The one place for sacrifice
12
📚These are the statutes and judgments which you must be careful to do in the land which the LORD God of your fathers gives you to possess, all the days that you live on the earth. 2 📚You must utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you will dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree.12:2-3 The very first duty Israel had after conquering Canaan was to cleanse it of all idols and false worship.⚜
3 📚And you must throw down their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their sacred groves with fire. And you must cut down the idols of their gods, and destroy their names from that place.
4 📚You must not act so toward the LORD your God, 5 📚but you must seek the LORD at the place which the LORD your God chooses out of all your tribes to put his name there, at his dwelling place. You must come there, 6 📚and you must bring there your burnt offerings and your sacrifices and your tithes and the contribution of your hands, and your vows, and your freewill offerings, and the firstborn from your herds and from your flocks. 7 📚And there you shall eat in the presence of the LORD your God, and rejoice in all to which you have put your hand, you and your households, where the LORD your God has blessed you.
8 📚You must not do at all what we are doing here this day, each man whatever is right in his own eyes. 9 📚For you have not yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the LORD your God gives you. 10 📚But when you cross the Jordan and live in the land which the LORD your God gives you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies around you, so that you live in safety, 11 📚then there will be a place which the LORD your God will choose to have his name dwell there. There you must bring all that I command you, your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution of your hands, and all your choice vows which you make to the LORD. 12 📚And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you, and your sons and your daughters and your male servants and your female servants and the Levite who is inside your gates, since he has no part or inheritance with you. 13 📚Watch yourself that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see, 14 📚but you must offer your burnt offerings in the place which the LORD chooses in one of your tribal territories, and there you must do all that I command you.
15 📚However you may kill and eat meat inside all your gates, whatever you desire, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which he gives you. The unclean and the clean may eat of it, as if it were gazelle or deer. 16 📚But you must not eat the blood; you must pour it on the ground like water. 17 📚You must not eat the tithe of your grain or of your wine or of your oil or the firstborn of your herds or of your flock, or any of your vows which you make or your freewill offerings or the contribution of your hands, inside your gates, 18 📚but you must eat them in the presence of the LORD your God in the place which the LORD your God chooses, you and your son and your daughter and your male servant and your female servant and the Levite who is inside your gates. And you shall rejoice in the presence of the LORD your God in all to which you put your hands. 19 📚Watch yourself that you do not abandon the Levite as long as you live on the earth.
20 📚When the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he has promised you, and you say, “I will eat meat”, because you long to eat meat, 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 animals from your herd and from your flock which the LORD gives you, as I have commanded you, and eat inside your gates whatever you desire. 22 📚You may eat them just as the gazelle and deer are eaten; the unclean and the clean alike may eat them. 23 📚But be sure that you do not eat the blood; for the blood is the life; and you may not eat the life with the meat. 24 📚You must not eat it; you must pour it on the ground like water. 25 📚You must not eat it, so that it may go well with you, and with your children after you, as you do what is right in the sight of the LORD.
26 📚But you must take your holy things which you have, and your vows, and go to the place which the LORD chooses. 27 📚And you must offer your burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, on the altar of the LORD your God. And the blood of your sacrifices must be poured out on the altar of the LORD your God, and you may eat the meat. 28 📚Be careful to hear all these words which I command you, so that it may go well with you, and with your children after you forever, as you do what is good and right in the sight of the LORD your God.
29 📚When the LORD your God cuts off the nations from before you, where you are going to dispossess them, and you succeed them and live in their land, 30 📚watch yourself that you are not snared by following them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not enquire about their gods, saying, “How did these nations serve their gods? I will do just the same way”. 31 📚You must not act so toward the LORD your God. For they have done for their gods everything abominable to the LORD, what he hates. For they have burned even their sons and their daughters in the fire for their gods.
32 📚Be careful to do whatever I command you. You must not add to it or take away from it.