Hello, this is Father Paul and I am glad we are taking this journey together to read the
Bible in a year.
Today's reading is from Deuteronomy chapters 15 to 18.
Chapter 15 At the end of every seven years you shall
grant a release of debts, and this is the form of the release.
Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbour shall release it.
He shall not require it of his neighbour or his brother, because it is called the Lord's
release.
As a governor you may require it, but you shall give up your claim to what is owed by
your brother.
Accept when there may be no poor among you, for the Lord will greatly bless you in the
land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance.
Only if you carefully obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe with care all these
commandments which I command you today.
For the Lord your God will bless you just as He promised you.
You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.
You shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you.
If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which
the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from
your poor brother, but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient
for his need whatever he needs.
Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart saying, The seventh year, the year of
release is at hand.
And your eye be evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing.
And he cry out to the Lord against you, and it becomes sin among you.
You shall surely give to him, and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him.
Because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your works and in all to
which you put your hand.
For the poor will never cease from the land.
Therefore I command you saying, You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your
poor and your needy in your land.
If your brother a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman is sold to you and serves you six years, then
in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you.
And when you send him away free from you, you shall not let him go away empty handed.
You shall supply him liberally from your flock, from your threshing floor, and from your wine
press.
From what the Lord your God has blessed you with you shall give to him.
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed
you.
Therefore I command you this thing today.
And if it happens that he says to you, I will not go away from you, because he loves you
and your house since he prospers with you, then you shall take an owl and thrust it through
his ear to the door, and he shall be your servant forever.
Also to your female servant you shall do likewise.
It shall not seem hard to you when you send him away free from you, for he has been worth
a double hired servant in serving you six years.
Then the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do.
All the firstborn males that come from your herd and your flock you shall sanctify to
the Lord your God.
You shall do no work with the firstborn of your herd, nor shear the firstborn of your
flock.
You and your household shall eat it before the Lord your God year by year in the place
which the Lord chooses.
But if there is a defect in it, if it is lame or blind, or has any serious defect, you shall
not sacrifice it to the Lord your God.
You may eat it within your gates, the unclean and the clean person alike may eat it, as
if it were a gazelle or a deer.
Only you shall not eat its blood.
You shall pour it on the ground like water.
Chapter 16 Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover
to the Lord your God.
For in the month of Abib, the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night.
Therefore you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God, from the flock and the
herd, in the place where the Lord chooses to put his name.
You shall eat no leavened bread with it.
Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it, that is the bread of affliction,
for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste, that you may remember the day in which
you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life.
And no leaven shall be seen among you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any
of the mead which you sacrificed the first day at twilight remain overnight until morning.
You may not sacrifice the Passover within any of your gates which the Lord your God
gives you, but at the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide.
There you shall sacrifice the Passover at twilight, at the going down of the sun at
the time you came out of Egypt.
Then you shall roast and eat it in the place which the Lord your God chooses, and in the
morning you shall turn and go to your tents.
Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a sacred
assembly to the Lord your God.
You shall do no work on it.
You shall count seven weeks for yourself, begin to count the seven weeks from the time
you begin to put the sickle to the grain.
Then you shall keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God with the tribute of a freewill
offering from your hand, which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you.
You shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male
servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the stranger and
the fatherless and the widow who are among you, at the place where the Lord your God
chooses to make his name abide.
And you shall remember that you are a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to observe
these statutes.
You shall observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, when you have gathered from your
threshing floor and from your winepress.
And you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant
and your female servant, and the Levite, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow
who are within your gates.
Seven days you shall keep a sacred feast to the Lord your God in the place which the Lord
chooses, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work
of your hands, so that you surely rejoice.
Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which
he chooses, at the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of
tabernacles.
And they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed.
Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which
he has given you.
You shall appoint judges and officers in all your gates, which the Lord your God gives
you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with just judgment.
You shall not pervert justice, you shall not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe
blinds the eyes of the wise, and twists the words of the righteous.
You shall follow what is altogether just, that you may live and inherit the land which
the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not plant for yourself any tree as a wooden image near the altar which you
built for yourself to the Lord your God.
You shall not set up a sacred pillar which the Lord your God hates.
Chapter 17 You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your
God a bull or sheep, which has any blemish or defect, for that is an abomination to the
Lord your God.
If there is found among you, within any of your gates, which the Lord your God gives
you, a man or a woman who has been wicked in the sight of the Lord your God in transgressing
his covenant, who has gone and served other gods and worshipped them, either the sun or
moon or any of the hosts of heaven, which I have not commanded, and it is told you, and
you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently.
And if it is indeed true and certain that such an abomination has been committed in
Israel, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has committed that wicked
thing and shall stone to death that man or woman with stones.
Whoever is deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three
witnesses.
He shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness.
The hands of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterward
the hands of all the people.
So you shall put away the evil from among you.
If a matter arises which is too hard for you to judge, between degrees of guilt for bloodshed,
between one judgment or another, or between one punishment or another, matters of controversy
within your gates, then you shall arise and go up to the place which the Lord your God
chooses.
And you shall come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge there in those days, and
inquire of them.
They shall pronounce upon you the sentence of judgment.
You shall do according to the sentence which they pronounce upon you in that place which
the Lord chooses.
And you shall be careful to do according to all that they order you, according to the
sentence of the law in which they instruct you, according to the judgment which they
tell you.
You shall do.
You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left from the sentence which they
pronounce upon you.
Now the man who acts presumptuously and will not heed the priest who stands to minister
there before the Lord your God or the judge, that man shall die.
So you shall put away the evil from Israel.
And all the people shall hear and fear, and no longer act presumptuously.
When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell
in it, and say, I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me, you
shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses.
One from among your brethren you shall set as king over you.
You may not set a foreigner over you who is not your brother.
But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to
multiply horses, for the Lord has said to you, you shall not return that way again.
Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he greatly
multiply silver and gold for himself.
Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself
a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites.
And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn
to fear the Lord his God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these
statutes, that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside
from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days
in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel.
Chapter 18 The priests, the Levites, all the tribe of
Levi shall have no part nor inheritance with Israel.
They shall eat the offerings of the Lord made by fire and his portion.
For they shall have no inheritance among their brethren.
The Lord is their inheritance, as he said to them.
And this shall be the priests do from the people, from those who offer a sacrifice,
whether it is bull or sheep.
They shall give to the priest the shoulder, the cheeks, and the stomach, the first fruits
of your grain and your new wine and your oil, and the first of the fleece of your sheep,
you shall give him.
For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand to minister in the
name of the Lord, him and his sons, forever.
So if a Levite comes from any of your gates, from where he dwells among all Israel, and
comes with all the desire of his mind to the place which the Lord chooses, then he may
serve in the name of the Lord his God, as all his brethren the Levites do, who stand
there before the Lord.
They shall have equal portions to eat, besides what comes from the sale of his inheritance.
When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn
to follow the abominations of those nations.
There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through
the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens
or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls
up the dead.
For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations
the Lord your God drives them out from before you.
You shall be blameless before the Lord your God.
For these nations which you will dispossess, listen to soothsayers and diviners.
But as for you the Lord your God has not appointed such for you.
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your
brethren.
Him you shall hear, according to all you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb, in the day
of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor let me see
this great fire any more lest I die.
And the Lord said to me, What they have spoken is good.
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put my
words in his mouth.
And he shall speak to them all that I command him.
And it shall be that whoever will not hear my words, which he speaks in my name, I will
require it of him.
But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him
to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.
And if you say in your heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?
When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass,
that is, the thing which the Lord has not spoken, the prophet has spoken it presumptuously.
You shall not be afraid of him.
I hope you enjoyed today's reading as much as I did, and I look forward to seeing you
again tomorrow to continue on our journey.
God bless you and have a great day.