Deuteronomy 16-19

Deuteronomy 16

¹Take note of the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God: for in the month of Abib the Lord your God took you out of Egypt by night.

²The Passover offering, from your flock or your herd, is to be given to the Lord your God in the place marked out by him as the resting-place of his name.

³Take no leavened bread with it; for seven days let your food be unleavened bread, that is, the bread of sorrow; for you came out of the land of Egypt quickly: so the memory of that day, when you came out of the land of Egypt, will be with you all your life.

⁴For seven days let no leaven be used through all your land; and nothing of the flesh which is put to death in the evening of the first day is to be kept through the night till morning.

⁵The Passover offering is not to be put to death in any of the towns which the Lord your God gives you:

⁶But in the place marked out by the Lord your God as the resting-place of his name, there you are to put the Passover to death in the evening, at sundown, at that time of the year when you came out of Egypt.

⁷It is to be cooked and taken as food in the place marked out by the Lord: and in the morning you are to go back to your tents.

⁸For six days let your food be unleavened bread; and on the seventh day there is to be a holy meeting to the Lord your God; no work is to be done.

⁹Let seven weeks be numbered from the first day when the grain is cut.

¹⁰Then keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God, with an offering freely given to him from the wealth he has given you:

¹¹Then you are to be glad before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your man-servant and your woman-servant, and the Levite who is with you, and the man from a strange country, and the child without a father, and the widow, who are living among you, in the place marked out by the Lord your God as a resting-place for his name.

¹²And you will keep in mind that you were a servant in the land of Egypt: and you will take care to keep all these laws.

¹³You are to keep the feast of tents for seven days after you have got in all your grain and made your wine:

¹⁴You are to keep the feast with joy, you and your son and your daughter, your man-servant and your woman-servant, and the Levite, and the man from a strange country, and the child without a father, and the widow, who are living among you.

¹⁵Keep the feast to the Lord your God for seven days, in the place marked out by the Lord: because the blessing of the Lord your God will be on all the produce of your land and all the work of your hands, and you will have nothing but joy.

¹⁶Three times in the year let all your males come before the Lord your God in the place named by him; at the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks, and the feast of tents: and they are not to come before the Lord with nothing in their hands;

¹⁷Every man is to give as he is able, in the measure of the blessing which the Lord your God has given you.

¹⁸You are to make judges and overseers in all your towns which the Lord your God gives you, for every tribe: and they are to be upright men, judging the people in righteousness.

¹⁹You are not to be moved in your judging by a man's position, you are not to take rewards; for rewards make the eyes of the wise man blind, and the decisions of the upright false.

²⁰Let righteousness be your guide, so that you may have life, and take for your heritage the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

²¹Let no holy tree of any sort be planted by the altar of the Lord your God which you will make.

²²You are not to put up stone pillars, for they are hated by the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 17

¹No ox or sheep which has a mark on it or is damaged in any way may be offered to the Lord your God: for that is disgusting to the Lord your God.

²If there is any man or woman among you, in any of the towns which the Lord your God gives you, who does evil in the eyes of the Lord your God, sinning against his agreement,

³By becoming a servant of other gods and worshipping them or the sun or the moon or all the stars of heaven, against my orders;

⁴If word of this comes to your ears, then let this thing be looked into with care, and if there is no doubt that it is true, and such evil has been done in Israel;

⁵Then you are to take the man or woman who has done the evil to the public place of your town, and they are to be stoned with stones till they are dead.

⁶On the word of two or three witnesses, a man may be given the punishment of death; but he is not to be put to death on the word of one witness.

⁷The hands of the witnesses will be the first to put him to death, and after them the hands of all the people. So you are to put away the evil from among you.

⁸If you are not able to give a decision as to who is responsible for a death, or who is right in a cause, or who gave the first blow in a fight, and there is a division of opinion about it in your town: then go to the place marked out by the Lord your God;

⁹And come before the priests, the Levites, or before him who is judge at the time: and they will go into the question and give you a decision:

¹⁰And you are to be guided by the decision they give in the place named by the Lord, and do whatever they say:

¹¹Acting in agreement with their teaching and the decision they give: not turning to one side or the other from the word they have given you.

¹²And any man who, in his pride, will not give ear to the priest whose place is there before the Lord your God, or to the judge, is to be put to death: you are to put away the evil from Israel.

¹³And all the people, hearing of it, will be full of fear and put away their pride.

¹⁴When you have come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken it for a heritage and are living in it, if it is your desire to have a king over you, like the other nations round about you;

¹⁵Then see that you take as your king the man named by the Lord your God: let your king be one of your countrymen, not a man of another nation who is not one of yourselves.

¹⁶And he is not to get together a great army of horses for himself, or make the people go back to Egypt to get horses for him: because the Lord has said, You will never again go back that way.

¹⁷And he is not to have a great number of wives, for fear that his heart may be turned away; or great wealth of silver and gold.

¹⁸And when he has taken his place on the seat of his kingdom, he is to make in a book a copy of this law, from that which the priests, the Levites, have in their care:

¹⁹And it is to be with him for his reading all the days of his life, so that he may be trained in the fear of the Lord his God to keep and do all the words of this teaching and these laws:

²⁰So that his heart may not be lifted up over his countrymen, and he may not be turned away from the orders, to one side or the other: but that his life and the lives of his children may be long in his kingdom in Israel.

Deuteronomy 18

¹The priests, the Levites, that is, all the tribe of Levi, will have no part or heritage with Israel: their food and their heritage will be the offerings of the Lord made by fire.

²And they will have no heritage among their countrymen: the Lord is their heritage, as he has said to them.

³And this is to be the priests' right: those who make an offering of a sheep or an ox are to give to the priest the top part of the leg and the two sides of the head and the stomach.

⁴And in addition you are to give him the first of your grain and wine and oil, and the first wool cut from your sheep.

⁵For he, and his sons after him for ever, have been marked out by the Lord your God from all your tribes, to do the work of priests in the name of the Lord.

⁶And if a Levite, moved by a strong desire, comes from any town in all Israel where he is living to the place marked out by the Lord;

⁷Then he will do the work of a priest in the name of the Lord his God, with all his brothers the Levites who are there before the Lord.

⁸His food will be the same as theirs, in addition to what has come to him as the price of his property.

⁹When you have come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, do not take as your example the disgusting ways of those nations.

¹⁰Let there not be seen among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter go through the fire, or anyone using secret arts, or a maker of strange sounds, or a reader of signs, or any wonder-worker,

¹¹Or anyone using secret force on people, or putting questions to a spirit, or having secret knowledge, or going to the dead for directions.

¹²For all who do such things are disgusting to the Lord; and because of these disgusting things the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

¹³You are to be upright in heart before the Lord your God.

¹⁴For these nations, whose land you are taking, give attention to readers of signs and to those using secret arts: but the Lord your God will not let you do so.

¹⁵The Lord your God will give you a prophet from among your people, like me; you will give ear to him;

¹⁶In answer to the request you made to the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the great meeting, when you said, Let not the voice of the Lord my God come to my ears again, and let me not see this great fire any more, or death will overtake me.

¹⁷Then the Lord said to me, What they have said is well said.

¹⁸I will give them a prophet from among themselves, like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he will say to them whatever I give him orders to say.

¹⁹And whoever does not give ear to my words which he will say in my name, will be responsible to me.

²⁰But the prophet who takes it on himself to say words in my name which I have not given him orders to say, or who says anything in the name of other gods, will come to his death.

²¹And if you say in your hearts, How are we to be certain that the word does not come from the Lord?

²²When a prophet makes a statement in the name of the Lord, if what he says does not take place and his words do not come true, then his word is not the word of the Lord: the words of the prophet were said in the pride of his heart, and you are to have no fear of him.

Deuteronomy 19

¹When the nations, whose land the Lord your God is giving you, have been cut off by him, and you have taken their place and are living in their towns and in their houses;

²You are to have three towns marked out in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for your heritage.

³You are to make ready a way, and see that the land which the Lord your God is giving you for your heritage, is marked out into three parts, to which any taker of life may go in flight.

⁴This is to be the rule for anyone who goes in flight there, after causing the death of his neighbour in error and not through hate;

⁵For example, if a man goes into the woods with his neighbour for the purpose of cutting down trees, and when he takes his axe to give a blow to the tree, the head of the axe comes off, and falling on to his neighbour gives him a wound causing his death; then the man may go in flight to one of these towns and be safe:

⁶For if not, he who has the right of punishment may go running after the taker of life in the heat of his wrath, and overtake him because the way is long, and give him a death-blow; though it is not right for him to be put to death because he was not moved by hate.

⁷And so I am ordering you to see that three towns are marked out for this purpose.

⁸And if the Lord your God makes wide the limits of your land, as he said in his oath to your fathers, and gives you all the land which he undertook to give to your fathers;

⁹If you keep and do all these orders which I give you today, loving the Lord your God and walking ever in his ways; then let three more towns, in addition to these three, be marked out for you:

¹⁰So that in all your land, which the Lord your God is giving you for your heritage, no man may be wrongly put to death, for which you will be responsible.

¹¹But if any man has hate for his neighbour, and waiting for him secretly makes an attack on him and gives him a blow causing his death, and then goes in flight to one of these towns;

¹²The responsible men of his town are to send and take him, and give him up to the one who has the right of punishment to be put to death.

¹³Have no pity on him, so that Israel may be clear from the crime of putting a man to death without cause, and it will be well for you.

¹⁴Your neighbour's landmark, which was put in its place by the men of old times, is not to be moved or taken away in the land of your heritage which the Lord your God is giving you.

¹⁵One witness may not make a statement against a man in relation to any sin or wrongdoing which he has done: on the word of two or three witnesses a question is to be judged.

¹⁶If a false witness makes a statement against a man, saying that he has done wrong,

¹⁷Then the two men, between whom the argument has taken place, are to come before the Lord, before the priests and judges who are then in power;

¹⁸And the judges will have the question looked into with care: and if the witness is seen to be false and to have made a false statement against his brother,

¹⁹Then do to him what it was his purpose to do to his brother: and so put away the evil from among you.

²⁰And the rest of the people, hearing of it, will be full of fear, and never again do such evil among you.

²¹Have no pity; let life be given for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.