Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

What God Requires^[a]

⁸ Moses quickly bowed down to the ground and worshiped. ⁹ He said, “Lord, if you really are pleased with me, I ask you to go with us. These people are stubborn, but forgive our evil and our sin, and accept us as your own people.”

The Covenant Is Renewed^(A)

¹⁰ The Lord said to Moses, “I now make a covenant with the people of Israel. In their presence I will do great things such as have never been done anywhere on earth among any of the nations. All the people will see what great things I, the Lord, can do, because I am going to do an awesome thing for you. ¹¹ Obey the laws that I am giving you today. I will drive out the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as you advance. ¹² Do not make any treaties with the people of the country into which you are going, because this could be a fatal trap for you. ^13 (B)Instead, tear down their altars, destroy their sacred pillars, and cut down their symbols of the goddess Asherah.

¹⁴ “Do not worship any other god, because I, the Lord, tolerate no rivals. ¹⁵ Do not make any treaties with the people of the country, because when they worship their pagan gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you to join them, and you will be tempted to eat the food they offer to their gods. ¹⁶ Your sons might marry those foreign women, who would lead them to be unfaithful to me and to worship their pagan gods.

^17 (C)“Do not make gods of metal and worship them.

^18 (D)“Keep the Festival of Unleavened Bread. As I have commanded you, eat unleavened bread for seven days in the month of Abib, because it was in that month that you left Egypt.

^19 (E)“Every first-born son and first-born male domestic animal belongs to me, ^20 (F)but you are to buy back every first-born donkey by offering a lamb in its place. If you do not buy it back, break its neck. Buy back every first-born son.

“No one is to appear before me without an offering.

^21 (G)“You have six days in which to do your work, but do not work on the seventh day, not even during plowing time or harvest.

^22 (H)“Keep the Harvest Festival when you begin to harvest the first crop of your wheat, and keep the Festival of Shelters in the autumn when you gather your fruit.

²³ “Three times a year all of your men must come to worship me, the Lord, the God of Israel. ²⁴ After I have driven out the nations before you and extended your territory, no one will try to conquer your country during the three festivals.

^25 (I)“Do not offer bread made with yeast when you sacrifice an animal to me. Do not keep until the following morning any part of the animal killed at the Passover Festival.

^26 (J)“Each year bring to the house of the Lord the first grain that you harvest.

“Do not cook a young sheep or goat in its mother's milk.”

²⁷ The Lord said to Moses, “Write these words down, because it is on the basis of these words that I am making a covenant with you and with Israel.” ²⁸ Moses stayed there with the Lord forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

Jesus before Pilate^(A)

²⁸ Early in the morning Jesus was taken from Caiaphas' house to the governor's palace. The Jewish authorities did not go inside the palace, for they wanted to keep themselves ritually clean, in order to be able to eat the Passover meal. ²⁹ So Pilate went outside to them and asked, “What do you accuse this man of?”

³⁰ Their answer was, “We would not have brought him to you if he had not committed a crime.”

³¹ Pilate said to them, “Then you yourselves take him and try him according to your own law.”

They replied, “We are not allowed to put anyone to death.” (^32 (B)This happened in order to make come true what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he would die.)