Leviticus 19

19 ¹ Our Father spoke to Moses, saying:

² Speak to the whole community of Israel: You shall be holy, for I, your Father, am holy.

³ Each of you must respect your mother and father, and keep my Sabbaths. I am your Father.

⁴ Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves gods of cast metal. I am your Father.

⁵ When you sacrifice a peace offering to me, offer it so you will be accepted. ⁶ Eat it the day you offer it, or the next; anything left to the third day, burn in fire. ⁷ If any is eaten on the third day, it is foul and will not be accepted. ⁸ Whoever eats it bears their guilt, for they desecrated what is holy to me; that person will be cut off from their people. ^a a v8 "Cut off from the people" means permanently expelled from the covenant community, with divine judgment implied.

⁹ When you harvest your land, do not reap to the field's edges or gather the gleanings of your harvest. ¹⁰ Do not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am your Father.

¹¹ Do not steal; do not deceive; do not lie to one another.

¹² Don't swear falsely by my name, desecrating your Father's name. I am your Father.

¹³ You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. Do not hold a hired worker's wages overnight.

¹⁴ Do not curse the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind, but fear your Father. I am your Father.

¹⁵ Do not pervert justice in your decisions. Do not favor the poor or defer to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

¹⁶ Don't spread slander among your people, and don't stand idle while your neighbor's life is in danger. I am your Father.

¹⁷ Do not hate your brother in your heart; correct your neighbor openly, so you don't bear sin because of him. ¹⁸ Do not take revenge or hold a grudge against your own people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am your Father.

¹⁹ Keep my decrees. Don't breed your livestock with a different kind. Don't sow your field with two kinds of seed, or wear a garment of two kinds of material.

²⁰ If a man sleeps with a slave woman assigned to another man, and she has not been bought back or set free, an inquiry is required. They are not to be put to death, since she was not free. ²¹ He shall bring his guilt offering to me, at the entrance of the tent of meeting—a ram as the guilt offering. ²² The priest will make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before me, for the sin he committed; and he will be forgiven the sin he committed.

²³ When you enter the land and plant any food tree, treat its fruit as forbidden. For three years it is forbidden to you; do not eat it. ²⁴ In the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy, an offering of praise to me. ²⁵ But the fifth year you may eat its fruit, so it yields more for you. I am your Father.

²⁶ Do not eat anything with the blood in it. Do not practice fortune-telling or interpret omens.

²⁷ Do not round off the hair at the sides of your head or damage the edges of your beard. ^b b v27 These cuts marked pagan mourning and religious rites that Israel was not to copy.

²⁸ Don't cut your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves. I am your Father.

²⁹ Do not desecrate your daughter by making her a prostitute, or the land will turn to prostitution and fill with depravity.

³⁰ You shall keep my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary. I am your Father.

³¹ Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek to be made unclean by them. I am your Father.

³² Stand up before the gray-haired and respect the old. Fear your Father. I am your Father.

³³ When a foreigner lives among you in your land, do not mistreat them. ³⁴ The foreigner living among you must be to you as a native, and love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am your Father.

³⁵ You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length, weight, or quantity. ³⁶ Have honest scales, honest weights, an honest grain measure, an honest liquid measure. I am your Father, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

³⁷ Keep all my statutes and all my rules, and do them. I am your Father.