Those days Moses spoke to the people and said:

The priests the Levites, and all the tribe of Levi, shall have neither part nor inheritance with Israel: they shall eat the offerings of the Lord made by fire, and his inheritance. Therefore shall they have no inheritance among their brethren: the Lord is their inheritance, as he has said to them. And this shall be the priest’s due from the people, from them that offer a sacrifice, whether it be ox or sheep; and they shall give to the priest the shoulder, and the two cheeks, and the maw. The firstfruit also of your corn, of your wine, and of your oil, and the first of the fleece of your sheep, shall you give him. For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes, to stand to minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for ever. And if a Levite come from any of your gates out of all Israel, where he sojourned, and come with all the desire of his mind to the place which the Lord shall choose; then he shall minister in the name of the Lord his God, as all his brethren the Levites do, which stand there before the Lord. They shall have like portions to eat, beside that which cometh of the sale of his patrimony. When you are come into the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord your God does drive them out from before you. You shall be perfect with the Lord your God. For these nations, which you shall possess, hearkened to observers of times, and to diviners: but as for you, the Lord your God has not suffered you so to do. The Lord your God will raise up to you a Prophet from the midst of you, of your brethren, like to me; to him you shall hearken; according to all that you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not.’ And the Lord said to me, "They have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like to you, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken to my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it presumptuously: you shall not be afraid of him.

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Those days Moses spoke to the people and said:

When a man has taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he has found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and gives it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife; her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the Lord: and you shall not cause the land to sin, which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance. When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he has taken. No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he takes a man’s life to pledge. If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and makes merchandise of him, or sells him; then that thief shall die; and you shall put evil away from among you. Take heed in the plague of leprosy, that you observe diligently, and do according to all that the priests the Levites shall teach you: as I commanded them, so you shall observe to do. Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam by the way, after that you were come forth out of Egypt. When you lend your brother anything, you shall not go into his house to fetch his pledge.You shall stand abroad, and the man to whom you lend shall bring out the pledge abroad to you. And if the man be poor, you shall not sleep with his pledge: in any case you shall deliver him the pledge again when the sun goes down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless you: and it shall be righteousness to you before the Lord your God. You shall not oppress a hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of your brethren, or of your strangers that are in your land within your gates: at his day you shall give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and sets his heart upon it: lest he cry against youto the Lord, and it be sin to you. The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin. You shall not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow’s raiment to pledge: but you shall remember that you were a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there: therefore I command you to do this thing. When you cut down your harvest in your field, and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. And you shall remember that you were a bondman in the land of Egypt: therefore I command you to do this thing. If there is a controversy between men, and they come to judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked. And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number. Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then your brother should seem vile to you. You shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn.

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Those days Moses spoke to the people and said:

It shall be, when you are come in to the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, and possess it, and dwell in it; that you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which you shall bring of your land that the Lord your God gives you, and shall put it in a basket, and shall go to the place which the Lord your God shall choose to place his name there. And you shall go to the priest that shall be in those days, and say to him, ‘I profess this day to the Lord your God, that I am come to the country which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.’ And the priest shall take the basket out of your hand, and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. And you shall speak and say before the Lord your God, a Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous: and the Egyptians evil entreated us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage: and when we cried to the Lord God of our fathers, the Lord heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labour, and our oppression: and the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders: and he has brought us into this place, and has given us this land, even a land that flows with milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land, which you, O Lord, has given me. And you shall set it before the Lord your God, and worship before the Lord your God: and you shall rejoice in every good thing which the Lord your God has given to you, and to your house, you, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you. When you have made an end of tithing all the tithes of your increase the third year, which is the year of tithing, and have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat within your gates, and be filled; then you shall say before the Lord your God, I have brought away the hallowed things out of my house, and also have given them to the Levite, and to the stranger, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all your commandments which you have commanded me: I have not transgressed your commandments, neither have I forgotten them: I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken away anything thereof for any unclean use, nor given anything thereof for the dead: but I have hearkened to the voice of the Lord my God, and have done according to all that you have commanded me. Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people Israel, and the land which you have given us, as you swore to our fathers, a land that flows with milk and honey. This day the Lord your God has commanded you to do these statutes and judgments: you shall therefore keep and do them with all your heart, and with all your soul. You have avouched the Lord this day to be your God, and to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and to hearken to his voice: and the Lord has avouched you this day to be his peculiar people, as he has promised you, and that you should keep all his commandments; and to make you high above all nations which he has made, in praise, and in name, and in honour; and that you may be an a holy people to the Lord your God, as he has spoken.

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Readings of the – 3^rd Week – Wednesday Reading from the Book of Deuteronomy

Those days Moses called all Israel and said:

These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb. And Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, you have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land; the great temptations which your eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles: yet the Lord has not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day. And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and your shoe is not waxen old upon your foot. Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do. You stand this day all of you before the Lord your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and your stranger that is in your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water: that you should enter into covenant with the Lord your God, and into his oath, which the Lord your God makes with you this day: that he may establish you today for a people to himself, and that he may be to you a God, as he has said to you, and as he has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath; but with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day: for you know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which you passed by; and you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them; lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood. And it come to pass, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst: the Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven. And the Lord shall separate him to evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law: so that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord has laid upon it; and that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor bears, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath. Even all nations shall say, ‘Wherefore has the Lord done thus to this land? What means the heat of this great anger?’ Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt: for they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given to them: and the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book: and the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day. The secret things belong to the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

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Those days Moses spoke to the people and said:

It shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you shall call them to mind among all the nations, whither the Lord your God has driven you, and shall return to the Lord your God, and shall obey his voice according to all that I command you this day, you and your children, with all your heart, and with all your soul; that then the Lord your God will turn your captivity, and have compassion upon you, and will return and gather you from all the nations, whither the Lord your God has scattered you. If any of you be driven out to the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord your God gather you, and from thence will he fetch you: and the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and he will do you good, and multiply you above your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that you may live. And the Lord your God will put all these curses upon your enemies, and on them that hate you, who persecuted you. And you shall return and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all his commandments which I command you this day. And the Lord your God will make you plenteous in every work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, and in the fruit of your cattle, and in the fruit of your land, for good: for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good, as he rejoiced over your fathers. If you shall hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul. For this commandment which I command you this day, it is not hidden from you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it?’ But the word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it. See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil; in that I command youthis day to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that you may live and multiply: and the Lord your God shall bless you in the land where you go to possess it. But if your heart turn away, so that you will not hear, but shall be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce to you this day, that you shall surely perish, and that you shall not prolong your days upon the land, from where you pass over Jordan to go to possess it. I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live: that you may love the Lord your God, and that you may obey his voice, and that you may cleave to him: for he is your life, and the length of your days: that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

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Moses went and spoke these words to all Israel and said to them:

I am a hundred and twenty years old this day; I can no more go out and come in: also the Lord has said to me, you shall not go over this Jordan. The Lord your God, he will go over before you, and he will destroy these nations from before you, and you shall possess them: and Joshua, he shall go over before you, as the Lord has said. And the Lord shall do to them as he did to Sihon and to Og, kings of the Amorites, and to the land of them, whom he destroyed. And the Lord shall give them up before your face, that you may do to them according to all the commandments which I have commanded you. Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord your God, he it is that goes with you; he will not fail you, nor forsake you. And Moses called to Joshua, and said to him in the sight of all Israel, ‘Be strong and of a good courage: for you must go with this people to the land which the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them; and you shall cause them to inherit it. And the Lord, he it is that goes before you; he will be with you, he will not fail you, neither forsake you: fear not, neither be dismayed.’ And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it to the priests the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, ‘At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord your God in the place which he shall choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and your stranger that is within your gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law: And that their children, which have not known anything, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live in the land whither you go over Jordan to possess it. And the Lord said to Moses, Behold, your days approach that you must die: call Joshua, and present yourselves in the tabernacle of the congregation, that I may give him a charge. And Moses and Joshua went, and presented themselves in the tabernacle of the congregation. And the Lord appeared in the tabernacle in a pillar of a cloud: and the pillar of the cloud stood over the door of the tabernacle. And he gave Joshua the son of Nun a charge, and said, "Be strong and of a good courage: for you shall bring the children of Israel into the land which I swore to them: and I will be with you."

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The Lord spoke to Moses that same day, saying:

Get youup into this mountain Abarim, to mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel for a possession: and die in the mount to which you go up, and be gathered to your people; as Aaron your brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered to his people: because you trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because you sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel. Yet you shall see the land before you; but you shall not go thither to the land which I give the children of Israel." Moses went up from the plains of Moab to the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the land of Gilead, to Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, to the utmost sea, and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, to Zoar. And the Lord said to him, "This is the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, I will give it to your seed: I have caused you to see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.

So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knows of his sepulchre to this day. And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days: so the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended. And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him: and the children of Israel hearkened to him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses. And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like to Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, in all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land, and in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.

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