Power and Accountability

¹Observe 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.

²You shall sacrifice the Passover to the LORD your God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the LORD shall choose to cause his name to dwell there.

³You shall eat no leavened bread with it. You shall eat unleavened bread with it seven days, even the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste) that you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life.

⁴No yeast shall be seen with you in all your borders seven days; neither shall any of the meat, which you sacrifice the first day at evening, remain all night until the morning.

⁵You may not sacrifice the Passover within any of your gates which the LORD your God gives you;

⁶but at the place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell in, there you shall sacrifice the Passover at evening, at the going down of the sun, at the season that you came out of Egypt.

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

⁸Six days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the seventh day shall be a solemn assembly to the LORD your God. You shall do no work.

⁹You shall count for yourselves seven weeks. From the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain you shall begin to count seven weeks.

¹⁰You shall keep the feast of weeks to the LORD your God with a tribute of a free will offering of your hand, which you shall give according to how the LORD your God blesses you.

¹¹You shall rejoice before the LORD your God: you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow who are among you, in the place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there.

¹²You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. You shall observe and do these statutes.

¹³You shall keep the feast of booths seven days, after you have gathered in from your threshing floor and from your wine press.

¹⁴You shall rejoice in your feast, you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your gates.

¹⁵You shall keep a feast to the LORD your God seven days in the place which the LORD chooses, because the LORD your God will bless you in all your increase and in all the work of your hands, and you shall be altogether joyful.

¹⁶Three times in a year all of your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place which he chooses: in the feast of unleavened bread, in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty.

¹⁷Every man shall give as he is able, according to the LORD your God’s blessing which he has given you.

¹⁸You shall make judges and officers in all your gates, which the LORD your God gives you, according to your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.

¹⁹You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality. You shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous.

²⁰You shall follow that which is altogether just, that you may live and inherit the land which the LORD your God gives you.

²¹You shall not plant for yourselves an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the LORD your God’s altar, which you shall make for yourselves.

²²Neither shall you set yourself up a sacred stone which the LORD your God hates.

¹You shall not sacrifice to the LORD your God an ox or a sheep in which is a defect or anything evil; for that is an abomination to the LORD your God.

²If there is found among you, within any of your gates which the LORD your God gives you, a man or woman who does that which is evil in the LORD your God’s sight in transgressing his covenant,

³and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun, or the moon, or any of the stars of the sky, which I have not commanded,

⁴and you are told, and you have heard of it, then you shall inquire diligently. Behold, if it is true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is done in Israel,

⁵then you shall bring out that man or that woman who has done this evil thing to your gates, even that same man or woman; and you shall stone them to death with stones.

⁶At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death. At the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.

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

⁸If there arises a matter too hard for you in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within your gates, then you shall arise, and go up to the place which the LORD your God chooses.

⁹You shall come to the priests who are Levites and to the judge who shall be in those days. You shall inquire, and they shall give you the verdict.

¹⁰You shall do according to the decisions of the verdict which they shall give you from that place which the LORD chooses. You shall observe to do according to all that they shall teach you.

¹¹According to the decisions of the law which they shall teach you, and according to the judgment which they shall tell you, you shall do. You shall not turn away from the sentence which they announce to you, to the right hand, nor to the left.

¹²The man who does presumptuously in not listening to the priest who stands to minister there before the LORD your God, or to the judge, even that man shall die. You shall put away the evil from Israel.

¹³All the people shall hear and fear, and do no more presumptuously.

¹⁴When you have come to the land which the LORD your God gives you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,”

¹⁵you shall surely set him whom the LORD your God chooses as king over yourselves. You shall set as king over you one from among your brothers. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.

¹⁶Only he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he may multiply horses; because the LORD has said to you, “You shall not go back that way again.”

¹⁷He shall not multiply wives to himself, that his heart not turn away. He shall not greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.

¹⁸It shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write himself a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the Levitical priests.

¹⁹It shall be with him, and he shall read from it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them;

²⁰that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he not turn away from the commandment to the right hand, or to the left, to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the middle of Israel.

¹The priests and the Levites—all the tribe of Levi—shall have no portion nor inheritance with Israel. They shall eat the offerings of the LORD made by fire and his portion.

²They shall have no inheritance among their brothers. The LORD is their inheritance, as he has spoken to them.

³This shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those who offer a sacrifice, whether it be ox or sheep, that they shall give to the priest: the shoulder, the two cheeks, and the inner parts.

⁴You shall give him the first fruits of your grain, of your new wine, and of your oil, and the first of the fleece of your sheep.

⁵For the LORD your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand to minister in the LORD’s name, him and his sons forever.

⁶If a Levite comes from any of your gates out of all Israel where he lives, and comes with all the desire of his soul to the place which the LORD shall choose,

⁷then he shall minister in the name of the LORD his God, as all his brothers the Levites do, who stand there before the LORD.

⁸They shall have like portions to eat, in addition to that which comes from the sale of his family possessions.

⁹When you have come into the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the abominations of those nations.

¹⁰There shall not be found with you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who tells fortunes, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer,

¹¹or a charmer, or someone who consults with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

¹²For whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. Because of these abominations, the LORD your God drives them out from before you.

¹³You shall be blameless with the LORD your God.

¹⁴For these nations that you shall dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery and to diviners; but as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you so to do.

¹⁵The LORD your God will raise up to you a prophet from among you, of your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him.

¹⁶This is according to all that you desired of the LORD your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, “Let me not hear again the LORD my God’s voice, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I not die.”

¹⁷The LORD said to me, “They have well said that which they have spoken.

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

¹⁹It shall happen, that whoever will not listen to my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.

²⁰But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.”

²¹You may say in your heart, “How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?”

²²When a prophet speaks in the LORD’s name, if the thing doesn’t follow, nor happen, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him.