However, by no means eat the blood, for the blood is life itself -- you must not eat the life with the meat!

You must not eat it! You must pour it out on the ground like water.

You must not eat it so that it may go well with you and your children after you; you will be doing what is right in the Lord's sight.

After they have been destroyed from your presence, be careful not to be ensnared like they are; do not pursue their gods and say, "How do these nations serve their gods? I will do the same."

You must not worship the Lord your God the way they do! For everything that is abhorrent to him, everything he hates, they have done when worshiping their gods. They even burn up their sons and daughters before their gods!

You must be careful to do everything I am commanding you. Do not add to it or subtract from it!

and the sign or wonder should come to pass concerning what he said to you, namely, "Let us follow other gods" -- gods whom you have not previously known -- "and let us serve them."

You must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer, for the Lord your God will be testing you to see if you love him with all your mind and being.

You must not give in to him or even listen to him; do not feel sympathy for him or spare him or cover up for him.

some evil people have departed from among you to entice the inhabitants of their cities, saying, "Let's go and serve other gods" (whom you have not known before).

You must not take for yourself anything that has been placed under judgment. Then the Lord will relent from his intense anger, show you compassion, have mercy on you, and multiply you as he promised your ancestors.

You are children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave your forehead bald for the sake of the dead.

You must not eat any forbidden thing.

However, you may not eat the following animals among those that chew the cud or those that have divided hooves: the camel, the hare, and the rock badger. (Although they chew the cud, they do not have divided hooves and are therefore ritually impure to you).

Also the pig is ritually impure to you; though it has divided hooves, it does not chew the cud. You may not eat their meat or even touch their remains.

but whatever does not have fins and scales you may not eat; it is ritually impure to you.

These are the ones you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture,

and any winged thing on the ground are impure to you -- they may not be eaten.

You may not eat any corpse, though you may give it to the resident foreigner who is living in your villages and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Do not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.

As for the Levites in your villages, you must not ignore them, for they have no allotment or inheritance along with you.

This is the nature of the cancellation: Every creditor must remit what he has loaned to another person; he must not force payment from his fellow Israelite, for it is to be recognized as "the Lord's cancellation of debts."

However, there should not be any poor among you, for the Lord will surely bless you in the land that he is giving you as an inheritance,

For the Lord your God will bless you just as he has promised; you will lend to many nations but will not borrow from any, and you will rule over many nations but they will not rule over you.

If a fellow Israelite from one of your villages in the land that the Lord your God is giving you should be poor, you must not harden your heart or be insensitive to his impoverished condition.

Be careful lest you entertain the wicked thought that the seventh year, the year of cancellation of debts, has almost arrived, and your attitude be wrong toward your impoverished fellow Israelite and you do not lend him anything; he will cry out to the Lord against you and you will be regarded as having sinned.

You must by all means lend to him and not be upset by doing it, for because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you attempt.

If you set them free, you must not send them away empty-handed.

However, if the servant says to you, "I do not want to leave you," because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you,

You should not consider it difficult to let him go free, for he will have served you for six years, twice the time of a hired worker; the Lord your God will bless you in everything you do.

You must set apart for the Lord your God every firstborn male born to your herds and flocks. You must not work the firstborn of your bulls or shear the firstborn of your flocks.

If they have any kind of blemish -- lameness, blindness, or anything else -- you may not offer them as a sacrifice to the Lord your God.

However, you must not eat its blood; you must pour it out on the ground like water.

Observe the month Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in that month he brought you out of Egypt by night.

You must not eat any yeast with it; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast, symbolic of affliction, for you came out of Egypt hurriedly. You must do this so you will remember for the rest of your life the day you came out of the land of Egypt.

There must not be a scrap of yeast within your land for seven days, nor can any of the meat you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain until the next morning.

You may not sacrifice the Passover in just any of your villages that the Lord your God is giving you,

You must eat bread made without yeast for six days. The seventh day you are to hold an assembly for the Lord your God; you must not do any work on that day.

Three times a year all your males must appear before the Lord your God in the place he chooses for the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Temporary Shelters; and they must not appear before him empty-handed.

You must not pervert justice or show favor. Do not take a bribe, for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and distort the words of the righteous.

You must not plant any kind of tree as a sacred Asherah pole near the altar of the Lord your God which you build for yourself.

You must not erect a sacred pillar, a thing the Lord your God detests.

You must not sacrifice to him a bull or sheep that has a blemish or any other defect, because that is considered offensive to the Lord your God.

by serving other gods and worshiping them -- the sun, moon, or any other heavenly bodies which I have not permitted you to worship.

You must do what you are instructed, and the verdict they pronounce to you, without fail. Do not deviate right or left from what they tell you.

Then all the people will hear and be afraid, and not be so presumptuous again.

you must select without fail a king whom the Lord your God chooses. From among your fellow citizens you must appoint a king -- you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites.

Moreover, he must not accumulate horses for himself or allow the people to return to Egypt to do so, for the Lord has said you must never again return that way.

Furthermore, he must not marry many wives lest his affections turn aside, and he must not accumulate much silver and gold.

Then he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens or turn from the commandments to the right or left, and he and his descendants will enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom in Israel.

When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn the abhorrent practices of those nations.

Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not given you permission to do such things.

This accords with what happened at Horeb in the day of the assembly. You asked the Lord your God: "Please do not make us hear the voice of the Lord our God any more or see this great fire any more lest we die."

"But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die.

Now if you say to yourselves, 'How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?' --

whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him."

Otherwise the blood avenger will chase after the killer in the heat of his anger, eventually overtake him, and kill him, though this is not a capital case since he did not hate him at the time of the accident.

You must not shed innocent blood in your land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, for that would make you guilty.

You must not pity him, but purge out the blood of the innocent from Israel, so that it may go well with you.

You must not encroach on your neighbor's property, which will have been defined in the inheritance you will obtain in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

A single witness may not testify against another person for any trespass or sin that he commits. A matter may be legally established only on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

You must not show pity; the principle will be a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, and a foot for a foot.

When you go to war against your enemies and see chariotry and troops who outnumber you, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, is with you.

"Listen, Israel! Today you are moving forward to do battle with your enemies. Do not be fainthearted. Do not fear and tremble or be terrified because of them,

Moreover, the officers are to say to the troops, "Who among you has built a new house and not dedicated it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else dedicate it.

Or who among you has planted a vineyard and not benefited from it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else benefit from it.

Or who among you has become engaged to a woman but has not married her? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else marry her."

In addition, the officers are to say to the troops, "Who among you is afraid and fainthearted? He may go home so that he will not make his fellow soldier's heart as fearful as his own."

If it does not accept terms of peace but makes war with you, then you are to lay siege to it.

This is how you are to deal with all those cities located far from you, those that do not belong to these nearby nations.

As for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive.

If you besiege a city for a long time while attempting to capture it, you must not chop down its trees, for you may eat fruit from them and should not cut them down. A tree in the field is not human that you should besiege it!

However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, and you may use it to build siege works against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.

Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked -- that has never pulled with the yoke --

Then they must proclaim, "Our hands have not spilled this blood, nor have we witnessed the crime.

Do not blame your people Israel whom you redeemed, O Lord, and do not hold them accountable for the bloodshed of an innocent person." Then atonement will be made for the bloodshed.

If you are not pleased with her, then you must let her go where she pleases. You cannot in any case sell her; you must not take advantage of her, since you have already humiliated her.

In the day he divides his inheritance he must not appoint as firstborn the son of the favorite wife in place of the other wife's son who is actually the firstborn.

his body must not remain all night on the tree; instead you must make certain you bury him that same day, for the one who is left exposed on a tree is cursed by God. You must not defile your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

When you see your neighbor's ox or sheep going astray, do not ignore it; you must return it without fail to your neighbor.

If the owner does not live near you or you do not know who the owner is, then you must corral the animal at your house and let it stay with you until the owner looks for it; then you must return it to him.

You shall do the same to his donkey, his clothes, or anything else your neighbor has lost and you have found; you must not refuse to get involved.

When you see your neighbor's donkey or ox fallen along the road, do not ignore it; instead, you must be sure to help him get the animal on its feet again.

A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor should a man dress up in women's clothing, for anyone who does this is offensive to the Lord your God.

If you happen to notice a bird's nest along the road, whether in a tree or on the ground, and there are chicks or eggs with the mother bird sitting on them, you must not take the mother from the young.

You must not plant your vineyard with two kinds of seed; otherwise the entire yield, both of the seed you plant and the produce of the vineyard, will be defiled.

You must not plow with an ox and a donkey harnessed together.

You must not wear clothing made with wool and linen meshed together.

accusing her of impropriety and defaming her reputation by saying, "I married this woman but when I had sexual relations with her I discovered she was not a virgin!"

Moreover, he has raised accusations of impropriety by saying, 'I discovered your daughter was not a virgin,' but this is the evidence of my daughter's virginity!" The cloth must then be spread out before the city's elders.

But if the accusation is true and the young woman was not a virgin,

you must bring the two of them to the gate of that city and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry out though in the city and the man because he violated his neighbor's fianc?e; in this way you will purge evil from among you.

You must not do anything to the young woman -- she has done nothing deserving of death. This case is the same as when someone attacks another person and murders him,

Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes her and they are discovered.

A man may not marry his father's former wife and in this way dishonor his father.

A man with crushed or severed genitals may not enter the assembly of the Lord.

A person of illegitimate birth may not enter the assembly of the Lord; to the tenth generation no one related to him may do so.

An Ammonite or Moabite may not enter the assembly of the Lord; to the tenth generation none of their descendants shall ever do so,

for they did not meet you with food and water on the way as you came from Egypt, and furthermore, they hired Balaam son of Beor of Pethor in Aram Naharaim to curse you.

You must not seek peace and prosperity for them through all the ages to come.

You must not hate an Edomite, for he is your relative; you must not hate an Egyptian, for you lived as a foreigner in his land.