Exodus 23–25

Laws About Fairness

23“You must not tell lies. If you are a witness in court, don’t help a wicked person by telling lies.

²“You must not do wrong just because everyone else is doing it. If you are a witness in court, you must not ruin a fair trial. You must not tell lies just because everyone else is. ³If a poor person is in court, you must not take his side just because he is poor.

⁴“If you see your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering away, you must return it to him. ⁵If you see that your enemy’s donkey has fallen because its load is too heavy, do not leave it there. You must help your enemy get the donkey back on its feet.

⁶“You must not be unfair to a poor person when he is in court. ⁷You must not lie when you accuse someone in court. Never allow an innocent or honest person to be put to death as punishment, because I will not treat guilty people as if they were innocent.

⁸“You must not accept money from a person who wants you to lie in court, because such money will not let you see what is right. Such money makes good people tell lies.

⁹“You must not mistreat a foreigner. You know how it feels to be a foreigner, because you were foreigners in Egypt.

Laws for the Sabbath

¹⁰“For six years you are to plant and harvest crops on your land. ¹¹Then during the seventh year, do not plow or plant your land. If any food grows there, allow the poor people to have it, and let the wild animals eat what is left. You should do the same with your vineyards and your orchards of olive trees.

¹²“You should work six days a week, but on the seventh day you must rest. This lets your ox and your donkey rest, and it also lets the slave born in your house and the foreigner be refreshed.

¹³“Be sure to do all that I have said to you. You must not even say the names of other gods; those names must not come out of your mouth.

Three Yearly Feasts

¹⁴“Three times each year you must hold a feast to honor me. ¹⁵You must celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the way I commanded you. For seven days you must eat bread that is made without yeast at the set time during the month of Abib, the month when you came out of Egypt. No one is to come to worship me without bringing an offering.

¹⁶“You must celebrate the Feast of Weeks. Offer to God the first things you harvest from the crops you planted in your fields.

“You must celebrate the Feast of Shelters in the fall, when you gather all the crops from your fields.

¹⁷“So three times during every year all your males must come to worship the Lord God.

¹⁸“You must not offer animal blood along with anything that has yeast in it.

“You must not save any of the fat from the sacrifice for the next day.

¹⁹“You must bring the best of the firstfruits of your land to the Holy Tent ⁿ of the Lord your God.

“You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

God Will Help Israel

²⁰“I am sending an angel ahead of you, who will protect you as you travel. He will lead you to the place I have prepared. ²¹Pay attention to the angel and obey him. Do not turn against him; he will not forgive such turning against him because my power is in him. ²²If you listen carefully to all he says and do everything that I tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies. I will fight all who fight against you. ²³My angel will go ahead of you and take you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and I will destroy them.

²⁴“You must not bow down to their gods or worship them. You must not live the way those people live. You must destroy their idols, breaking into pieces the stone pillars they use in worship. ²⁵If you worship the Lord your God, I will bless your bread and your water. I will take away sickness from you. ²⁶None of your women will have her baby die before it is born, and all women will have children. I will allow you to live long lives.

²⁷“I will make your enemies afraid of me. I will confuse any people you fight against, and I will make all your enemies run away from you. ²⁸I will send terror ahead of you that will force the Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites out of your way. ²⁹But I will not force all those people out in only one year. If I did, the land would become a desert and the wild animals would become too many for you. ³⁰Instead, I will force those people out slowly, until there are enough of you to take over the land.

³¹“I will give you the land from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give you power over the people who now live in the land, and you will force them out ahead of you. ³²You must not make an agreement with those people or with their gods. ³³You must not let them live in your land, or they will make you sin against me. If you worship their gods, you will be caught in a trap.”

God and Israel Make Their Agreement

24The Lord told Moses, “You, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel must come up to me and worship me from a distance. ²Then Moses alone must come near me; the others must not come near. The rest of the people must not come up the mountain with Moses.”

³Moses told the people all the Lord’s words and laws for living. Then all of the people answered out loud together, “We will do all the things the Lord has said.” ⁴So Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. And he got up early the next morning and built an altar near the bottom of the mountain. He set up twelve stones, one stone for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. ⁵Then Moses sent young Israelite men to offer whole burnt offerings and to sacrifice young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord. ⁶Moses put half of the blood of these animals in bowls, and he sprinkled the other half of the blood on the altar. ⁷Then he took the Book of the Agreement and read it so the people could hear him. And they said, “We will do everything that the Lord has said; we will obey.”

⁸Then Moses took the blood from the bowls and sprinkled it on the people, saying, “This is the blood that begins the Agreement, the Agreement which the Lord has made with you about all these words.”

⁹Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up the mountain ¹⁰and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was a surface that looked as if it were paved with blue sapphire stones, and it was as clear as the sky! ¹¹These leaders of the Israelites saw God, but God did not destroy them. Then they ate and drank together.

God Promises Moses the Stone Tablets

¹²The Lord said to Moses, “Come up the mountain to me. Wait there, and I will give you two stone tablets. On these are the teachings and the commands I have written to instruct the people.”

¹³So Moses and his helper Joshua set out, and Moses went up to Sinai, the mountain of God. ¹⁴Moses said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone who has a disagreement with others can take it to them.”

Moses Meets with God

¹⁵When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it. ¹⁶The glory of the Lord came down on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from inside the cloud. ¹⁷To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a fire burning on top of the mountain. ¹⁸Then Moses went into the cloud and went higher up the mountain. He was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.

Gifts for the Lord

25The Lord said to Moses, ²“Tell the Israelites to bring me gifts. Receive for me the gifts each person wants to give. ³These are the gifts that you should receive from them: gold, silver, bronze; ⁴blue, purple, and red thread; fine linen, goat hair, ⁵sheepskins that are dyed red; fine leather; acacia wood; ⁶olive oil to burn in the lamps; spices for sweet-smelling incense, and the special olive oil poured on a person’s head to make him a priest; ⁷onyx stones, and other jewels to be put on the holy vest and the chest covering.

⁸“The people must build a holy place for me so that I can live among them. ⁹Build this Holy Tent and everything in it by the plan I will show you.

The Ark of the Agreement

¹⁰“Use acacia wood and build an Ark forty-five inches long, twenty-seven inches wide, and twenty-seven inches high. ¹¹Cover the Ark inside and out with pure gold, and put a gold strip all around it. ¹²Make four gold rings for the Ark and attach them to its four feet, two rings on each side. ¹³Then make poles from acacia wood and cover them with gold. ¹⁴Put the poles through the rings on the sides of the Ark, and use these poles to carry it. ¹⁵These poles must always stay in the rings of the Ark. Do not take them out. ¹⁶Then put in the Ark the Agreement which I will make with you.

¹⁷“Then make a lid of pure gold for the Ark; this is the mercy seat. Make it forty-five inches long and twenty-seven inches wide. ¹⁸Then hammer gold to make two creatures with wings, and put one on each end of the lid. ¹⁹Attach one creature on one end of the lid and the other creature on the other end. Make them to be one piece with the lid at the ends. ²⁰The creatures’ wings should be spread upward, covering the lid, and the creatures are to face each other across the lid. ²¹Put this lid on top of the Ark, and put in the Ark the Agreement which I will make with you. ²²I will meet with you there, above the lid between the two winged creatures on the Ark of the Agreement. There I will give you all my commands for the Israelites.

The Table

²³“Make a table out of acacia wood, thirty-six inches long, eighteen inches wide, and twenty-seven inches high. ²⁴Cover it with pure gold, and put a gold strip around it. ²⁵Make a frame three inches high that stands up all around the edge, and put a gold strip around it. ²⁶Then make four gold rings. Attach them to the four corners of the table where the four legs are. ²⁷Put the rings close to the frame around the top of the table, because they will hold the poles for carrying it. ²⁸Make the poles out of acacia wood, cover them with gold, and carry the…