Bible in 90 Days Plan

¹Observe the month of Abib by keeping the passover to the LORD your God, for in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night.

²You shall offer the passover sacrifice to the LORD your God, from the flock and the herd, at the place that the LORD will choose as a dwelling for his name.

³You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it — the bread of affliction — because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt.

⁴No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days; and none of the meat of what you slaughter on the evening of the first day shall remain until morning.

⁵You are not permitted to offer the passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you.

⁶But at the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, only there shall you offer the passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, the time of day when you departed from Egypt.

⁷You shall cook it and eat it at the place that the LORD your God will choose; the next morning you may go back to your tents.

⁸For six days you shall continue to eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly for the LORD your God, when you shall do no work.

⁹You shall count seven weeks; begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain.

¹⁰Then you shall keep the festival of weeks to the LORD your God, contributing a freewill offering in proportion to the blessing that you have received from the LORD your God.

¹¹Rejoice before the LORD your God — you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, the Levites resident in your towns, as well as the strangers, the orphans, and the widows who are among you — at the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.

¹²Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and diligently observe these statutes.

¹³You shall keep the festival of booths for seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your wine press.

¹⁴Rejoice during your festival, you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, as well as the Levites, the strangers, the orphans, and the widows resident in your towns.

¹⁵Seven days you shall keep the festival to the LORD your God at the place that the LORD will choose; for the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all your undertakings, and you shall surely celebrate.

¹⁶Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose: at the festival of unleavened bread, at the festival of weeks, and at the festival of booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed;

¹⁷all shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you.

¹⁸You shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes, in all your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, and they shall render just decisions for the people.

¹⁹You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.

²⁰Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

²¹You shall not plant any tree as a sacred pole beside the altar that you make for the LORD your God;

²²nor shall you set up a stone pillar — things that the LORD your God hates.

¹You must not sacrifice to the LORD your God an ox or a sheep that has a defect, anything seriously wrong; for that is abhorrent to the LORD your God.

²If there is found among you, in one of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, and transgresses his covenant

³by going to serve other gods and worshiping them — whether the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden —

⁴and if it is reported to you or you hear of it, and you make a thorough inquiry, and the charge is proved true that such an abhorrent thing has occurred in Israel,

⁵then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has committed this crime and you shall stone the man or woman to death.

⁶On the evidence of two or three witnesses the death sentence shall be executed; a person must not be put to death on the evidence of only one witness.

⁷The hands of the witnesses shall be the first raised against the person to execute the death penalty, and afterward the hands of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

⁸If a judicial decision is too difficult for you to make between one kind of bloodshed and another, one kind of legal right and another, or one kind of assault and another — any such matters of dispute in your towns — then you shall immediately go up to the place that the LORD your God will choose,

⁹where you shall consult with the levitical priests and the judge who is in office in those days; they shall announce to you the decision in the case.

¹⁰Carry out exactly the decision that they announce to you from the place that the LORD will choose, diligently observing everything they instruct you.

¹¹You must carry out fully the law that they interpret for you or the ruling that they announce to you; do not turn aside from the decision that they announce to you, either to the right or to the left.

¹²As for anyone who presumes to disobey the priest appointed to minister there to the LORD your God, or the judge, that person shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.

¹³All the people will hear and be afraid, and will not act presumptuously again.

¹⁴When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,”

¹⁵you may indeed set over you a king whom the LORD your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community.

¹⁶Even so, he must not acquire many horses for himself, or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the LORD has said to you, “You must never return that way again.”

¹⁷And he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself.

¹⁸When he has taken the throne of his kingdom, he shall have a copy of this law written for him in the presence of the levitical priests.

¹⁹It shall remain with him and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes,

²⁰neither exalting himself above other members of the community nor turning aside from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, so that he and his descendants may reign long over his kingdom in Israel.

¹The levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no allotment or inheritance within Israel. They may eat the sacrifices that are the LORD’s portion

²but they shall have no inheritance among the other members of the community; the LORD is their inheritance, as he promised them.

³This shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: they shall give to the priest the shoulder, the two jowls, and the stomach.

⁴The first fruits of your grain, your wine, and your oil, as well as the first of the fleece of your sheep, you shall give him.

⁵For the LORD your God has chosen Levi out of all your tribes, to stand and minister in the name of the LORD, him and his sons for all time.

⁶If a Levite leaves any of your towns, from wherever he has been residing in Israel, and comes to the place that the LORD will choose (and he may come whenever he wishes),

⁷then he may minister in the name of the LORD his God, like all his fellow-Levites who stand to minister there before the LORD.

⁸They shall have equal portions to eat, even though they have income from the sale of family possessions.

⁹When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations.

¹⁰No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer,

¹¹or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead.

¹²For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the LORD; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the LORD your God is driving them out before you.

¹³You must remain completely loyal to the LORD your God.

¹⁴Although these nations that you are about to dispossess do give heed to soothsayers and diviners, as for you, the LORD your God does not permit you to do so.

¹⁵The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.

¹⁶This is what you requested of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: “If I hear the voice of the LORD my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.”

¹⁷Then the LORD replied to me: “They are right in what they have said.

¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.

¹⁹Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable.

²⁰But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak — that prophet shall die.”

²¹You may say to yourself, “How can we recognize a word that the LORD has not spoken?”

²²If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.

¹When the LORD your God has cut off the nations whose land the LORD your God is giving you, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their towns and in their houses,

²you shall set apart three cities in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess.

³You shall calculate the distances and divide into three regions the land that the LORD your God gives you as a possession, so that any homicide can flee to one of them.

⁴Now this is the case of a homicide who might flee there and live, that is, someone who has killed another person unintentionally when the two had not been at enmity before:

⁵Suppose someone goes into the forest with another to cut wood, and when one of them swings the ax to cut down a tree, the head slips from the handle and strikes the other person who then dies; the killer may flee to one of these cities and live.

⁶But if the distance is too great, the avenger of blood in hot anger might pursue and overtake and put the killer to death, although a death sentence was not deserved, since the two had not been at enmity before.

⁷Therefore I command you: You shall set apart three cities.

⁸If the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he swore to your ancestors — and he will give you all the land that he promised your ancestors to give you,

⁹provided you diligently observe this entire commandment that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God and walking always in his ways — then you shall add three more cities to these three,

¹⁰so that the blood of an innocent person may not be shed in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, thereby bringing bloodguilt upon you.

¹¹But if someone at enmity with another lies in wait and attacks and takes the life of that person, and flees into one of these cities,

¹²then the elders of the killer’s city shall send to have the culprit taken from there and handed over to the avenger of blood to be put to death.

¹³Show no pity; you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, so that it may go well with you.

¹⁴You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, set up by former generations, on the property that will be allotted to you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess.

¹⁵A single witness shall not suffice to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing in connection with any offense that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.

¹⁶If a malicious witness comes forward to accuse someone of wrongdoing,

¹⁷then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days,

¹⁸and the judges shall make a thorough inquiry. If the witness is a false witness, having testified falsely against another,

¹⁹then you shall do to the false witness just as the false witness had meant to do to the other. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

²⁰The rest shall hear and be afraid, and a crime such as this shall never again be committed among you.

²¹Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

¹When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots, an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.

²Before you engage in battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the troops,

³and shall say to them: “Hear, O Israel! Today you are drawing near to do battle against your enemies. Do not lose heart, or be afraid, or panic, or be in dread of them;

⁴for it is the LORD your God who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to give you victory.”

⁵Then the officials shall address the troops, saying, “Has anyone built a new house but not dedicated it? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another dedicate it.

⁶Has anyone planted a vineyard but not yet enjoyed its fruit? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another be first to enjoy its fruit.

⁷Has anyone become engaged to a woman but not yet married her? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another marry her.”

⁸The officials shall continue to address the troops, saying, “Is anyone afraid or disheartened? He should go back to his house, or he might cause the heart of his comrades to melt like his own.”

⁹When the officials have finished addressing the troops, then the commanders shall take charge of them.

¹⁰When you draw near to a town to fight against it, offer it terms of peace.

¹¹If it accepts your terms of peace and surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you at forced labor.

¹²If it does not submit to you peacefully, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it;

¹³and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword.

¹⁴You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children, livestock, and everything else in the town, all its spoil. You may enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you.

¹⁵Thus you shall treat all the towns that are very far from you, which are not towns of the nations here.

¹⁶But as for the towns of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive.

¹⁷You shall annihilate them — the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites — just as the LORD your God has commanded,

¹⁸so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the LORD your God.

¹⁹If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?

²⁰You may destroy only the trees that you know do not produce food; you may cut them down for use in building siegeworks against the town that makes war with you, until it falls.

¹If, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess, a body is found lying in open country, and it is not known who struck the person down,

²then your elders and your judges shall come out to measure the distances to the towns that are near the body.

³The elders of the town nearest the body shall take a heifer that has never been worked, one that has not pulled in the yoke;

⁴the elders of that town shall bring the heifer down to a wadi with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the wadi.

⁵Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to him and to pronounce blessings in the name of the LORD, and by their decision all cases of dispute and assault shall be settled.

⁶All the elders of that town nearest the body shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi,

⁷and they shall declare: “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor were we witnesses to it.

⁸Absolve, O LORD, your people Israel, whom you redeemed; do not let the guilt of innocent blood remain in the midst of your people Israel.” Then they will be absolved of bloodguilt.

⁹So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, because you must do what is right in the sight of the LORD.

¹⁰When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God hands them over to you and you take them captive,

¹¹suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry,

¹²and so you bring her home to your house: she shall shave her head, pare her nails,

¹³discard her captive’s garb, and shall remain in your house a full month, mourning for her father and mother; after that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.

¹⁴But if you are not satisfied with her, you shall let her go free and not sell her for money. You must not treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.

¹⁵If a man has two wives, one of them loved and the other disliked, and if both the loved and the disliked have borne him sons, the firstborn being the son of the one who is disliked,

¹⁶then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons, he is not permitted to treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the firstborn.

¹⁷He must acknowledge as firstborn the son of the one who is disliked, giving him a double portion of all that he has; since he is the first issue of his virility, the right of the firstborn is his.

¹⁸If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him,

¹⁹then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place.

²⁰They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.”

²¹Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid.

²²When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree,

²³his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that the LORD your God is giving you for possession.

¹You shall not watch your neighbor’s ox or sheep straying away and ignore them; you shall take them back to their owner.

²If the owner does not reside near you or you do not know who the owner is, you shall bring it to your own house, and it shall remain with you until the owner claims it; then you shall return it.

³You shall do the same with a neighbor’s donkey; you shall do the same with a neighbor’s garment; and you shall do the same with anything else that your neighbor loses and you find. You may not withhold your help.

⁴You shall not see your neighbor’s donkey or ox fallen on the road and ignore it; you shall help to lift it up.

⁵A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the LORD your God.

⁶If you come on a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, with the mother sitting on the fledglings or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young.

⁷Let the mother go, taking only the young for yourself, in order that it may go well with you and you may live long.

⁸When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof; otherwise you might have bloodguilt on your house, if anyone should fall from it.

⁹You shall not sow your vineyard with a second kind of seed, or the whole yield will have to be forfeited, both the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard itself.

¹⁰You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.

¹¹You shall not wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together.

¹²You shall make tassels on the four corners of the cloak with which you cover yourself.

¹³Suppose a man marries a woman, but after going in to her, he dislikes her

¹⁴and makes up charges against her, slandering her by saying, “I married this woman; but when I lay with her, I did not find evidence of her virginity.”

¹⁵The father of the young woman and her mother shall then submit the evidence of the young woman’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate.

¹⁶The father of the young woman shall say to the elders: “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man but he dislikes her;

¹⁷now he has made up charges against her, saying, ‘I did not find evidence of your daughter’s virginity.’ But here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” Then they shall spread out the cloth before the elders of the town.

¹⁸The elders of that town shall take the man and punish him;

¹⁹they shall fine him one hundred shekels of silver (which they shall give to the young woman’s father) because he has slandered a virgin of Israel. She shall remain his wife; he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.

²⁰If, however, this charge is true, that evidence of the young woman’s virginity was not found,

²¹then they shall bring the young woman out to the entrance of her father’s house and the men of her town shall stone her to death, because she committed a disgraceful act in Israel by prostituting herself in her father’s house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

²²If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.

²³If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her,

²⁴you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

²⁵But if the man meets the engaged woman in the open country, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die.

²⁶You shall do nothing to the young woman; the young woman has not committed an offense punishable by death, because this case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor.

²⁷Since he found her in the open country, the engaged woman may have cried for help, but there was no one to rescue her.

²⁸If a man meets a virgin who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are caught in the act,

²⁹the man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife. Because he violated her he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.

³⁰A man shall not marry his father’s wife, thereby violating his father’s rights.

¹No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD.

²Those born of an illicit union shall not be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD.

³No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD,

⁴because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you.

⁵(Yet the LORD your God refused to heed Balaam; the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loved you.)

⁶You shall never promote their welfare or their prosperity as long as you live.

⁷You shall not abhor any of the Edomites, for they are your kin. You shall not abhor any of the Egyptians, because you were an alien residing in their land.

⁸The children of the third generation that are born to them may be admitted to the assembly of the LORD.

⁹When you are encamped against your enemies you shall guard against any impropriety.

¹⁰If one of you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he shall go outside the camp; he must not come within the camp.

¹¹When evening comes, he shall wash himself with water, and when the sun has set, he may come back into the camp.

¹²You shall have a designated area outside the camp to which you shall go.

¹³With your utensils you shall have a trowel; when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up your excrement.

¹⁴Because the LORD your God travels along with your camp, to save you and to hand over your enemies to you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.

¹⁵Slaves who have escaped to you from their owners shall not be given back to them.

¹⁶They shall reside with you, in your midst, in any place they choose in any one of your towns, wherever they please; you shall not oppress them.

¹⁷None of the daughters of Israel shall be a temple prostitute; none of the sons of Israel shall be a temple prostitute.

¹⁸You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a male prostitute into the house of the LORD your God in payment for any vow, for both of these are abhorrent to the LORD your God.

¹⁹You shall not charge interest on loans to another Israelite, interest on money, interest on provisions, interest on anything that is lent.

²⁰On loans to a foreigner you may charge interest, but on loans to another Israelite you may not charge interest, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all your undertakings in the land that you are about to enter and possess.

²¹If you make a vow to the LORD your God, do not postpone fulfilling it; for the LORD your God will surely require it of you, and you would incur guilt.

²²But if you refrain from vowing, you will not incur guilt.

²³Whatever your lips utter you must diligently perform, just as you have freely vowed to the LORD your God with your own mouth.

²⁴If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in a container.

²⁵If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.

¹Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house

²and goes off to become another man’s wife.

³Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies);

⁴her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that would be abhorrent to the LORD, and you shall not bring guilt on the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a possession.

⁵When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be charged with any related duty. He shall be free at home one year, to be happy with the wife whom he has married.

⁶No one shall take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge, for that would be taking a life in pledge.

⁷If someone is caught kidnaping another Israelite, enslaving or selling the Israelite, then that kidnaper shall die. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

⁸Guard against an outbreak of a leprous skin disease by being very careful; you shall carefully observe whatever the levitical priests instruct you, just as I have commanded them.

⁹Remember what the LORD your God did to Miriam on your journey out of Egypt.

¹⁰When you make your neighbor a loan of any kind, you shall not go into the house to take the pledge.

¹¹You shall wait outside, while the person to whom you are making the loan brings the pledge out to you.

¹²If the person is poor, you shall not sleep in the garment given you as the pledge.

¹³You shall give the pledge back by sunset, so that your neighbor may sleep in the cloak and bless you; and it will be to your credit before the LORD your God.

¹⁴You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns.

¹⁵You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt.

¹⁶Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; only for their own crimes may persons be put to death.

¹⁷You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge.

¹⁸Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.

¹⁹When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all your undertakings.

²⁰When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.

²¹When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.

²²Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this.

¹Suppose two persons have a dispute and enter into litigation, and the judges decide between them, declaring one to be in the right and the other to be in the wrong.

²If the one in the wrong deserves to be flogged, the judge shall make that person lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of lashes proportionate to the offense.

³Forty lashes may be given but not more; if more lashes than these are given, your neighbor will be degraded in your sight.

⁴You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.

⁵When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her,

⁶and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.

⁷But if the man has no desire to marry his brother’s widow, then his brother’s widow shall go up to the elders at the gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.”

⁸Then the elders of his town shall summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying, “I have no desire to marry her,”

⁹then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and declare, “This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.”

¹⁰Throughout Israel his family shall be known as “the house of him whose sandal was pulled off.”

¹¹If men get into a fight with one another, and the wife of one intervenes to rescue her husband from the grip of his opponent by reaching out and seizing his genitals,

¹²you shall cut off her hand; show no pity.

¹³You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, large and small.

¹⁴You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, large and small.

¹⁵You shall have only a full and honest weight; you shall have only a full and honest measure, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

¹⁶For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are abhorrent to the LORD your God.

¹⁷Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt,

¹⁸how he attacked you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you; he did not fear God.

¹⁹Therefore when the LORD your God has given you rest from all your enemies on every hand, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; do not forget.

¹When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it,

²you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.

³You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us.”

⁴When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God,

⁵you shall make this response before the LORD your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.

⁶When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us,

⁷we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.

⁸The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders;

⁹and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

¹⁰So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.” You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God.

¹¹Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.

¹²When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year (which is the year of the tithe), giving it to the Levites, the aliens, the orphans, and the widows, so that they may eat their fill within your towns,

¹³then you shall say before the LORD your God: “I have removed the sacred portion from the house, and I have given it to the Levites, the resident aliens, the orphans, and the widows, in accordance with your entire commandment that you commanded me; I have neither transgressed nor forgotten any of your commandments:

¹⁴I have not eaten of it while in mourning; I have not removed any of it while I was unclean; and I have not offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the LORD my God, doing just as you commanded me.

¹⁵Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people Israel and the ground that you have given us, as you swore to our ancestors — a land flowing with milk and honey.”

¹⁶This very day the LORD your God is commanding you to observe these statutes and ordinances; so observe them diligently with all your heart and with all your soul.

¹⁷Today you have obtained the LORD’s agreement: to be your God; and for you to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, his commandments, and his ordinances, and to obey him.

¹⁸Today the LORD has obtained your agreement: to be his treasured people, as he promised you, and to keep his commandments;

¹⁹for him to set you high above all nations that he has made, in praise and in fame and in honor; and for you to be a people holy to the LORD your God, as he promised.

¹Then Moses and the elders of Israel charged all the people as follows: Keep the entire commandment that I am commanding you today.

²On the day that you cross over the Jordan into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall set up large stones and cover them with plaster.

³You shall write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over, to enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you.

⁴So when you have crossed over the Jordan, you shall set up these stones, about which I am commanding you today, on Mount Ebal, and you shall cover them with plaster.

⁵And you shall build an altar there to the LORD your God, an altar of stones on which you have not used an iron tool.

⁶You must build the altar of the LORD your God of unhewn stones. Then offer up burnt offerings on it to the LORD your God,

⁷make sacrifices of well-being, and eat them there, rejoicing before the LORD your God.

⁸You shall write on the stones all the words of this law very clearly.

⁹Then Moses and the levitical priests spoke to all Israel, saying: Keep silence and hear, O Israel! This very day you have become the people of the LORD your God.

¹⁰Therefore obey the LORD your God, observing his commandments and his statutes that I am commanding you today.

¹¹The same day Moses charged the people as follows:

¹²When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim for the blessing of the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.

¹³And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.

¹⁴Then the Levites shall declare in a loud voice to all the Israelites:

¹⁵“Cursed be anyone who makes an idol or casts an image, anything abhorrent to the LORD, the work of an artisan, and sets it up in secret.” All the people shall respond, saying, “Amen!”

¹⁶“Cursed be anyone who dishonors father or mother.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

¹⁷“Cursed be anyone who moves a neighbor’s boundary marker.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

¹⁸“Cursed be anyone who misleads a blind person on the road.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

¹⁹“Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

²⁰“Cursed be anyone who lies with his father’s wife, because he has violated his father’s rights.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

²¹“Cursed be anyone who lies with any animal.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

²²“Cursed be anyone who lies with his sister, whether the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

²³“Cursed be anyone who lies with his mother-in-law.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

²⁴“Cursed be anyone who strikes down a neighbor in secret.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

²⁵“Cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

²⁶“Cursed be anyone who does not uphold the words of this law by observing them.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”

¹If you will only obey the LORD your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth;

²all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the LORD your God:

³Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.

⁴Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your livestock, both the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock.

⁵Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

⁶Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

⁷The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you; they shall come out against you one way, and flee before you seven ways.

⁸The LORD will command the blessing upon you in your barns, and in all that you undertake; he will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

⁹The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways.

¹⁰All the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you.

¹¹The LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground in the land that the LORD swore to your ancestors to give you.

¹²The LORD will open for you his rich storehouse, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all your undertakings. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow.

¹³The LORD will make you the head, and not the tail; you shall be only at the top, and not at the bottom — if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I am commanding you today, by diligently observing them,

¹⁴and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I am commanding you today, either to the right or to the left, following other gods to serve them.

¹⁵But if you will not obey the LORD your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees, which I am commanding you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you:

¹⁶Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field.

¹⁷Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

¹⁸Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock.

¹⁹Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.

²⁰The LORD will send upon you disaster, panic, and frustration in everything you attempt to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me.

²¹The LORD will make the pestilence cling to you until it has consumed you off the land that you are entering to possess.

²²The LORD will afflict you with consumption, fever, inflammation, with fiery heat and drought, and with blight and mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish.

²³The sky over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you iron.

²⁴The LORD will change the rain of your land into powder, and only dust shall come down upon you from the sky until you are destroyed.

²⁵The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out against them one way and flee before them seven ways. You shall become an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

²⁶Your corpses shall be food for every bird of the air and animal of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away.

²⁷The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with ulcers, scurvy, and itch, of which you cannot be healed.

²⁸The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind;

²⁹you shall grope about at noon as blind people grope in darkness, but you shall be unable to find your way; and you shall be continually abused and robbed, without anyone to help.

³⁰You shall become engaged to a woman, but another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house, but not live in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but not enjoy its fruit.

³¹Your ox shall be butchered before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it. Your donkey shall be stolen in front of you, and shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, without anyone to help you.

³²Your sons and daughters shall be given to another people, while you look on; you will strain your eyes looking for them all day but be powerless to do anything.

³³A people whom you do not know shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors; you shall be continually abused and crushed,

³⁴and driven mad by the sight that your eyes shall see.

³⁵The LORD will strike you on the knees and on the legs with grievous boils of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.

³⁶The LORD will bring you, and the king whom you set over you, to a nation that neither you nor your ancestors have known, where you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone.

³⁷You shall become an object of horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you.

³⁸You shall carry much seed into the field but shall gather little in, for the locust shall consume it.

³⁹You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them.

⁴⁰You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off.

⁴¹You shall have sons and daughters, but they shall not remain yours, for they shall go into captivity.

⁴²All your trees and the fruit of your ground the cicada shall take over.

⁴³Aliens residing among you shall ascend above you higher and higher, while you shall descend lower and lower.

⁴⁴They shall lend to you but you shall not lend to them; they shall be the head and you shall be the tail.

⁴⁵All these curses shall come upon you, pursuing and overtaking you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God, by observing the commandments and the decrees that he commanded you.

⁴⁶They shall be among you and your descendants as a sign and a portent forever.

⁴⁷Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and with gladness of heart for the abundance of everything,

⁴⁸therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and lack of everything. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

⁴⁹The LORD will bring a nation from far away, from the end of the earth, to swoop down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand,

⁵⁰a grim-faced nation showing no respect to the old or favor to the young.

⁵¹It shall consume the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed, leaving you neither grain, wine, and oil, nor the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, until it has made you perish.

⁵²It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout your land; it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you.

⁵³In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you.

⁵⁴Even the most refined and gentle of men among you will begrudge food to his own brother, to the wife whom he embraces, and to the last of his remaining children,

⁵⁵giving to none of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because nothing else remains to him, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in all your towns.

⁵⁶She who is the most refined and gentle among you, so gentle and refined that she does not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge food to the husband whom she embraces, to her own son, and to her own daughter,

⁵⁷begrudging even the afterbirth that comes out from between her thighs, and the children that she bears, because she is eating them in secret for lack of anything else, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in your towns.

⁵⁸If you do not diligently observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, fearing this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God,

⁵⁹then the LORD will overwhelm both you and your offspring with severe and lasting afflictions and grievous and lasting maladies.

⁶⁰He will bring back upon you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were in dread, and they shall cling to you.

⁶¹Every other malady and affliction, even though not recorded in the book of this law, the LORD will inflict on you until you are destroyed.

⁶²Although once you were as numerous as the stars in heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the LORD your God.

⁶³And just as the LORD took delight in making you prosperous and numerous, so the LORD will take delight in bringing you to ruin and destruction; you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to possess.

⁶⁴The LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other; and there you shall serve other gods, of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known.

⁶⁵Among those nations you shall find no ease, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a languishing spirit.

⁶⁶Your life shall hang in doubt before you; night and day you shall be in dread, with no assurance of your life.

⁶⁷In the morning you shall say, “If only it were evening!” and at evening you shall say, “If only it were morning!” — because of the dread that your heart shall feel and the sights that your eyes shall see.

⁶⁸The LORD will bring you back in ships to Egypt, by a route that I promised you would never see again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.

¹These are the words of the covenant that the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb.

²Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land,

³the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders.

⁴But to this day the LORD has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.

⁵I have led you forty years in the wilderness. The clothes on your back have not worn out, and the sandals on your feet have not worn out;

⁶you have not eaten bread, and you have not drunk wine or strong drink — so that you may know that I am the LORD your God.

⁷When you came to this place, King Sihon of Heshbon and King Og of Bashan came out against us for battle, but we defeated them.

⁸We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh.

⁹Therefore diligently observe the words of this covenant, in order that you may succeed in everything that you do.

¹⁰You stand assembled today, all of you, before the LORD your God — the leaders of your tribes, your elders, and your officials, all the men of Israel,

¹¹your children, your women, and the aliens who are in your camp, both those who cut your wood and those who draw your water —

¹²to enter into the covenant of the LORD your God, sworn by an oath, which the LORD your God is making with you today;

¹³in order that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you and as he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

¹⁴I am making this covenant, sworn by an oath, not only with you who stand here with us today before the LORD our God,

¹⁵but also with those who are not here with us today.

¹⁶You know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed.

¹⁷You have seen their detestable things, the filthy idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, that were among them.

¹⁸It may be that there is among you a man or woman, or a family or tribe, whose heart is already turning away from the LORD our God to serve the gods of those nations. It may be that there is among you a root sprouting poisonous and bitter growth.

¹⁹All who hear the words of this oath and bless themselves, thinking in their hearts, “We are safe even though we go our own stubborn ways” (thus bringing disaster on moist and dry alike) —

²⁰the LORD will be unwilling to pardon them, for the LORD’s anger and passion will smoke against them. All the curses written in this book will descend on them, and the LORD will blot out their names from under heaven.

²¹The LORD will single them out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law.

²²The next generation, your children who rise up after you, as well as the foreigner who comes from a distant country, will see the devastation of that land and the afflictions with which the LORD has afflicted it —

²³all its soil burned out by sulfur and salt, nothing planted, nothing sprouting, unable to support any vegetation, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD destroyed in his fierce anger —

²⁴they and indeed all the nations will wonder, “Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused this great display of anger?”

²⁵They will conclude, “It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

²⁶They turned and served other gods, worshiping them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them;

²⁷so the anger of the LORD was kindled against that land, bringing on it every curse written in this book.

²⁸The LORD uprooted them from their land in anger, fury, and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as is now the case.”

²⁹The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law.