Deuteronomy 10–12
1 At that time the Lord said to me, “Cut out for yourself two tablets of stone like the first and come up to Me onto the mountain and make an ark of wood for yourself. 2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.”
3 So I made an ark of acacia wood and cut out two tablets of stone just like the first and went up onto the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. 4 He wrote on the tablets just like the first writing, the Ten Commandments which the Lord spoke to you at the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me. 5 I turned around and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark which I had made, and there they are, just as the Lord commanded me.
6 (The children of Israel set out from Beeroth of the sons of Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died and was buried, and his son Eleazar ministered in the priest’s office in his place. 7 From there they journeyed to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land of rivers of waters. 8 At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister to Him, and to bless in His name, to this day. 9 Therefore, Levi has no portion or inheritance with his brothers. The Lord is his inheritance, just as the Lord your God promised him.)
10 As for me, I stayed on the mountain like the first time, forty days and forty nights, and the Lord listened to me at that time also. The Lord was not willing to destroy you. 11 The Lord said to me, “Arise, take your journey before the people, so that they may go in and possess the land which I swore to give to their fathers.”
12 Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good?
14 Indeed, heaven and the highest heavens belong to the Lord your God, also the earth with all that is in it. 15 The Lord delighted only in your fathers, to love them; and He chose their descendants after them, even you above all people, as it is today. 16 Therefore, circumcise your heart, and do not be stubborn anymore. 17 For the Lord your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the fearsome God who is unbiased and takes no bribe. 18 He executes the judgment of the orphan and the widow and loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. 19 Therefore, love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. 20 You must fear the Lord your God. You must serve Him and cling to Him, and swear by His name. 21 He is your praise, and He is your God, who has done for you these great and fearsome things which your eyes have seen. 22 Your fathers went down into Egypt with seventy people, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.
Chapter 11
1 You must love the Lord your God and keep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments always. 2 Know this day that I am not speaking with your children who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the Lord your God, His greatness, His mighty hand, and His outstretched arm, 3 and His signs and His works which He did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to all his land, 4 and what He did to the army of Egypt, to their horses, and to their chariots, when He made the water of the Red Sea to flow over them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord utterly destroyed them, 5 and what He did to you in the wilderness until you came to this place, 6 and what He did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben, when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, their households, their tents, and everything that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel. 7 But your eyes have seen all the great deeds of the Lord which He did.
8 Therefore you must keep all the commandments which I am commanding you today, so that you may be strong and go in and possess the land which you are going to possess; 9 and that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 For the land which you are entering to possess is not like the land of Egypt from where you came, where you sowed your seed and watered it with your foot like a vegetable garden, 11 but the land, which you are entering to possess, is a land of hills and valleys and drinks water from the rain of heaven, 12 a land for which the Lord your God cares. The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year.
13 It will be, if you will diligently obey My commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 then I will give you the rain of your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. 15 I will provide grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be full.
16 Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived, and you turn away and serve other gods and worship them. 17 Then the Lord’s wrath will be inflamed against you, and He will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the land will not yield its fruit, and you will quickly perish from the good land which the Lord is giving you. 18 Therefore you must fix these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, so that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 20 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the days of heaven on the earth.
22 For if you diligently keep all these commandments which I am commanding you to do—to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast to Him— 23 then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you. 24 Every place where the soles of your feet tread will be yours. Your border will be from the wilderness to Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, as far as the Mediterranean Sea. 25 No man will be able to resist you, for the Lord your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land where you shall tread, just as He has spoken to you.
26 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am commanding you today, 28 and the curse, if you will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn from the way which I am commanding you today, to go after other gods which you have not known. 29 Now it shall be, when the Lord your God has brought you into the land which you are entering to possess, that you shall put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. 30 Are they not on the other side of the Jordan, west where the sun goes down, in the land of the Canaanites, who dwell in the plain opposite Gilgal, beside the oaks of Moreh? 31 For you will cross over the Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and you will possess it, and dwell in it. 32 You must be careful to do all the statutes and judgments which I am setting before you today.
Chapter 12
1 These are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land, which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess, all the days that you live on the earth. 2 You must utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you will possess served their gods, on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree. 3 And you shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their Asherah poles with fire, and you shall cut down the engraved images of their gods, and eliminate their names out of that place.
4 You shall not act this way toward the Lord your God. 5 But you must seek only the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to establish His name, and there you must go. 6 There you shall bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the offerings of your hand, your vows, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and of your flocks. 7 There you must eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice in all that you put your hand to, you and your households, where the Lord your God has blessed you.
8 You are not to do all the things that we are doing here today, where every man does whatever is right in his own eyes. 9 For you have not yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord your God has given you. 10 But when you cross the Jordan, and dwell in the land which the Lord your God has given you to inherit, and when He gives you rest from all your enemies round about, so that you dwell in safety, 11 then there will be a place which the Lord your God will choose to cause His name to dwell. There you must bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, the offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which you vow to the Lord. 12 You will rejoice before the Lord your God, you, your sons, your daughters, your male servants, your female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, for he has no portion or inheritance with you. 13 Be careful that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see. 14 Rather, in the place which the Lord will choose in one of your tribes, there you must offer your burnt offerings, and there you must do all that I command you.
15 Notwithstanding, you may kill and eat meat within all your gates, whatever your heart desires, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which He has given you. The unclean and the clean may eat of it, of the gazelle and of the deer, 16 only you must not eat the blood. You shall pour it on the ground like water. 17 You may not eat within your gates the tithe of your grain, your wine, your oil, the firstborn of your herds or of your flock, any of your vows which you vow, your freewill offerings, or the offering of your hand. 18 Rather you must eat them before the Lord your God in the place which the Lord your God will choose—you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, and the Levite that is within your gates—and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God in all that you undertake to do. 19 Take heed to yourself that you do not forsake the Levite as long as you live on the earth.
20 When the Lord your God shall enlarge your border as He has promised you, and you say, “I will eat meat,” because you desire to eat meat, then you may eat as much meat as your heart desires. 21 If the place which the Lord your God has chosen to put His name is too far from you, then you shall kill of your herd and of your flock, which the Lord has given you, as I have commanded you, and you must eat in your gates whatever your heart desires. 22 Even as the gazelle and the deer are eaten, so you shall eat them. The unclean and the clean shall eat of them alike. 23 Only be sure that you do not eat the blood. For the blood is the life, and you may not eat the life with the meat. 24 You must not eat it. You must pour it on the ground like water. 25 You must not eat it, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you, when you do that which is right in the sight of the Lord.
26 You shall take only your holy things which you have, along with your vows, and go to the place which the Lord shall choose. 27 You must offer your burnt offerings, the meat and the blood, on the altar of the Lord your God, and the blood of your sacrifices will be poured out on the altar of the Lord your God, and you shall eat the meat. 28 Observe and hear all these words which I command you, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever, when you do that which is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God.
29 When the Lord your God shall cut off the nations from before you, where you go to possess them, and you dispossess them, and dwell in their land, 30 take heed to yourself so that you are not ensnared by following them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you not inquire after their gods, saying, “How did these nations serve their gods? Even so I will do likewise.” 31 You shall not do so to the Lord your God, for every abomination to the Lord, which He hates, they have done to their gods. They have even burned their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.
32 Whatever I command you, be careful to do it. You shall not add to it or take away from it.
Mark 12:1–27
1 He began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a pit for the winepress, and built a tower, and rented it to vinedressers, and went to a far country. 2 At harvest time he sent a servant to the vinedressers to receive from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 But they seized him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Then he sent another servant to them. They threw stones at him, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled. 5 Still he sent another, and they killed him. And there were many others. Some they beat, and some they killed.
6 “Having yet his one well-beloved son, he sent him last to them, saying, ‘They will revere my son.’
7 “But those vinedressers said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 So they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.
9 “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill the vinedressers and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture:
‘The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
11 This was the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
12 Then they tried to seize Him, but feared the people, for they knew that He had spoken the parable against them. So they left Him and went their way.
13 They sent to Him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians to trap Him in His words. 14 When they came to Him, they said, “Teacher, we know that You are true and swayed by no man. For You do not regard the person of men, but truthfully teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? 15 Should we pay, or should we not pay?”
But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” 16 They brought it, and He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?”
They said to Him, “Caesar’s.”
17 Then Jesus answered them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
And they were amazed at Him.
18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him, saying, 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves his wife behind, but leaves no children, that man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and when he died, he left no children. 21 The second took her and died, leaving no children, and the third likewise. 22 The seven had her and left no children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”
24 Jesus answered them, “Do you not err, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 Now concerning the dead rising, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You therefore do greatly err.”