If you follow this advice and God so directs you, then you will be able to endure, and all these people can go home in peace.”

And God spoke all these words: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, . . .

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on the earth.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath; instead, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

The blood on the houses where you are staying will distinguish them; when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will fall on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,

alternating the gold bells and pomegranates around the lower hem of the robe.

With loving devotion You will lead the people You have redeemed; with Your strength You will guide them to Your holy dwelling.

You shall not murder.

“These are the ordinances that you are to set before them: If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free without paying anything. If he arrived alone, he is to leave alone; if he arrived with a wife, she is to leave with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children; I do not want to go free,’ . . .

Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month is the beginning of months for you; it shall be the first month of your year.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

“Tell the Israelites, ‘Surely you must keep My Sabbaths, for this will be a sign between Me and you for the generations to come, so that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you. Keep the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Anyone who profanes it must surely be put to death. Whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from among his people. For six days work may be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must surely be put to death. The Israelites must keep the Sabbath, celebrating it as a permanent covenant for the generations to come. It is a sign between Me and the Israelites forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, but on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.’”

The LORD also said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people.

But the LORD said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh, for because of My mighty hand he will let the people go; because of My strong hand he will drive them out of his land.” God also told Moses, “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by My name the LORD I did not make Myself known to them. I also established My covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land where they lived as foreigners. Furthermore, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered My covenant. . . .

These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all, including Joseph, who was already in Egypt. . . .

On the third day, when morning came, there was thunder and lightning. A thick cloud was upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the ram’s horn went out, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke, because the LORD had descended on it in fire. And the smoke rose like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. And as the sound of the ram’s horn grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him in the thunder.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Come up to the LORD—you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of Israel’s elders—and you are to worship at a distance. Moses alone shall approach the LORD, but the others must not come near. And the people may not go up with him.” When Moses came and told the people all the words and ordinances of the LORD, they all responded with one voice: “All the words that the LORD has spoken, we will do.” And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. Early the next morning he got up and built an altar at the base of the mountain, along with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he sent out some young men of Israel, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the LORD. . . .

He gives power to the faint and increases the strength of the weak.

The word of the LORD came to me, saying: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

His lightning illuminates the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax at the presence of the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts,

Wives, in the same way, submit yourselves to your husbands, so that even if they refuse to believe the word, they will be won over without words by the behavior of their wives when they see your pure and reverent demeanor. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair or gold jewelry or fine clothes, but from the inner disposition of your heart, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in God’s sight. For this is how the holy women of the past adorned themselves. They put their hope in God and were submissive to their husbands, . . .

for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for anyone else who is averse to sound teaching

Then the whole congregation of Israel left the Desert of Sin, moving from place to place as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So the people contended with Moses, “Give us water to drink.” “Why do you contend with me?” Moses replied. “Why do you test the LORD?” But the people thirsted for water there, and they grumbled against Moses: “Why have you brought us out of Egypt—to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” Then Moses cried out to the LORD, “What should I do with these people? A little more and they will stone me!” And the LORD said to Moses, “Walk on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you. Take along in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. . . .

And God spoke all these words:

You shall have no other gods before Me.

You must not allow a sorceress to live.

If a thief is caught breaking in and is beaten to death, no one shall be guilty of bloodshed. But if it happens after sunrise, there is guilt for his bloodshed. A thief must make full restitution; if he has nothing, he himself shall be sold for his theft.

Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from within a bush. Moses saw the bush ablaze with fire, but it was not consumed. So Moses thought, “I must go over and see this marvelous sight. Why is the bush not burning up?” When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from within the bush, “Moses, Moses!” “Here I am,” he answered. “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” . . .

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land that I promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ And I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people; otherwise, I might destroy you on the way.” When the people heard these bad tidings, they went into mourning, and no one put on any of his jewelry. For the LORD had said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. If I should go with you for a single moment, I would destroy you. Now take off your jewelry, and I will decide what to do with you.’” . . .

Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

So Saul died for his unfaithfulness to the LORD, because he did not keep the word of the LORD and even consulted a medium for guidance, and he failed to inquire of the LORD. So the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse.

And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Now go and attack the Amalekites and devote to destruction all that belongs to them. Do not spare them, but put to death men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced sorcery and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did great evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

Now a man of the house of Levi married a daughter of Levi, and she conceived and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him for three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she got him a papyrus basket and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in the basket and set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. And his sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Soon the daughter of Pharaoh went down to bathe in the Nile, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. And when she saw the basket among the reeds, she sent her maidservant to retrieve it. . . .

You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

If men who are fighting strike a pregnant woman and her child is born prematurely, but there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband demands and as the court allows. But if a serious injury results, then you must require a life for a life— eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, and stripe for stripe.

Now the two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When Lot saw them, he got up to meet them, bowed facedown, and said, “My lords, please turn aside into the house of your servant; wash your feet and spend the night. Then you can rise early and go on your way.” “No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.” But Lot insisted so strongly that they followed him into his house. He prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. Before they had gone to bed, all the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, surrounded the house. They called out to Lot, saying, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so we can have relations with them!” . . .

Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

Then the spirit of the Egyptians will be emptied out from among them, and I will frustrate their plans, so that they will resort to idols and spirits of the dead, to mediums and spiritists.

who foils the signs of false prophets and makes fools of diviners, who confounds the wise and turns their knowledge into nonsense,

When men tell you to consult the spirits of the dead and the spiritists who whisper and mutter, shouldn’t a people consult their God instead? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?

Did not He who made me in the womb also make them? Did not the same One form us in the womb?

You must not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out, or you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God.

“Because I, the LORD, do not change, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed.

and from Mattanah to Nahaliel, and from Nahaliel to Bamoth,