Exodus 23–24
1 You must not give a false report. Do not join your hand with the wicked to be a malicious witness.
2 You must not follow the masses to do evil, and do not testify in a dispute that agrees with the crowd to pervert justice. 3 You must not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute.
4 If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely return it to him. 5 If you see the donkey of someone who hates you lying under its burden, you must not ignore it; you must surely help with him.
6 You shall not turn justice away from your poor in his dispute. 7 Keep far away from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and the righteous, for I will not justify the wicked.
8 You shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and subverts the words of the righteous.
9 Also you shall not oppress a foreigner, for you know the life of a foreigner, seeing you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.
10 You shall sow your land for six years and shall gather in its produce, 11 but in the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard and with your olive grove.
12 For six days you are to do your work, but on the seventh day you must cease, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the foreigner may refresh themselves.
13 In all things that I have said to you, watch yourselves, and do not mention the name of other gods, nor let them be heard from your mouth.
14 Three times in the year you must celebrate a feast to Me.
15 You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, in the appointed time of the month Aviv, for in it you came out from Egypt.
No one shall appear before Me empty-handed.
16 You shall observe the Feast of Harvest, the first fruits of your labors, which you have sown in the field.
You shall observe the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field.
17 Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.
18 You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leavened bread, nor shall the fat of My sacrifice remain until the morning.
19 The first of the first fruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.
You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
20 Indeed, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. 21 Be on guard before him and obey his voice. Do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for My name is in him. 22 But if you diligently obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. 23 For My angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will completely destroy them. 24 You must not bow down to their gods, or serve them, or do according to their practices, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break down their images in pieces. 25 You shall serve the Lord your God, and He shall bless your bread and your water, and I will remove sickness from your midst. 26 No one shall be miscarrying or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days.
27 I will send My fear before you, and I will throw into panic all the people to whom you shall come. I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 28 I will send hornets before you which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. 29 I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field multiply against you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you become fruitful and inherit the land.
31 I will set your boundaries from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you. 32 You must not make a covenant with them or with their gods. 33 They shall not live in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.
Chapter 24
1 Then He said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and you shall worship from a distance. 2 Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but they shall not come near, nor may the people go up with him.”
3 Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances. Then all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the Lord has said we will do.” 4 Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 He sent young Israelite men who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of young bulls to the Lord. 6 Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. 7 He took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people, and they said, “All that the Lord has said we will do, and we will be obedient.”
8 So Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
9 Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, 10 and they saw the God of Israel, and under His feet there was something like a paved work of sapphire stone as clear as the sky itself. 11 He did not lay His hand upon the nobles of the children of Israel. Also they saw God, and they ate and they drank.
12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me to the mountain and stay there, and I will give you the stone tablets with law and the commandments which I have written, so that you may teach them.”
13 Moses rose up with Joshua his attendant, and Moses went up to the mountain of God. 14 He said to the elders, “Wait for us in this place until we return to you. Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has any matters of dispute let him come to them.”
15 Moses went up to the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16 The glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. And on the seventh day He called to Moses from the midst of the cloud. 17 Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain to the eyes of the children of Israel. 18 Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up to the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.
Matthew 20:1–16
1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 When he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
3 “Then he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, 4 and said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. 5 Again he went out about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did likewise.
6 “About the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’
7 “They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’
“He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right you will receive.’
8 “So when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first.’
9 “When they who were hired about the eleventh hour came, they each received a denarius. 10 But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more, but each of them likewise received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us, who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.’
13 “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what is yours and go your way. I will give to this last one even as I give to you. 15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few are chosen.”