Study Desk

“All your males are to appear three times a year before the Lord your God in the place he chooses: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Shelters. No one is to appear before the Lord empty-handed.

Everyone must appear with a gift suited to his means, according to the blessing the Lord your God has given you.

“Appoint judges and officials for your tribes in all your towns the Lord your God is giving you. They are to judge the people with righteous judgment.

Pursue justice and justice alone, so that you will live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.

“Do not set up an Asherah of any kind of wood next to the altar you will build for the Lord your God,

and do not set up a sacred pillar; the Lord your God hates them.

“Do not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or sheep with a defect or any serious flaw, for that is detestable to the Lord your God.

“If a man or woman among you in one of your towns that the Lord your God will give you is discovered doing evil in the sight of the Lord your God and violating his covenant

“If a case is too difficult for you—concerning bloodshed, lawsuits, or assaults—cases disputed at your city gates, then go up to the place the Lord your God chooses.

The person who acts arrogantly, refusing to listen either to the priest who stands there serving the Lord your God or to the judge, must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.

“When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, take possession of it, live in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations around me,’

you are to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses. Appoint a king from your brothers. You are not to set a foreigner over you, or one who is not of your people.

It is to remain with him, and he is to read from it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to observe all the words of this instruction, and to do these statutes.

For the Lord your God has chosen him and his sons from all your tribes to stand and minister in his name from now on.

he may serve in the name of the Lord his God like all his fellow Levites who minister there in the presence of the Lord.

“When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not imitate the detestable customs of those nations.

Everyone who does these acts is detestable to the Lord, and the Lord your God is driving out the nations before you because of these detestable acts.

You must be blameless before the Lord your God.

Though these nations you are about to drive out listen to fortune-tellers and diviners, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do this.

“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.