Study Desk

You must only offer the Passover sacrifice at the place where the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for His Name. Do this in the evening as the sun sets, at the same time you departed from Egypt.

and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God in the place where He will choose as a dwelling for His Name-you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levite within your gates, as well as the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widows among you.

If a man or woman among you in one of the towns that the LORD your God gives you is found doing evil in the sight of the LORD your God by transgressing His covenant

He must not take many wives for himself, lest his heart go astray. He must not accumulate for himself great amounts of silver and gold.

When he is seated on his royal throne, he must write for himself a copy of this instruction on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests.

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 by carefully observing all the words of this instruction and these statutes.

Then his heart will not be exalted above his countrymen, and he will not turn aside from the commandment, to the right or to the left, in order that he and his sons may reign many years over his kingdom in Israel.

For the LORD your God has chosen Levi and his sons out of all your tribes to stand and minister in His name for all time.

then he shall serve in the name of the LORD his God like all his fellow Levites who stand there before the LORD.

They shall eat equal portions, even though he has received money from the sale of his father's estate.

Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, practices divination or conjury, interprets omens, practices sorcery,

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put My words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.

Now this is the situation regarding the manslayer who flees to one of these cities to save his life, having killed his neighbor accidentally, without intending to harm him:

If he goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut timber and swings his ax to chop down a tree, but the blade flies off the handle and strikes and kills his neighbor, he may flee to one of these cities to save his life.

and if you carefully observe all these commandments I am giving you today, loving the LORD your God and walking in His ways at all times, then you are to add three more cities to these three.

If, however, a man hates his neighbor and lies in wait, attacks him and kills him, and then flees to one of these cities,

the elders of his city must send for him, bring him back, and hand him over to the avenger of blood to die.

The judges shall investigate thoroughly, and if the witness is proven to be a liar who has falsely accused his brother,

you must do to him as he intended to do to his brother. You must purge the evil from among you.

Then the officers shall speak further to the army, saying, "Is any man afraid or fainthearted? Let him return home, so that the hearts of his brothers will not melt like his own."