Annual festivals
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. 2 📚Therefore you must 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. 3 📚You must eat no leavened bread with it; for seven days you must eat unleavened bread with it, the bread of affliction; for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste. Do this so that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. 4 📚And for seven days no unleavened bread is to be seen with you in your whole territory. And as for the meat which you sacrificed the first day at evening, there must not be any of it remaining all night until morning. 5 📚You must not sacrifice the Passover inside any of your gates which the LORD your God gives you, 6 📚but in the place which the LORD your God chooses to put his name. There you must sacrifice the Passover at evening, at sunset, at the season that you came out of Egypt. 7 📚And you shall roast and eat it in the place which the LORD your God chooses. And in the morning you shall return to your tents. 8 📚For six days you must eat unleavened bread; and on the seventh day there will be a solemn assembly to the LORD your God. You must do no work on that day.
16:5-8 This was a national festival. The people had to go to Jerusalem to sacrifice.⚜
9 📚Then you must count for yourselves seven weeks. Begin counting the seven weeks from the time that you begin putting the sickle to the grain. 10 📚And you must keep the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God with a tax of a freewill offering from your hand, which you must give to the LORD your God in accordance with how the LORD your God has blessed you. 11 📚And you shall rejoice in the presence of the LORD your God in the place where the LORD your God chooses to put his name, you and your son and your daughter and your male servant and your female servant and the Levite who is inside your gates and the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow who are among you. 12 📚And you must remember that you were a slave in Egypt; and you must observe and do these statutes.
13 📚You must observe the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days, after you have harvested your grain and your wine. 14 📚And you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter and your male servant and your female servant and the Levite, the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow who are inside your gates. 15 📚For seven days you must keep a solemn 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 works of your hands, so you will surely rejoice.
16 📚Three times in a year all your males must appear before the LORD your God in the place which he chooses: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and in the Feast of Weeks, and in the Feast of Tabernacles. And they must not appear before the LORD empty-handed. 17 📚Each man must give as he is able, in accordance with the blessing of the LORD your God which he gives you.
Appointment of judges
18 📚You must select judges and officers for yourselves inside all your gates which the LORD your God gives you, throughout your tribes. And they must judge the people with just judgment. 19 📚You must not pervert judgment; you must not show partiality or take a bribe; for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous. 20 📚You must follow what is fully in accordance with justice, so that you may live and inherit the land which the LORD your God gives you.
21 📚You must not plant for yourself a grove of any trees near the altar of the LORD your God, which you make for yourselves. 22 📚And you must not set up any idol for yourselves; the LORD your God hates this.