But you must not redeem the firstborn of a cow or a sheep or a goat; they are holy. You must splash ¹  their blood on the altar and burn their fat for an offering made by fire for a pleasing aroma to the Lord.

Anyone who touches the corpse of any dead person and does not purify himself defiles the tabernacle of the Lord. And that person must be cut off from Israel, ¹  because the water of purification was not sprinkled on him. He will be unclean; his uncleanness remains on him.

or with enmity he strikes him with his hand and he dies, the one who struck him must surely be put to death, for he is a murderer. The avenger of blood must kill the murderer when he meets him.

Rather it is because of his ¹  love ²  for you and his faithfulness to the promise ³  he solemnly vowed ⁴  to your ancestors ⁵  that the Lord brought you out with great power, ⁶  redeeming ⁷  you from the place of slavery, from the power ⁸  of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

It is not because of your righteousness, or even your inner uprightness, ¹  that you have come here to possess their land. Instead, because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out ahead of you in order to confirm the promise he ²  made on oath to your ancestors, ³  to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Then I again fell down before the Lord for forty days and nights; I ate and drank nothing because of all the sin you had committed, doing such evil before the Lord as to enrage him.

On the other hand, you may slaughter and eat meat as you please when the Lord your God blesses you ¹  in all your villages. ²  Both the ritually pure and impure may eat it, whether it is a gazelle or an ibex.

You must not eat any yeast with it; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast, symbolic of affliction, for you came out of Egypt hurriedly. You must do this so you will remember for the rest of your life the day you came out of the land of Egypt.

The person who pays no attention ¹  to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the verdict – that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel.

Suppose he goes with someone else ¹  to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax ²  to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose ³  from the handle and strikes ⁴  his fellow worker ⁵  so hard that he dies. The person responsible ⁶  may then flee to one of these cities to save himself. ⁷ 

Otherwise the blood avenger will chase after the killer in the heat of his anger, eventually overtake him, ¹  and kill him, ²  though this is not a capital case ³  since he did not hate him at the time of the accident.

Beware that the heart of no man, woman, clan, or tribe among you turns away from the Lord our God today to pursue and serve the gods of those nations; beware that there is among you no root producing poisonous and bitter fruit. ¹ 

The Lord will be unwilling to forgive him, and his intense anger ¹  will rage ²  against that man; all the curses ³  written in this scroll will fall upon him ⁴  and the Lord will obliterate his name from memory. ⁵ 

We said, ‘If in the future they say such a thing ¹  to us or to our descendants, we will reply, “See the model of the Lord’s altar that our ancestors ²  made, not for burnt offerings or sacrifices, but as a reminder to us and you.”’ ³ 

Gideon said to him, “Pardon me, ¹  but if the Lord is with us, why has such disaster ²  overtaken us? Where are all his miraculous deeds our ancestors told us about? They said, ³  ‘Did the Lord not bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.”

When Gideon arrived, he heard a man telling another man about a dream he had. ¹  The man ²  said, “Look! I had a dream. I saw ³  a stale cake of barley bread rolling into the Midianite camp. It hit a tent so hard it knocked it over and turned it upside down. The tent just collapsed.” ⁴ 

When the army ¹  came back to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why did the Lord let us be defeated today by ²  the Philistines? Let’s take with us the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Shiloh. When it is with us, it will save us ³  from the hand of our enemies.

Saul replied, “Am I not a Benjaminite, from the smallest of Israel’s tribes, and is not my family clan the smallest of all the tribes of Benjamin? Why do you speak to me in this way?”

David strapped on his sword over his fighting attire and tried to walk around, but he was not used to them. ¹  David said to Saul, “I can’t walk in these things, for I’m not used to them.” So David removed them.

He took his staff in his hand, picked out five smooth stones from the stream, placed them in the pouch ¹  of his shepherd’s bag, took his sling in hand, and approached the Philistine.