But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen or pay attention to them, just as the Lord had told Moses.

So there was hail, and lightning (fireballs) flashing intermittently in the midst of the extremely heavy hail, such as had not been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.

But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart, both he and his servants.

Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not let the Israelites go, just as the Lord had said through Moses.

For they covered the [visible] surface of the land, so that the ground was darkened; and they ate every plant of the land and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left. There remained not a green thing on the trees or the plants of the field throughout all the land of Egypt.

The Egyptians could not see one another, nor did anyone leave his place for three days, but all the Israelites had [supernatural] light in their dwellings.

Then the Israelites went and did [as they had been told]: just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought from Egypt; it was not leavened, since they were driven [quickly] from Egypt and could not delay, nor had they prepared any food for themselves.

Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had solemnly ordered (placed under an oath) the Israelites, saying, “God will assuredly take care of you, and you must carry my bones away from here with you.”

When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his servants had a change of heart toward the people, and they said, “What is this that we have done? We have let Israel go from serving us!”

and the Israelites said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate bread until we were full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this entire assembly with hunger.”

When the layer of dew evaporated, on the surface of the wilderness there was a fine, flake-like thing, as fine as frost on the ground.

When they measured it with an omer, he who had gathered a large amount had no excess, and he who had gathered little had no lack; every man gathered according to his need (family size).

Now Jethro (Reuel), the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel His people, and that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt.

Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took Moses’ wife Zipporah, after he had sent her away [from Egypt],

Moses told his father-in-law about all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, and about all the hardship that had happened during the journey, and how the Lord had rescued them.

Jethro rejoiced over all the good things the Lord had done to Israel, in that He had rescued them from the hand of the Egyptians.

So Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything that he had said.

When they moved out from Rephidim, they came to the Wilderness of Sinai and they camped there; Israel camped at the base of the mountain [of Sinai].

Then Moses came and told the people everything that the Lord had said and all the ordinances. And all the people answered with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.”

When He had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, He gave Moses the two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.

So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He had said He would do to His people.

Then Moses took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it on the surface of the water and made the Israelites drink it.

Now when Moses saw that the people were out of control—for Aaron had let them get out of control to the point of being an object of mockery among their enemies—

For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the sons of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked (stubborn, rebellious) people! If I should come among you for one moment, I would destroy you. Now therefore, [penitently] take off your ornaments, so that I may know what to do with you.’”

Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise and stand, each at his tent door, and look at Moses until he entered the tent.

So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first ones, and he got up early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took the two tablets of stone in his hand.

Afterward all the Israelites approached him, and he commanded them to do everything that the Lord had said to him on Mount Sinai.

When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.

All the skilled and talented women spun thread with their hands, and brought what they had spun, blue and purple and scarlet fabric and fine linen.

All the women whose heart stirred with a skill spun the goats’ hair.

The Israelites, all the men and women whose heart moved them to bring material for all the work which the Lord had commanded through Moses to be done, brought a freewill (voluntary) offering to the Lord.

So Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person in whom the Lord had put ability, everyone whose heart stirred him, to come to do the work.

They received from Moses all the offerings which the Israelites had brought for the construction of the sanctuary, to prepare it for service. And they continued to bring him freewill (voluntary) offerings every morning.

for the material they had was sufficient and more than enough to do all the work.

Each board had two tenons (dovetails), fitted to one another; he did this for all the boards of the tabernacle.

Moreover, from the blue and purple and scarlet fabric, they made finely woven garments for serving and ministering in the Holy Place; they made the holy garments for Aaron, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

The skillfully woven sash with which to bind it, which was on the ephod [to hold it in place], was like its workmanship, of the same material: of gold and of blue, purple, and scarlet fabric, and fine twisted linen, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

And he put them on the shoulder pieces of the ephod to be memorial stones (a remembrance) for the sons of Israel (Jacob), just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Thus all the work of the tabernacle of the Tent of Meeting was finished; and the Israelites did according to all that the Lord had commanded Moses; that is what they did.

So the Israelites did all the work according to all that the Lord had commanded Moses.

And Moses [carefully] inspected all the work, and behold, they had done it; just as the Lord had commanded, so had they done it. So Moses blessed them.

He spread the tent over the tabernacle and put the covering of the tent over it, just as the Lord had commanded him.

Moses brought the ark into the tabernacle, and set up a veil (partition) for the screen (curtain), and screened off the ark of the Testimony, just as the Lord had commanded him.

He set the bread [of the Presence] in order on it before the Lord, just as the Lord had commanded him.

So they took what Moses had commanded to the front of the Tent of Meeting, and all the congregation approached and stood before the Lord.

but the fat, the kidneys, and the lobe of the liver from the sin offering he offered up in smoke on the altar, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective [ceremonial] censers, put fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange (unauthorized, unacceptable) fire before the Lord, [an act] which He had not commanded them to do.

So they came forward and carried them, still in their undertunics, outside the camp, as Moses had said.

Then Moses said to Aaron and to his [younger] sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not uncover your heads nor let your hair hang loose nor tear your clothes [as expressions of mourning], so that you will not die [also] and so that He will not express His wrath and anger toward all the congregation. But your relatives, the whole house of Israel, may mourn the burning which the Lord has brought about.

But Moses diligently tried to find the goat [that had been offered] as the sin offering, and discovered that it had been burned up [as waste, not eaten]! So he was angry with Aaron’s surviving sons Eleazar and Ithamar, saying,

Then Aaron said to Moses, “This very day they have [obediently] presented their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord, but [such terrible things] as these have happened to me [and to them]; if I [and my sons] had eaten a sin offering today would it have been acceptable and pleasing in the sight of the Lord?”

and the priest shall examine him, and if the diseased part is changed to white, then the priest shall pronounce him who had the disease to be clean; he is clean.

‘If a man takes his sister, his father’s daughter or his mother’s daughter, so that he sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace; and they shall be cut off in the sight of the sons of their people. He has uncovered his sister’s nakedness; he bears [responsibility for] his guilt.

also his virgin sister, who is near to him because she has had no husband; for her he may become unclean.

No man of the descendants of Aaron who is a leper or has a discharge may eat the holy things [the offerings and the showbread] until he is clean. And whoever touches any person or thing made unclean by contact with a corpse or a man who has had a seminal emission,

Then Moses spoke to the Israelites, and they brought the one who had cursed [the Lord] outside the camp and stoned him with stones. Thus the Israelites did just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

For the Lord had said to Moses,

But Nadab and Abihu died in the presence of the Lord when they offered strange (unholy, unacceptable, inappropriate) fire before the Lord in the Wilderness of Sinai; and they had no sons. So Eleazar and Ithamar served as priests in the presence and under the supervision of Aaron their father.

Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, was chief of the leaders of the Levites; he supervised those who performed the duties of the sanctuary.

According to the commandment of the Lord through Moses, they were numbered, each assigned to his work of serving and carrying. Thus they were numbered by him, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

On the day that Moses had finished setting up the tabernacle and had anointed and consecrated it and all its furniture, and the altar and all its utensils; he also anointed them and consecrated them [for holy use].

But to the sons of Kohath he gave nothing, because they were assigned the care of the holy things which they carried on their shoulders [when the tabernacle was moved].

Now this was the workmanship of the lampstand: hammered work of gold; from its base to its flowers it was hammered work; according to the pattern which the Lord had shown Moses, so he made the lampstand.

Then after that the Levites went in to perform their service in the Tent of Meeting before Aaron and his sons; just as the Lord had commanded Moses concerning the Levites, so they did to them.

The Lord spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying,

Now Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had married a Cushite woman);

But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut up outside the camp for seven days, and afterward she may return.”

So they gave the Israelites a bad report about the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we went, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants. And all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.

All the Israelites murmured [in discontent] against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, “Oh that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or that we had died in this wilderness!

Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes [as a sign of grief],

So Eleazar the priest took the bronze censers which the Levites who were burned had offered, and they were hammered out [into broad sheets] as a plating for the [bronze] altar [of burnt offering],

Now on the next day Moses went into the Tent of the Testimony, and the rod of Aaron of the tribe of Levi had sprouted and put out buds and produced blossoms and yielded [ripe] almonds.

The people contended with Moses, and said, “If only we had perished when our brothers perished [in the plague] before the Lord!

So Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it on the pole, and it happened that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.

From there the Israelites went on to Beer, that is the well where the Lord said to Moses, “Gather the people together and I will give them water.”

For Heshbon was the city of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab and had taken all his land out of his hand, as far as the Arnon.

And Balak [the king of Moab] the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites.

The donkey saw Me and turned away from Me these three times. If she had not turned away from Me, I would have certainly killed you now, and let her live.”

When Balak heard that Balaam was coming, he went out to meet him at the city of Moab, which is on the border at the Arnon [River], at the farthest end of the border.

Balak did just as Balaam had said, and Balak and Balaam offered a bull and a ram on each altar.

Balak did just as Balaam had said, and offered a bull and a ram on each altar.

When Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, he did not go as he had done each time before [superstitiously] to seek omens and signs [in the natural world], but he set his face toward the wilderness (desert).

Therefore now flee to your place! I had intended to honor you greatly, but behold, the Lord has held you back from honor.”

Zelophehad the son of Hepher had no sons, but only daughters, and the names of Zelophehad’s daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.

For the Lord had said of them, “They shall certainly die in the wilderness.” And not a man was left of them except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.

“Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among those who assembled together against the Lord in the company of Korah, but he died for his own sin [as did all those who rebelled at Kadesh], and he had no sons.

Why should the name of our father be removed from his family because he had no son? Give to us a possession (land) among our father’s brothers.”

Then Eleazar the priest said to the men of war who had gone to battle, “This is the statute of the law which the Lord has commanded Moses:

and from the Israelites’ half, Moses took one out of every fifty, both of persons and animals, and gave them to the Levites, who were in charge of the tabernacle of the Lord, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

For the men of war had taken plunder, every man for himself.

Now the sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad had very large herds of cattle, and they saw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead [on the east side of the Jordan River], and indeed, the place was suitable for raising livestock.

For when they went up to the Valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the hearts of the Israelites so that they did not go into the land which the Lord had given them.

So the Lord’s anger was kindled against the sons of Israel (Jacob) and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until the entire generation of those who had done evil in the sight of the Lord was destroyed.

while the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn whom the Lord had struck down among them. Upon their gods the Lord also executed judgments.

The cities shall be to you as a refuge from the avenger, so that the one who has caused the death of another will not be killed until he has had a [fair] trial before the congregation.

The congregation shall rescue the offender from the hand of the blood avenger and return him to his city of refuge, [the place] to which he had escaped; and he shall live there until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the sacred oil.

But if at any time the one guilty of manslaughter comes outside the border of his city of refuge to which he fled,

In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the children of Israel in accordance with all that the Lord had commanded him to say to them,

after he had defeated Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, who lived at Ashtaroth in Edrei.