3. Do not eat it with bread made with yeast, but for seven days eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, because you left Egypt in haste – so that all the days of your life you may remember the time of your departure from Egypt.
4. Let no yeast be found in your possession in all your land for seven days. Do not let any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until morning.
5. You must not sacrifice the Passover in any town the Lord your God gives you
6. except in the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name. There you must sacrifice the Passover in the evening, when the sun goes down, on the anniversary of your departure from Egypt.
7. Roast it and eat it at the place the Lord your God will choose. Then in the morning return to your tents.
8. For six days eat unleavened bread and on the seventh day hold an assembly to the Lord your God and do no work.
9. Count seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing corn.
10. Then celebrate the Festival of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you.
11. And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name – you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows living among you.
12. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and follow carefully these decrees.
13. Celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing-floor and your winepress.
14. Be joyful at your festival – you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns.
15. For seven days celebrate the festival to the Lord your God at the place the Lord will choose. For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.
16. Three times a year all your men must appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose: at the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks and the Festival of Tabernacles. No one should appear before the Lord empty-handed:
3. and contrary to my command has worshipped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars in the sky,
4. and this has been brought to your attention, then you must investigate it thoroughly. If it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done in Israel,
5. take the man or woman who has done this evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death.
6. On the testimony of two or three witnesses a person is to be put to death, but no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.
7. The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting that person to death, and then the hands of all the people. You must purge the evil from among you.
8. If cases come before your courts that are too difficult for you to judge – whether bloodshed, lawsuits or assaults – take them to the place the Lord your God will choose.
9. Go to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office at that time. Enquire of them and they will give you the verdict.
10. You must act according to the decisions they give you at the place the Lord will choose. Be careful to do everything they instruct you to do.
11. Act according to whatever they teach you and the decisions they give you. Do not turn aside from what they tell you, to the right or to the left.
12. Anyone who shows contempt for the judge or for the priest who stands ministering there to the Lord your God is to be put to death. You must purge the evil from Israel.
13. All the people will hear and be afraid, and will not be contemptuous again.
14. When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,’
15. be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite.
16. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way again.’