Persons Excluded from the Assembly
1 “He who has been castrated byhaving his testiclescrushed or his male organ cut off shall not enter the congregation of the Lord.
2 A person ofillegitimate birth shall not enter the assembly of the Lord; none of hisdescendants,even to the tenth generation.
3 An Ammonite orMoabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord; none of theirdescendants,even to the tenth generation, shall ever enter the assembly of the Lord,
4 because they did not meet you with bread (food) and water on the road as you came out of Egypt, and because they hired [to act] against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you.
5 Nevertheless, the Lordyour God was not willing to listen to Balaam, but the Lordyour God turned the curse into a blessing for you because the Lordyour God has loved you.
6 You shall never seek their peace nor their prosperity all your days.
7 “You shall not detest an Edomite, for he is your brother [Esau’s descendant]. You shall not detest an Egyptian, because you were a stranger (resident alien, foreigner) in his land.
8 Their children of the third generation who are born to them may enter the assembly of the Lord.
9 “When you go out as an army [to fight] against your enemies, you shall keep yourselves from every evil [thing].
10 “If there is any man among you who is [ceremonially] unclean because of nocturnal emission, then he must go outside the camp; he shall not come back to the camp.
11 But when evening comes, he shall bathe in water, and at sundown he may return to the camp.
12 “You shall also have a place outside the camp to which you may go,
13 and you shall have a spade among your tools, and when you [prepare to] sit down outside [to relieve yourself], you shall diga holewith it and shall turn and cover up your waste.
14 Since the Lordyour God walks in the midst of your camp to rescue you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy (undefiled); and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you.
15 “You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you.
16 He shall live among you, in the place he chooses in one of your cities where it pleases him; you shall not mistreatoroppress him.
17 “There shall be no cult prostitute among the daughters of Israel, nor shall there be a cult prostitute (a sodomite) among the sons of Israel.
18 You shall not bring the wages of a prostitute or the price of a dog [that is, a male prostitute] into the house of the Lordyour Godas paymentfor any vow, for both of these [the gift and the giver] are utterly repulsive to the Lordyour God.
19 “You shall not charge interest to your fellow Israelite–interest on money, food or anything that may be loaned for interest.
20 You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your fellow Israelite you shall not charge interest, so that the Lordyour God may bless you inall that you undertake in the land which you are about to enter to possess.
21 “When you make avow to the Lordyour God, you shall not delay to pay it, for He will most certainly require it of you, and a delay would cause you to sin.
22 But if you refrain from making a vow, that would not be [counted as] sin in you.
23 You shall be careful to perform that [vow] which passes your lips, just as you have made a voluntary vow to the Lordyour God, just as you have promised with your own words (mouth).
24 “When you enter your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes,as many as you please, but you shall not put any in your basket [to take with you].
25 “When you come into the standing grain of your neighbor, you maypluck the ears of grain with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor’s standing grain [to harvest it].