Deuteronomy 23–26

The Lord’s People

23No man who has had part of his sex organ cut off may come into the meeting to worship the Lord.

²No one born to parents who were forbidden by law to marry may come into the meeting to worship the Lord. The descendants for ten generations may not come in either.

³No Ammonite or Moabite may come into the meeting to worship the Lord, and none of their descendants for ten generations may come in. ⁴This is because the Ammonites and Moabites did not give you bread and water when you came out of Egypt. And they hired Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor in Northwest Mesopotamia, to put a curse on you. ⁵But the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam. He turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. ⁶Don’t wish for their peace or success as long as you live.

⁷Don’t hate Edomites; they are your close relatives. Don’t hate Egyptians, because you were foreigners in their country. ⁸The great-grandchildren of these two peoples may come into the meeting to worship the Lord.

Keeping the Camp Clean

⁹When you are camped in time of war, keep away from unclean things. ¹⁰If a man becomes unclean during the night, he must go outside the camp and not come back. ¹¹But when evening comes, he must wash himself, and at sunset he may come back into the camp.

¹²Choose a place outside the camp where people may go to relieve themselves. ¹³Carry a tent peg with you, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your dung. ¹⁴The Lord your God moves around through your camp to protect you and to defeat your enemies for you, so the camp must be holy. He must not see anything unclean among you so that he will not leave you.

Other Laws

¹⁵If an escaped slave comes to you, do not hand over the slave to his master. ¹⁶Let the slave live with you anywhere he likes, in any town he chooses. Do not mistreat him.

¹⁷No Israelite man or woman must ever become a temple prostitute. ¹⁸Do not bring a male or female prostitute’s pay to the Temple of the Lord your God to pay what you have promised to the Lord, because the Lord your God hates prostitution.

¹⁹If you loan your fellow Israelites money or food or anything else, don’t make them pay back more than you loaned them. ²⁰You may charge foreigners, but not fellow Israelites. Then the Lord your God will bless everything you do in the land you are entering to take as your own.

²¹If you make a promise to give something to the Lord your God, do not be slow to pay it, because the Lord your God demands it from you. Do not be guilty of sin. ²²But if you do not make the promise, you will not be guilty. ²³You must do whatever you say you will do, because you chose to make the promise to the Lord your God.

²⁴If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat as many grapes as you wish, but do not put any grapes into your basket. ²⁵If you go into your neighbor’s grainfield, you may pick grain with your hands, but you must not cut down your neighbor’s grain with your sickle.

24A man might marry a woman but later decide she doesn’t please him because he has found something bad about her. He writes out divorce papers for her, gives them to her, and sends her away from his house. ²After she leaves his house, she goes and marries another man, ³but her second husband does not like her either. So he writes out divorce papers for her, gives them to her, and sends her away from his house. Or the second husband might die. ⁴In either case, her first husband who divorced her must not marry her again, because she has become unclean. The Lord would hate this. Don’t bring this sin into the land the Lord your God is giving you as your own.

⁵A man who has just married must not be sent to war or be given any other duty. He should be free to stay home for a year to make his new wife happy.

⁶If someone owes you something, do not take his two stones for grinding grain—not even the upper one—in place of what he owes, because this is how the person makes a living.

⁷If someone kidnaps a fellow Israelite, either to make him a slave or sell him, the kidnapper must be killed. You must get rid of the evil among you.

⁸Be careful when someone has a skin disease. Do exactly what the priests, the Levites, teach you, being careful to do what I have commanded them. ⁹Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on your way out of Egypt.

¹⁰When you make a loan to your neighbors, don’t go into their homes to get something in place of it. ¹¹Stay outside and let them go in and get what they promised you. ¹²If a poor person gives you a coat to show he will pay the loan back, don’t keep it overnight. ¹³Give the coat back at sunset, because your neighbor needs that coat to sleep in, and he will be grateful to you. And the Lord your God will see that you have done a good thing.

¹⁴Don’t cheat hired servants who are poor and needy, whether they are fellow Israelites or foreigners living in one of your towns. ¹⁵Pay them each day before sunset, because they are poor and need the money. Otherwise, they may complain to the Lord about you, and you will be guilty of sin.

¹⁶Parents must not be put to death if their children do wrong, and children must not be put to death if their parents do wrong. Each person must die for his own sin.

¹⁷Do not be unfair to a foreigner or an orphan. Don’t take a widow’s coat to make sure she pays you back. ¹⁸Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord your God saved you from there. That is why I am commanding you to do this.

¹⁹When you are gathering your harvest in the field and leave behind a bundle of grain, don’t go back and get it. Leave it there for foreigners, orphans, and widows so that the Lord your God can bless everything you do. ²⁰When you beat your olive trees to knock the olives off, don’t beat the trees a second time. Leave what is left for foreigners, orphans, and widows. ²¹When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, don’t pick the vines a second time. Leave what is left for foreigners, orphans, and widows. ²²Remember that you were slaves in Egypt; that is why I am commanding you to do this.

25If two people have an argument and go to court, the judges will decide the case. They will declare one person right and the other guilty. ²If the guilty person has to be punished with a beating, the judge will make that person lie down and be beaten in front of him. The number of lashes should match the crime. ³But don’t hit a person more than forty times, because more than that would disgrace him before others.

⁴When an ox is working in the grain, do not cover its mouth to keep it from eating.

⁵If two brothers are living together, and one of them dies without having a son, his widow must not marry someone outside her husband’s family. Her husband’s brother must marry her, which is his duty to her as a brother-in-law. ⁶The first son she has counts as the son of the dead brother so that his name will not be forgotten in Israel.

⁷But if a man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, she should go to the elders at the town gate. She should say, “My brother-in-law will not carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He refuses to do his duty for me.”

⁸Then the elders of the town must call for the man and talk to him. But if he is stubborn and says, “I don’t want to marry her,” ⁹the woman must go up to him in front of the leaders. She must take off one of his sandals and spit in his face and say, “This is for the man who won’t continue his brother’s family!” ¹⁰Then that man’s family shall be known in Israel as the Family of the Unsandaled.

¹¹If two men are fighting and one man’s wife comes to save her husband from his attacker, grabbing the attacker by his sex organs, ¹²you must cut off her hand. Show her no mercy.

¹³Don’t carry two sets of weights with you, one heavy and one light. ¹⁴Don’t have two different sets of measures in your house, one large and one small. ¹⁵You must have true and honest weights and measures so that you will live a long time in the land the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁶The Lord your God hates anyone who is dishonest and uses dishonest measures.

¹⁷Remember what the Amalekites did to you when you came out of Egypt. ¹⁸When you were tired and worn out, they met you on the road and attacked all those lagging behind. They were not afraid of God. ¹⁹When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you as your own, you shall destroy any memory of the Amalekites on the earth. Do not forget!

The First Harvest

26When you go into the land the Lord your God is giving you as your own, to take it over and live in it, ²you must take some of the first harvest of crops that grow from the land the Lord your God is giving you. Put the food in a basket and go to the place where the Lord your God will choose to be worshiped. ³Say to the priest on duty at that time, “Today I declare before the Lord your God that I have come into the land the Lord promised our ancestors that he would give us.” ⁴The priest will take your basket and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God. ⁵Then you shall announce before the Lord your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt with only a few people, but they became a great, powerful, and large nation there. ⁶But the Egyptians were cruel to us, making us suffer and work very hard. ⁷So we prayed to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and he heard us. When he saw our trouble, hard work, and suffering, ⁸the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his great power and strength, using great terrors, signs, and miracles. ⁹Then he brought us to this place and gave us this fertile land. ¹⁰Now I bring part of the first harvest from this land that you, Lord, have given me.” Place the basket before the Lord your God and bow down before him. ¹¹Then you and the Levites and foreigners among you should rejoice, because the Lord your God has given good things to you and your family.

¹²Bring a tenth of all your harvest the third year…