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¹"Observe the month of Abib and celebrate 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 sacrifice the Passover [lamb] to the LORD your God from the flock or the herd, in the place where the LORD chooses to establish His Name (Presence).

³You shall not eat leavened bread with it; instead, for seven days you shall eat the Passover with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction (for you left the land of Egypt in haste); [do this] so that all the days of your life you may remember [thoughtfully] the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.

⁴For seven days no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory, and none of the meat which you sacrificed the evening of the first day shall remain overnight until morning.

⁵You are not allowed to sacrifice the Passover [lamb] in any of your cities which the LORD your God is giving you;

⁶but at the place where the LORD your God chooses to establish His Name (Presence), you shall sacrifice the Passover [lamb] in the evening at sunset, at the time that you came out of Egypt.

⁷You shall cook and eat it in the place which the LORD your God chooses. In the morning you are to return to your tents.

⁸For six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a celebration to the LORD your God; so you shall do no work [on that day].

⁹"You shall count seven weeks for yourself; you shall begin to count seven weeks from the time you first put the sickle to the standing grain.

¹⁰Then you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God with a tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give [to Him] just as the LORD your God blesses you;

¹¹and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite who is within your [city] gates, and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are among you, at the place where the LORD your God chooses to establish His Name (Presence).

¹²You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to obey these statutes.

¹³"You shall celebrate the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles) seven days, when you have gathered in [the grain] from your threshing floor and [the wine] from your wine vat.

¹⁴You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are within your city.

¹⁵Seven days you shall celebrate a feast to the LORD your God in the place which the LORD chooses, because the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.

¹⁶"Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover) and at the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) and at the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles), and they shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed.

¹⁷Every man shall give as he is able, in accordance with the blessing which the LORD your God has given you.

¹⁸"You shall appoint judges and officers in all your cities (gates) which the LORD your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.

¹⁹You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.

²⁰You shall pursue justice, and only justice [that which is uncompromisingly righteous], so that you may live and take possession of the land which the LORD your God is giving you.

²¹"You shall not plant for yourself an Asherah of any kind of tree or wood beside the altar of the LORD your God, which you shall make.

²²You shall not set up for yourself a sacred pillar which the LORD your God hates.

¹"You shall not sacrifice to the LORD your God an ox or sheep with a blemish or any defect, for that is a detestable thing to the LORD your God.

²"If there is discovered among you, within any of your cities, which the LORD your God is giving you, a man or a woman who does evil in the sight of the LORD your God, by transgressing (violating) His covenant,

³and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly host, [doing these things] which I have commanded not to do,

⁴and if it is told to you and you hear about it, then you shall investigate thoroughly [all the charges]. If it is confirmed beyond doubt that this detestable thing has been done in Israel,

⁵then you shall bring that man or that woman who has done this evil thing to the gates [of your city] and you shall stone the man or the woman to death.

⁶On the evidence of two or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the evidence of [only] one witness.

⁷The hand of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall remove the evil from among you.

⁸"If any case is too difficult for you to judge—between one kind of homicide and another, between one kind of lawsuit and another, between one kind of assault and another, being controversial issues in your courts—then you shall arise and go to the place which the LORD your God chooses.

⁹So you shall come to the Levitical priests or to the judge who is in office at that time, and you shall consult them and they will declare to you the verdict in the case.

¹⁰You shall act in accordance with the terms of the verdict which they declare to you from that place which the LORD chooses. You shall be careful to act in accordance with all of their instructions.

¹¹"You shall act in accordance with the law which they teach you and the judgment which they tell you. You shall not turn aside from their verdict, to the right or to the left.

¹²The man who acts presumptuously and insolently by not listening to the priest who stands there to serve the LORD your God, nor to the judge, that man shall die; so you shall remove the evil from Israel.

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

¹⁴"When you enter the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and you take possession of it and live there, and you say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,'

¹⁵you shall most certainly set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses. You shall set a king over you from among your countrymen (brothers); you may not choose a foreigner [to rule] over you who is not your countryman.

¹⁶Further, he shall not acquire many [war] horses for himself, nor make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire horses [to expand his military power], since the LORD said to you, 'You shall never return that way again.'

¹⁷He shall not acquire multiple wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away [from God]; nor [for the same reason] shall he acquire great amounts of silver and gold.

¹⁸"Now it shall come about when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests.

¹⁹And it shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear [and worship] the LORD his God [with awe-filled reverence and profound respect], by carefully obeying (keeping foremost in his thoughts and actively doing) all the words of this law and these statutes,

²⁰so that his heart will not be lifted up above his countrymen [by a false sense of self-importance and self-reliance] and that he will not turn away (deviate) from the commandment, to the right or to the left, so that he and his sons may continue [to reign] for a long time in his kingdom in Israel.

¹"The Levitical priests, the entire tribe of Levi, shall own [privately] no portion [of land] or inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the Lord's offerings by fire and His portion.

²They shall have no inheritance [of land] among their countrymen (brothers, brethren); the LORD is their inheritance, as He promised them.

³"Now this shall be the priests' portion from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, either an ox or a sheep: they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach.

⁴You shall also give him the first fruits of your grain, your new wine [the first of the season], and your [olive] oil, and the first sheared fleece of your sheep.

⁵For the LORD your God has chosen him, him and his sons from all your tribes, to stand and serve in the name of the LORD forever.

⁶"Now if a Levite comes from any of your cities throughout Israel where he resides, and comes whenever he wishes to [the sanctuary] the place which the LORD chooses;

⁷then he shall serve in the name of the LORD his God, like all his fellow Levites who stand there before the LORD.

⁸They shall have equal portions to eat, except what they receive from the sale of their fathers' estates.

⁹"When you enter the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable (repulsive) practices of those nations.

¹⁰There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire [as a sacrifice], one who uses divination and fortune-telling, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,

¹¹or one who casts a charm or spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or a necromancer [who seeks the dead].

¹²For everyone who does these things is utterly repulsive to the LORD; and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God is driving them out before you.

¹³You shall be blameless (complete, perfect) before the LORD your God.

¹⁴For these nations which you shall dispossess listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners and fortune-tellers, but as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do so.

¹⁵"The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me [Moses] from among you, from your countrymen (brothers, brethren). You shall listen to him.

¹⁶This is according to all that you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb (Mount Sinai) on the day of the assembly, saying, 'Let me not hear the voice of the LORD my God again, nor see this great fire anymore, so that I will not die.'

¹⁷The LORD said to me, 'They have spoken well.

¹⁸I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

¹⁹It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him [and there will be consequences].

²⁰But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods—that prophet shall die.'

²¹If you say in your heart, 'How will we know and recognize the word which the LORD has not spoken?'

²²When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and the thing does not happen or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.

¹"When the LORD your God cuts off (destroys) the nations whose land He is giving you, and you dispossess them and live in their cities and in their houses,

²you shall designate three cities for yourself in the central area of the land, which the LORD your God is giving you to possess.

³You shall prepare and maintain for yourself the roads [to these cities], and divide the territory of your land into three parts, so that anyone who kills another unintentionally may escape there [for asylum].

⁴"Now this is the case of the offender (manslayer) who may escape there and live [protected from vengeance]: when he kills his neighbor unintentionally, not having hated him previously—

⁵as [for example] when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down the tree, but the iron head slips off the wooden handle and hits his companion and he dies—the offender may escape to one of these cities and live;

⁶otherwise the avenger of blood might pursue the offender in the heat of anger, and overtake him, because it is a long way, and take his life, even though he did not deserve to die, since he did not hate his neighbor beforehand.

⁷Therefore, I command you, saying, 'You shall set aside three cities [of refuge] for yourself.'

⁸"If the LORD your God enlarges your border, as He has sworn to your fathers to do, and gives you all the land which He promised to give to your fathers—

⁹if you keep and carefully observe all these commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the LORD your God, and to walk [that is, to live each and every day] always in His ways—then you shall add three more cities [of refuge] for yourself, besides these three,

¹⁰so that innocent blood will not be shed [by blood avengers] in your land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and blood guilt will not be on you [for the death of an innocent man].

¹¹"But if there is a man who hates his neighbor and lies in wait and ambush for him and attacks him and strikes him down so that he dies, and the assailant escapes to one of these cities,

¹²then the elders of his own city shall send for him and have him taken back from there and turn him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may be put to death.

¹³You shall not pity him [the guilty one], but you shall purge the blood of the innocent from Israel, so that it may go well with you.

¹⁴"You shall not move your neighbor's boundary mark, which the forefathers [who first divided the territory] have set, in the land which you will inherit in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess.

¹⁵"A single witness shall not appear in a trial against a man for any wrong or any sin which he has committed; [only] on the testimony or evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be confirmed.

¹⁶If a malicious witness rises up against a man to [falsely] accuse him of wrongdoing,

¹⁷then both parties to the controversy shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who will be in office at that time.

¹⁸The judges shall investigate thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness, and he has accused his brother falsely,

¹⁹then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother. So you shall remove the evil from among you.

²⁰Those who remain will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such an evil thing among you.

²¹You shall not show pity [to the guilty one]: it shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.