NAS - Deuteronomy Chapter 12 to 14

12 Laws of the Sanctuary

¹"These are the statutes and the judgments which you shall carefully observe in the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess as long as you live on the earth. ²"You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. ³"You shall tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and burn their Asherim with fire, and you shall cut down the engraved images of their gods and obliterate their name from that place. ⁴"You shall not act like this toward the LORD your God. ⁵"But you shall seek the LORD at the place which the LORD your God will choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come. ⁶"There you shall bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the contribution of your hand, your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. ⁷"There also you and your households shall eat before the LORD your God, and rejoice in all your undertakings in which the LORD your God has blessed you.

⁸"You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes; ⁹for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which the LORD your God is giving you. ¹⁰"When you cross the Jordan and live in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to inherit, and He gives you rest from all your enemies around you so that you live in security, ¹¹then it shall come about that the place in which the LORD your God will choose for His name to dwell, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution of your hand, and all your choice votive offerings which you will vow to the LORD. ¹²"And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, since he has no portion or inheritance with you.

¹³"Be careful that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every cultic place you see, ¹⁴but in the place which the LORD chooses in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you.

¹⁵"However, you may slaughter and eat meat within any of your gates, whatever you desire, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which He has given you; the unclean and the clean may eat of it, as of the gazelle and the deer. ¹⁶"Only you shall not eat the blood; you are to pour it out on the ground like water. ¹⁷"You are not allowed to eat within your gates the tithe of your grain or new wine or oil, or the firstborn of your herd or flock, or any of your votive offerings which you vow, or your freewill offerings, or the contribution of your hand. ¹⁸"But you shall eat them before the LORD your God in the place which the LORD your God will choose, you and your son and daughter, and your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God in all your undertakings. ¹⁹"Be careful that you do not forsake the Levite as long as you live in your land.

²⁰"When the LORD your God extends your border as He has promised you, and you say, `I will eat meat,' because you desire to eat meat, then you may eat meat, whatever you desire. ²¹"If the place which the LORD your God chooses to put His name is too far from you, then you may slaughter of your herd and flock which the LORD has given you, as I have commanded you; and you may eat within your gates whatever you desire. ²²"Just as a gazelle or a deer is eaten, so you will eat it; the unclean and the clean alike may eat of it. ²³"Only be sure not to eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh. ²⁴"You shall not eat it; you shall pour it out on the ground like water. ²⁵"You shall not eat it, so that it may be well with you and your sons after you, for you will be doing what is right in the sight of the LORD. ²⁶"Only your holy things which you may have and your votive offerings, you shall take and go to the place which the LORD chooses. ²⁷"And you shall offer your burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, on the altar of the LORD your God; and the blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the LORD your God, and you shall eat the flesh.

²⁸"Be careful to listen to all these words which I command you, so that it may be well with you and your sons after you forever, for you will be doing what is good and right in the sight of the LORD your God.

²⁹"When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, ³⁰beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, `How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?' ³¹"You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.

³²"Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to nor take away from it.

13 Shun Idolatry

¹"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, ²and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, `Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,' ³you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. ⁴"You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him. ⁵"But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.

⁶"If your brother, your mother's son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, `Let us go and serve other gods' (whom neither you nor your fathers have known, ⁷of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end), ⁸you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him. ⁹"But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. ¹⁰"So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ¹¹"Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such a wicked thing among you.

¹²"If you hear in one of your cities, which the LORD your God is giving you to live in, anyone saying that ¹³some worthless men have gone out from among you and have seduced the inhabitants of their city, saying, `Let us go and serve other gods' (whom you have not known), ¹⁴then you shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly. If it is true and the matter established that this abomination has been done among you, ¹⁵you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it and all that is in it and its cattle with the edge of the sword. ¹⁶"Then you shall gather all its booty into the middle of its open square and burn the city and all its booty with fire as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God; and it shall be a ruin forever. It shall never be rebuilt. ¹⁷"Nothing from that which is put under the ban shall cling to your hand, in order that the LORD may turn from His burning anger and show mercy to you, and have compassion on you and make you increase, just as He has sworn to your fathers, ¹⁸if you will listen to the voice of the LORD your God, keeping all His commandments which I am commanding you today, and doing what is right in the sight of the LORD your God.

14 Clean and Unclean Animals

¹"You are the sons of the LORD your God; you shall not cut yourselves nor shave your forehead for the sake of the dead. ²"For you are a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

³"You shall not eat any detestable thing. ⁴"These are the animals which you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, ⁵the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep. ⁶"Any animal that divides the hoof and has the hoof split in two and chews the cud, among the animals, that you may eat. ⁷"Nevertheless, you are not to eat of these among those which chew the cud, or among those that divide the hoof in two: the camel and the rabbit and the shaphan, for though they chew the cud, they do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you. ⁸"The pig, because it divides the hoof but does not chew the cud, it is unclean for you. You shall not eat any of their flesh nor touch their carcasses.

⁹"These you may eat of all that are in water: anything that has fins and scales you may eat, ¹⁰but anything that does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you.

¹¹"You may eat any clean bird. ¹²"But these are the ones which you shall not eat: the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard, ¹³and the red kite, the falcon, and the kite in their kinds, ¹⁴and every raven in its kind, ¹⁵and the ostrich, the owl, the sea gull, and the hawk in their kinds, ¹⁶the little owl, the great owl, the white owl, ¹⁷the pelican, the carrion vulture, the cormorant, ¹⁸the stork, and the heron in their kinds, and the hoopoe and the bat. ¹⁹"And all the teeming life with wings are unclean to you; they shall not be eaten. ²⁰"You may eat any clean bird.

²¹"You shall not eat anything which dies of itself. You may give it to the alien who is in your town, so that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner, for you are a holy people to the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.

²²"You shall surely tithe all the produce from what you sow, which comes out of the field every year. ²³"You shall eat in the presence of the LORD your God, at the place where He chooses to establish His name, the tithe of your grain, your new wine, your oil, and the firstborn of your herd and your flock, so that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always. ²⁴"If the distance is so great for you that you are not able to bring the tithe, since the place where the LORD your God chooses to set His name is too far away from you when the LORD your God blesses you, ²⁵then you shall exchange it for money, and bind the money in your hand and go to the place which the LORD your God chooses. ²⁶"You may spend the money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your heart desires; and there you shall eat in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household. ²⁷"Also you shall not neglect the Levite who is in your town, for he has no portion or inheritance among you.

²⁸"At the end of every third year you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in that year, and shall deposit it in your town. ²⁹"The Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance among you, and the alien, the orphan and the widow who are in your town, shall come and eat and be satisfied, in order that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.