Study Desk

"When you make an altar for the Lord your God, do not put beside it a wooden god like the false goddess Asherah.

Do not set up for yourself a pillar for worship that the Lord your God hates.

"Do not give to the Lord your God a bull or a sheep which is not perfect. For that is a hated thing to the Lord your God.

"There may be a problem too hard for you to decide, between two kinds of killing, between two kinds of questions about the law, between two kinds of hurting, problems argued about in your courts. Then get up and go to the place which the Lord your God chooses.

He must not take many horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get many horses. Because the Lord has told you, ‘You must never again return that way.'

He must not take many wives for himself or his heart may turn away. And he must not gather much silver and gold for himself.

"When he sits on the throne of his nation, he should write this Law for himself in a book in front of the Levite religious leaders.

For the Lord your God has chosen him and his sons from all your families, to stand and serve in the name of the Lord forever.

For the Lord hates whoever does these things. And because of these hated things, the Lord your God will drive them out from in front of you.

For these nations that you are about to take listen to those who do witchcraft and use secret ways. But the Lord your God has not allowed you to do so.

"The Lord your God will give you a man who speaks for God like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.

I will give them a man who speaks for God like you from among their brothers. I will put My words in his mouth. And he will make known to them all that I tell him.

When a man who speaks for God speaks in the name of the Lord, and what he says does not come true, that word is not from the Lord. The man has spoken on his own. Do not be afraid of him.

you should set apart three cities for yourself in the land the Lord your God gives you for your own.

Make the roads good that lead to these cities. Divide into three parts the land the Lord your God gives you for your own. Any man who kills another may run to a city and be safe.

Or else the one who is angry will want to punish him for the killing, and will catch him and kill him. But the killer should not be put to death, because he had not hated the man in the past.

So I tell you, ‘Set apart three cities for yourself.'

"But there might be a man who hates his neighbor, lies in wait for him, goes against him, and hurts him so that he dies. After this he might run to one of these cities.

Then the leaders of his city should send men to take him from there and bring him to the one who wants to punish him for the killing that he may die.

"Do not move your neighbor's land-mark which the fathers of long ago have set in the land the Lord your God gives you for your own.