In those days, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and observed their hard labor, and he saw an Egyptian man attacking a Hebrew man, one of his own people.

Those of Pharaoh's servants who feared the word of the Lord hurried to bring their servants and livestock into the houses,

but those who did not take the word of the Lord seriously left their servants and their cattle in the field.

In the abundance of your majesty you have overthrown those who rise up against you. You sent forth your wrath; it consumed them like stubble.

But you choose from the people capable men, God-fearing, men of truth, those who hate bribes, and put them over the people as rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me,

and showing covenant faithfulness to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

"You must not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and subverts the words of the righteous.

They are to eat those things by which atonement was made to consecrate and to set them apart, but no one else may eat them, for they are holy.

Everyone who crosses over to those who are numbered is to pay this: a half shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (a shekel weighs twenty gerahs). The half shekel is to be an offering to the Lord.

Everyone who crosses over to those numbered, from twenty years old and up, is to pay an offering to the Lord.

Moses said, "It is not the sound of those who shout for victory, nor is it the sound of those who cry because they are overcome, but the sound of singing I hear."

All the skilled among those who were doing the work made the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twisted linen and blue and purple and scarlet; they were made with cherubim that were the work of an artistic designer.

The silver of those who were numbered of the community was one hundred talents and 1,775 shekels, according to the sanctuary shekel,

one beka per person, that is, a half shekel, according to the sanctuary shekel, for everyone who crossed over to those numbered, from twenty years old or older, 603,550 in all.