English Standard Version  
Chapter 16
Passover
1“Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night.
2And you shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock or the herd, at the place that the Lord will choose, to make his name dwell there.
3You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction—for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste—that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.
4No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any of the flesh that you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain all night until morning.
5You may not 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, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the time you came out of Egypt.
7And you shall cook it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose. And in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents.
8For six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord your God. You shall do no work on it.
The Feast of Weeks
9“You 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 Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you.
11And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your towns, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are among you, at the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell there.
12You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt; and you shall be careful to observe these statutes.
The Feast of Booths
13“You shall keep the Feast of Booths seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your winepress.
14You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns.
15For seven days you shall keep the feast to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, 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 at the place that he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Booths. They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed.
17Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.
Justice
18“You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.
19You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous.
20Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Forbidden Forms of Worship
21“You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God that you shall make.
22And you shall not set up a pillar, which the Lord your God hates.
Chapter 17
1“You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or a sheep in which is a blemish, any defect whatever, for that is an abomination to the Lord your God.
2“If there is found among you, within any 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, in transgressing his covenant,
3and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden,
4and it is told you and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently, and if it is true and certain that such an abomination has been done in Israel,
5then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones.
6On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness.
7The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall purgeSeptuagint drive out the evilOr evil person from your midst.
Legal Decisions by Priests and Judges
8“If any case arises requiring decision between one kind of homicide and another, one kind of legal right and another, or one kind of assault and another, any case within your towns that is too difficult for you, then you shall arise and go up to the place that the Lord your God will choose.
9And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall consult them, and they shall declare to you the decision.
10Then you shall do according to what they declare to you from that place that the Lord will choose. And you shall be careful to do according to all that they direct you.
11According to the instructions that they give you, and according to the decision which they pronounce to you, you shall do. You shall not turn aside from the verdict that they declare to you, either to the right hand or to the left.
12The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who stands to minister there before the Lord your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.
13And all the people shall hear and fear and not act presumptuously again.
Laws Concerning Israel's Kings
14“When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’
15you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.
16Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’
17And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.
18“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved byHebrew from before the Levitical priests.
19And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them,
20that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.
Chapter 18
Provision for Priests and Levites
1“The Levitical priests, all the tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. They shall eat the Lord's food offeringsOr the offerings by fire to the Lord as theirHebrew his inheritance.
2They shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them.
3And this 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 and the two cheeks and the stomach.
4The firstfruits of your grain, of your wine and of your oil, and the first fleece of your sheep, you shall give him.
5For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for all time.
6“And if a Levite comes from any of your towns out of all Israel, where he lives—and he may come when he desiresOr lives—if he comes enthusiastically—to the place that the Lord will choose,
7and ministers in the name of the Lord his God, like all his fellow Levites who stand to minister there before the Lord,
8then he may have equal portions to eat, besides what he receives from the sale of his patrimony.The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain
Abominable Practices
9“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.
10There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering,Hebrew makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer
11or a charmer or a medium or a wizard or a necromancer,
12for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you.
13You shall be blameless before the Lord your God,
14for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.
A New Prophet like Moses
15“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—
16just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’
17And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken.
18I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
19And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.
20But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, orOr and who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’
21And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’—
22when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.
 
 

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