Justice and Mercy

¹“You shall not spread a false report. Do not join the wicked by being a malicious witness.

²You shall not follow the crowd in wrongdoing. When you testify in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd.

³And do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.

⁴If you encounter your enemy’s stray ox or donkey, you must return it to him.

⁵If you see the donkey of one who hates you fallen under its load, do not leave it there; you must help him with it.

⁶You shall not deny justice to the poor in their lawsuits.

⁷Stay far away from a false accusation. Do not kill the innocent or the just, for I will not acquit the guilty.

⁸Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the righteous.

⁹Do not oppress a foreign resident, since you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners; for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

Sabbath Laws

¹⁰For six years you are to sow your land and gather its produce,

¹¹but in the seventh year you must let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor among your people may eat from the field and the wild animals may consume what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and olive grove.

¹²For six days you are to do your work, but on the seventh day you must cease, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the son of your maidservant may be refreshed, as well as the foreign resident.

¹³Pay close attention to everything I have said to you. You must not invoke the names of other gods; they must not be heard on your lips.

The Three Feasts of Pilgrimage

¹⁴Three times a year you are to celebrate a feast to Me.

¹⁵You are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Breadas I commanded you: At the appointed time in the month of Abibyou are to eat unleavened bread for seven days, because that was the month you came out of Egypt. No one may appear before Me empty-handed.

¹⁶You are also to keep the Feast of Harvestwith the firstfruits of the produce from what you sow in the field.And keep the Feast of Ingatheringat the end of the year, when you gather your produce from the field.

¹⁷Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord GOD.

¹⁸You must not offer the blood of My sacrifices with anything leavened, nor may the fat of My feast remain until morning.

¹⁹Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

God’s Angel to Lead

²⁰Behold, I am sending an angel before you to protect you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.

²¹Pay attention to him and listen to his voice; do not defy him, for he will not forgive rebellion, since My Name is in him.

²²But if you will listen carefully to his voice and do everything I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.

²³For My angel will go before you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and I will annihilate them.

²⁴You must not bow down to their gods or serve them or follow their practices. Instead, you are to demolish them and smash their sacred stones to pieces.

²⁵So you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will blessyour bread and your water. And I will take away sickness from among you.

²⁶No woman in your land will miscarry or be barren; I will fulfill the number of your days.

²⁷I will send My terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn and run.

²⁸I will send the hornet before you to drive the Hivites and Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.

²⁹I will not drive them out before you in a single year; otherwise the land would become desolate and wild animals would multiply against you.

³⁰Little by little I will drive them out ahead of you, until you become fruitful and possess the land.

³¹And I will establish your borders from the Red Seato the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the Euphrates.For I will deliver the inhabitants into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.

³²You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods.

³³They must not remain in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

New Stone Tablets

¹Then the LORD said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the originals, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

²Be ready in the morning, and come up on Mount Sinai to present yourself before Me on the mountaintop.

³No one may go up with you; in fact, no one may be seen anywhere on the mountain—not even the flocks or herds may graze in front of the mountain.”

⁴So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the originals. He rose early in the morning, and taking the two stone tablets in his hands, he went up Mount Sinai as the LORD had commanded him.

⁵And the LORD descended in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed His name, the LORD.

⁶Then the LORD passed in front of Moses and called out:“The LORD, the LORD God,is compassionate and gracious,slow to anger,abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness,

⁷maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations,forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished;He will visit the iniquity of the fatherson their children and grandchildrento the third and fourth generations.”

⁸Moses immediately bowed down to the ground and worshiped.

⁹“O Lord,” he said, “if I have indeed found favor in Your sight, my Lord, please go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our iniquity and sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”

The LORD Renews the Covenant

¹⁰And the LORD said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will perform wonders that have never been done in any nation in all the world. All the people among whom you live will see the LORD’s work, for it is an awesome thing that I am doing with you.

¹¹Observe what I command you this day. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

¹²Be careful not to make a treatywith the inhabitants of the land you are entering, lest they become a snare in your midst.

¹³Rather, you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and chop down their Asherah poles.

¹⁴For you must not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

¹⁵Do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you, and you will eat their sacrifices.

¹⁶And when you take some of their daughters as brides for your sons, their daughters will prostitute themselves to their gods and cause your sons to do the same.

¹⁷You shall make no molten gods for yourselves.

¹⁸You are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread.For seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib,you are to eat unleavened bread as I commanded you. For in the month of Abib you came out of Egypt.

¹⁹The first offspring of every womb belongs to Me, including all the firstborn males among your livestock, whether cattle or sheep.

²⁰You must redeem the firstborn of a donkey with a lamb; but if you do not redeem it, you are to break its neck. You must redeem all the firstborn of your sons. No one shall appear before Me empty-handed.

²¹Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in the seasons of plowing and harvesting, you must rest.

²²And you are to celebrate the Feast of Weekswith the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingatheringat the turn of the year.

²³Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel.

²⁴For I will drive out the nations before you and enlarge your borders, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before the LORD your God.

²⁵Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to Me along with anything leavened, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.

²⁶Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

²⁷The LORD also said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

²⁸So Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

²⁹And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was unaware that his face had become radiant from speaking with the LORD.

³⁰Aaron and all the Israelites looked at Moses, and behold, his face was radiant. And they were afraid to approach him.

³¹But Moses called out to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke to them.

³²And after this all the Israelites came near, and Moses commanded them to do everything that the LORD had told him on Mount Sinai.

³³When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.

³⁴But whenever Moses went in before the LORD to speak with Him, he would remove the veil until he came out. And when he came out, he would tell the Israelites what he had been commanded,

³⁵and the Israelites would see that the face of Moses was radiant. So Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the LORD.

Marriage and Divorce Laws

¹If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds some indecency in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce,hand it to her, and send her away from his house.

²If, after leaving his house, she goes and becomes another man’s wife,

³and the second man hates her, writes her a certificate of divorce, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house, or if he dies,

⁴then the husband who divorced her first may not remarry her after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination to the LORD. You must not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

⁵If a man is newly married, he must not be sent to war or be pressed into any duty. For one year he is free to stay at home and bring joy to the wife he has married.

Additional Laws

⁶Do not take a pair of millstones or even an upper millstone as security for a debt, because that would be taking one’s livelihood as security.

⁷If a man is caught kidnapping one of his Israelite brothers, whether he treats him as a slave or sells him, the kidnapper must die. So you must purge the evil from among you.

⁸In cases of infectious skin diseases,be careful to diligently follow everything the Levitical priests instruct you. Be careful to do as I have commanded them.

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

¹⁰When you lend anything to your neighbor, do not enter his house to collect security.

¹¹You are to stand outside while the man to whom you are lending brings the security out to you.

¹²If he is a poor man, you must not go to sleep with the security in your possession;

¹³be sure to return it to him by sunset, so that he may sleep in his own cloak and bless you, and this will be credited to you as righteousness before the LORD your God.

¹⁴Do not oppress a hired hand who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother or a foreigner residing in one of your towns.

¹⁵You are to pay his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and depends on them. Otherwise he may cry out to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.

¹⁶Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.

¹⁷Do not deny justice to the foreigner or the fatherless, and do not take a widow’s cloak as security.

¹⁸Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you from that place. Therefore I am commanding you to do this.

¹⁹If you are harvesting in your field and forget a sheaf there, do not go back to get it. It is to be left for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

²⁰When you beat the olives from your trees, you must not go over the branches again. What remains will be for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow.

²¹When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you must not go over the vines again. What remains will be for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow.

²²Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt. Therefore I am commanding you to do this.

Sing for Joy to God Our Strength

¹Sing for joy to God our strength;make a joyful noise to the God of Jacob.

²Lift up a song, strike the tambourine,play the sweet-sounding harp and lyre.

³Sound the ram’s horn at the New Moon,and at the full moon on the day of our Feast.

⁴For this is a statute for Israel,an ordinance of the God of Jacob.

⁵He ordained it as a testimony for Josephwhen he went out over the land of Egypt,where I heard an unfamiliar language:

⁶“I relieved his shoulder of the burden;his hands were freed from the basket.

⁷You called out in distress, and I rescued you;I answered you from the cloud of thunder;I tested you at the waters of Meribah.Selah

⁸Hear, O My people, and I will warn you:O Israel, if only you would listen to Me!

⁹There must be no strange god among you,nor shall you bow to a foreign god.

¹⁰I am the LORD your God,who brought you up out of Egypt.Open wide your mouth,and I will fill it.

¹¹But My people would not listen to Me,and Israel would not obey Me.

¹²So I gave them up to their stubborn heartsto follow their own devices.

¹³If only My people would listen to Me,if Israel would follow My ways,

¹⁴how soon I would subdue their enemiesand turn My hand against their foes!

¹⁵Those who hate the LORD would feign obedience,and their doom would last forever.

¹⁶But I would feed you the finest wheat;with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”