Study Desk

Then celebrate the Festival of Harvest for the Lord your God. Do this by bringing him some special gift you want to bring. Decide how much to give by thinking about how much the Lord your God has blessed you.

Go to the place the Lord will choose to be the home for his name. You and your people should enjoy yourselves together there with the Lord your God. Take all your people with you—your sons, your daughters, and all your servants. And take the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows living in your towns.

Celebrate this festival for seven days at the special place the Lord will choose. Do this to honor the Lord your God. The Lord your God blessed your harvest and all the work you did, so be very happy!

"Three times a year all your men must come to meet with the Lord your God at the special place he will choose. They must come for the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Harvest, and the Festival of Shelters. Everyone who comes to meet with the Lord must bring a gift.

"Choose men to be judges and officers in every town that the Lord your God gives you. Every tribe must do this. And these men must be fair in judging the people.

Goodness and Fairness! You must try very hard to be good and fair all the time. Then you will live and keep the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

"When you set up an altar for the Lord your God, you must not place beside the altar any of the wooden poles that honor the goddess Asherah.

You must not set up special stones for worshiping false gods. The Lord your God hates them.

"You must not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or sheep that has anything wrong with it. The Lord your God would hate that.

"You might hear about an evil thing that happens in one of the cities that the Lord your God is giving you. You might hear that a man or woman in your group has sinned against the Lord your God. You might hear that they have broken his agreement or

"There might be some problems that are too hard for your courts to judge. It might be a murder case or an argument between two people. Or it might be a fight in which someone was hurt. When these cases are argued in your towns, your judges there might not be able to decide what is right. Then you must go to the special place that the Lord your God will choose.

"You must punish anyone who refuses to obey the judge or the priest who is there at that time serving the Lord your God. That person must die. You must remove this evil person from Israel.

"You will enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You will take that land and live in it. Then you will say, ‘We will put a king over us, like all the nations around us.'

When that happens, you must be sure to choose the king that the Lord your God chooses. The king over you must be one of your own people. You must not make a foreigner your king.

He must keep that book with him and read from it all his life, because he must learn to respect the Lord his God. He must learn to completely obey everything the law commands.

This is because the Lord your God looked at all your tribes and chose Levi and his descendants to serve him as priests forever.

And this Levite may serve in the name of the Lord his God, the same as all his brother Levites who are on duty before the Lord .

"When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, don't learn to do the terrible things the people of the other nations there do.

The Lord hates anyone who does these things. And because these other nations do these terrible things, the Lord your God will force them out of the land as you enter it.

You must be faithful to the Lord your God, never doing anything he considers wrong.