to your tents. 8For six days you will eat unleavened bread. The seventh day will be a celebration for the LORD your God. Don't do any work.
Festival of Weeks
9Count out seven weeks, starting the count from the beginning of the grain harvest. 10At that point, perform the Festival of Weeks for the LORD your God. Offer a spontaneous gift in precise measure with the blessing the LORD your God gives you. 11Then celebrate in the presence of the LORD your God--you, your sons, your daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites who live in your cities, the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows who are among you--in the location the LORD your God selects for his name to reside. 12Remember how each of you was a slave in Egypt, so follow these regulations most carefully.
Festival of Booths
13Once you have collected the food and drink you need, perform the Festival of Booths for seven days. 14Celebrate your festival: you, your sons, your daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites, the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows who live in your cities. 15Seven days you must perform the festival for the LORD your God in the location the LORD selects because the LORD your God will bless you in all you do and in all your work. You will be overjoyed.
16Three times a year every male among you must appear before the presence of the LORD your God in the location he will select: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Booths. They must not appear before the LORD's presence empty-handed. 17Each one should have his gift in hand, in precise measure with the blessing the LORD your God gives you.
Judges and officials
18Appoint judges and officials for each of your tribes in every city that the LORD your God gives you. They must judge the people fairly. 19Don't delay justice; don't show favoritism. Don't take bribes because bribery blinds the vision of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. 20Righteousness! Pursue righteousness so that you live long and take possession of the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
Rules for worship
21Don't plant any tree to serve as a sacred poled next to the altar you make for the LORD your God. 22Don't set up any sacred stone either, because the LORD your God hates such things.
Deuteronomy 17Don't sacrifice to the LORD your God any oxen or sheep that have defects of any kind, because that is detestable to the LORD your God.
Capital punishment
2If someone, whether male or female, is found in your community--in one of the cities the LORD your God is giving you--who does evil in the LORD your God's eyes, by breaking God's covenant, 3by following and serving other gods, and by bowing down to them, to the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly bodies that I haven't permitted--4and you hear news about it, then you must look into this situation very carefully. And if it's definitely true that this detestable thing was done in Israel, 5then you must bring out the man or woman who has done this evil thing to the gates of the city. Stone that person until he or she is dead.
6Capital punishment must be decided by two or three witnesses. No one may be executed on the basis of only one testimony. 7In the execution, the hands of the witnesses must be against the guilty person from the start; the hand of all the people will be involved at the end. Removee such evil from your community!
Legal disputes
8If some legal dispute in your cities is too difficult for you to decide--say, between different kinds of bloodshed, different kinds of legal ruling, or different kinds of injury--then take it to the location the LORD your God selects. 9Go to the levitical priests and to the head judge in office at that time and look into things there. They will announce to you the correct ruling. 10You must then act according to the ruling they announced to you from that location, the one the LORD selects. You must follow very carefully everything they instruct you to do. 11Act precisely according to the instruction they give you and the ruling they announce to you. Don't deviate even a bit from the word they announce. 12And whoever acts rashly by not listening to the priest who is in office serving the LORD your God or to the head judge will die. Removef such evil from Israel! 13All the people will hear about this and be afraid. They won't act arrogantly anymore.
Law of the king
14Once you have entered the land the LORD your God is giving you and you have taken possession of it and settled down in it, you might say: "Let's appoint a king over us, as all our neighboring nations have done."15You can indeed appoint over you a king that the LORD your God selects. You can appoint over you a king who is one of your fellow Israelites. You are not allowed to appoint over you a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites. 16That granted, the king must not acquire too many horses, and he must not return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, because the LORD told you: "You will never go back by that road again."17The king must not take numerous wives so that his heart doesn't go astray. Nor can the king acquire too much silver and gold. 18Instead, when he sits on his royal throne, he himself must write a copy of this Instruction on a scroll in the presence of the levitical priests. 19That Instruction must remain with him, and he must read in it every day of his life so that he learns to revere the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this Instruction and these regulations, by doing them, 20by not being overbearing toward his fellow Israelites, and by not deviating even a bit from the commandment. If the king does all that, he will ensure lasting rule in Israel for himself and for his successors.
Priests and Levites
Deuteronomy 18Neither the levitical priests nor any Levite tribe member will have a designated inheritance in Israel. They can eat the sacrifices offered to the LORD, which are the LORD's portion,g 2but they won't share an inheritance with their fellow Israelites. The LORD alone is the Levites' inheritance--just as God promised them.
3Now this is what the priests may keep from the people's sacrifices of oxen or sheep: They must give the priest the shoulder, the jaws, and the stomach. 4You must also give the priest the first portions of your grain, wine, and oil, and the first of your sheep's shearing 5because the LORD your God selected Levi from all of your tribes to stand and minister in the LORD's name--both him and his descendants for all time.
6Now if a Levite leaves one of your cities or departs from any location in Israel where he's been living and, because he wants to, comes to the location the LORD selects 7and ministers in the LORD his God's name, just like his relatives--the other Levites serving there in the LORD's presence--8he is allowed to eat equal portions, despite the finances he has from his family.h
Communicating with God
9Once you enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, don't try to imitate the detestable things those nations do. 10There must not be anyone among you who passes his son or daughter through fire; who practices divination, is a sign reader, fortune-teller, sorcerer, 11or spell caster; who converses with ghosts or spirits or communicates with the dead. 12All who do these things are detestable to the LORD! It is on account of these detestable practices that the LORD your God is driving these nationsi out before you.
13Instead, you must be perfect before the LORD your God. 14These nations you are displacing listened to sign readers and diviners, but the LORD your God doesn't permit you to do the same! 15The LORD your God will raise up a prophet like me from your community, from your fellow Israelites. He's the one you must listen to. 16That's exactly what you requested from the LORD your God at Horeb, on the day of the assembly, when you said, "I can't listen to the LORD my God's voice anymore or look at this great fire any longer. I don't want to die!"
17The