Old/New Testament
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[a] 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.[b]
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.[c]
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.[d] 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!”[e] 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[f] 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.
13 As Jesus left the temple later that day, one of the disciples noticed the grandeur of Herod’s temple.
Disciple: Teacher, I can’t believe the size of these stones! Look at these magnificent buildings!
Jesus: 2 Look closely at these magnificent buildings. Someday there won’t be one of these great stones left on another. Everything will be thrown down.
3 They took a seat on the Mount of Olives, across the valley from the temple; and Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked Jesus to explain His statement to them privately.
Peter, James, John, and Andrew: 4 Don’t keep us in the dark. When will the temple be destroyed? What sign will let us know that it’s about to happen?
Jesus: 5 Take care that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come claiming to be Mine, saying, “I am the One,” and they will fool lots of people. 7 You will hear of wars, or that war is coming, but don’t lose heart. These things will have to happen, although it won’t mean the end yet. 8 Tribe will rise up against tribe, nation against nation, and there will be earthquakes in place after place and famines. These are a prelude to “labor pains” that precede the temple’s fall.
9 Be careful, because you will be delivered to trial and beaten in the places of worship. Kings and governors will stand in judgment over you as you speak in My name. 10 The good news of the coming kingdom of God must be delivered first in every land and every language. 11 When people bring you up on charges and it is your time to defend yourself, don’t worry about what message you’ll deliver. Whatever comes to your mind, speak it, because the Holy Spirit will inspire it.
12 But it will get worse. Brothers will betray each other to death, and fathers will betray their children. Children will turn against their parents and cause them to be executed. 13 Everyone will hate you because of your allegiance to Me. But if you’re faithful until the end, you will be rescued.
14 You will see that which desecrates our most holy place[a] [described by Daniel the prophet][b] out of place.
Let the one who reads and hears understand.
Jesus: On the day you see it, whoever is in Judea should flee for the mountains. 15 The person on the rooftop shouldn’t reenter the house to get anything, 16 and the person working in the field shouldn’t turn back to grab his coat. 17 It will be horrible for women who are pregnant or who are nursing their children when those days come. 18 And pray that you don’t have to run for your lives in the winter. 19 When those days come, there will be suffering like nobody has seen from the beginning of the world that God created until now, and it never will be like this again. 20 And if the Lord didn’t shorten those days for the sake of the ones He has chosen, then nobody would survive them.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.