Study Desk

"You must not curse anyone who is deaf. You must not do anything to make a blind person fall. But you must respect your God. I am the Lord .

"Don't secretly hate any of your neighbors. But tell them openly what they have done wrong so that you will not be just as guilty of sin as they are.

"It may happen that a man has sexual relations with a woman who is the slave of another man. But this slave woman has not been bought or given her freedom. If this happens, there must be punishment. But they will not be put to death because the woman was not free.

But I will be against these people and their families. I will separate them from their people. I will separate anyone who is unfaithful to me and chases after Molech.

But I have told you that you will get their land. I will give their land to you. It will be your land! It is a land filled with many good things. I am the Lord your God. "I have treated you differently from other people.

But if the dead person was one of his close relatives, he can touch the dead body. The priest can make himself unclean if the dead person is his mother or father, his son or daughter, his brother or

But a priest must not make himself unclean if the dead person was only one of his slaves.

But he cannot go through the curtain into the Most Holy Place and he cannot go near the altar. This is because he has something wrong with him. He must not make my holy places unholy. I am the Lord , and I make these places holy."

But if the priest buys a person as a slave with his own money, that person may eat some of the holy things. Slaves who were born in the priest's house may also eat some of the priest's food.

A priest's daughter might become a widow, or she might be divorced. If she does not have any children to support her, and she goes back to her father's house where she lived as a child, she can eat some of her father's food. But only people from a priest's family can eat this food.

"You might bring a fellowship offering to the Lord . That fellowship offering might be payment for a special promise that you made. Or maybe it is a special gift that you wanted to give to the Lord. It can be a bull or a sheep, but it must be healthy. There must be nothing wrong with that animal.

"Sometimes a bull or lamb will have a leg that is too long, or a foot that did not grow right. If you want to give that animal as a special gift to the Lord, it will be accepted. But it will not be accepted as payment for a special promise that you made.

But you must not kill the animal and its mother on the same day. This rule is the same for cattle and sheep.

"If you want to offer some special offering of thanks to the Lord , you are free to offer that gift. But you must do it in a way that pleases God.

"Work for six days, but the seventh day, the Sabbath, will be a special day of rest, a holy meeting. You must not do any work. It is a day of rest to honor the Lord in all your homes.

Whoever kills an animal must pay for the animal. But whoever kills another person must be put to death.

But during the seventh year, you will let the land rest. This will be a special time of rest to honor the Lord . You must not plant seed in your field or trim your vineyards.

"The land will have a year of rest, but you will still have enough food. There will be enough food for your men and women servants. There will be food for your hired workers and for the foreigners living in your country.

"But maybe you will say, ‘If we don't plant seeds or gather our crops, we will not have anything to eat during the seventh year.'

People might sell their land, but the family will always get their land back.