a virgin but who’s engaged to someone else, and he has sexual relations with her? If this happens in the city, 24 bring them both out to the gate of that city where the public will stone them to death: the girl, because she was in the city and could have cried for help but didn’t, meaning she consented; and the man, because he violated another man’s wife. Expel the wicked from your community this way. 25 But if this happens out in the country—if a man finds an engaged girl out there and overpowers and rapes her—then only the man must die. 26-27 But don’t do anything to the girl; she did nothing wrong and doesn’t deserve to die. When this man came after her, she cried for help, but no one was there to respond. She’s as innocent as the victim of a sudden murderous attack—there was nothing she could do.
28 If a man meets a girl who’s a virgin and who isn’t engaged to someone else, and he forces himself on her, when what he’s done is discovered, 29 he must pay 20 ounces of silver to her father as a bride price, and she will become his wife. He can’t ever divorce her after this because he’s dishonored her.
By marrying her, the rapist ensures she will be cared for during her lifetime because no other man would marry a woman who isn’t a virgin—even under such circumstances.
30 A man is not allowed to marry a woman who was once married to his father. He must respect the privacy and dignity of his father’s intimate relations with his wife.
The next group of laws describes certain people who may not come into the holy place to worship the Lord. This is the defining right of a member in good standing of the community, so the people described here are, in effect, being excluded from community membership itself. The reasons for exclusion reflect Deuteronomy’s ongoing concerns: rejecting pagan practices, upholding lawful marriage, maintaining wholeness and purity, and showing compassion to those in need.
23 Moses: No emasculated man, either by crushing or severing his male organs, may come and worship the Eternal. 2 No one born from an illegal or incestuous union may come and worship the Eternal. This prohibition stays in effect for 10 generations. 3 No Ammonite or Moabite may join the Israelite community and come and worship the Eternal. This prohibition stays in effect for 10 generations. 4 This is because they wouldn’t give you any food or water when you came out of Egypt and because they hired someone to curse you instead—Balaam (Beor’s son) from Pethor in northwest Mesopotamia.[z] 5 But the Eternal your God wouldn’t listen to Balaam, and He turned his curse into a blessing for you because the Eternal your God loves you. 6 Don’t ever make peace with them, and don’t align with them, for as long as you live.
These ordinances seem unduly harsh, but two ideas are at play. First, Lot’s sexual relations with his daughters bring forth the Ammonite and Moabite peoples, so this command is a commentary reflecting on that event. Second, these restrictions are only temporary. God requires a ritually pure and completely devoted people (both internal and external) in order to bring forth the “messianic seed of woman.” One day the physically maimed and social outcasts will be fully integrated into the people of God. Although Isaiah 56:3–5 models this expectation, Jesus makes it a reality.
Moses: 7 Don’t be hostile toward the Edomites because they’re related to you. And don’t be hostile toward the Egyptians because you were once foreign residents in their land. 8 The great-grandchildren of an Edomite or Egyptian may join the Israelite community and come and worship the Eternal.
9 When you go to fight your enemies, maintain strict standards of moral and ritual decency in your camp. 10 If a man becomes ritually impure because of a nocturnal emission, he can’t remain in the camp. He has to stay outside that day. 11 But when evening comes, once he’s washed himself in water, he may come back into the camp at sunset which begins the new day.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.