Study Desk

Then the LORD spoke to Moses, "Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have behaved corruptly.

"They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a cast metal calf, and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, 'This is your god, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!'"

Then Moses pleaded with the LORD his God, and said, "LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

"For they said to me, 'Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we do not know what happened to him.'

Then the LORD spoke to Moses, "Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, 'To your descendants I will give it.'

"Be careful that you do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going, or it will become a snare in your midst.

otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they would prostitute themselves with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite you to eat of his sacrifice,

'For I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; so you shall be holy, because I am holy.'"

"When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as a possession, and I put a spot of leprosy on a house in the land of your possession,

'You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you; you shall not walk in their statutes.

'For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has vomited out its inhabitants.

(for the people of the land who were there before you did all these abominations, and the land has become defiled),

so that the land will not vomit you out should you defile it, as it has vomited out the nation which was there before you.

'Now when you enter the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as forbidden. For three years it shall be forbidden to you; it shall not be eaten.

'Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute, so that the land does not fall into prostitution, and the land does not become full of outrageous sin.

'The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.

'You shall have accurate balances, accurate weights, an accurate ephah, and an accurate hin; I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt.

"You shall also say to the sons of Israel: 'Anyone from the sons of Israel or from the strangers residing in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech, shall certainly be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones.

'If the people of the land, however, should ever disregard that man when he gives any of his children to Molech, so as not to put him to death,

'You are therefore to keep all My statutes and all My ordinances, and do them, so that the land to which I am bringing you to live will not vomit you out.