The three principal solemnities to be observed: just judges to be appointed in every city: all occasions of idolatry to be avoided.

¹ “Observe the month of new grain, at the beginning of springtime, so that you may accomplish the Passover to the Lord your God. For in this month, the Lord your God led you away from Egypt in the night.

² And you shall immolate the Passover to the Lord your God, from sheep and from oxen, in the place which the Lord your God will choose, so that his name may dwell there.

³ You shall not eat it with leavened bread. For seven days you shall eat, without leaven, the bread of affliction. For you departed from Egypt in fear. So may you remember the day of your departure from Egypt, throughout all the days of your life.

⁴ No leaven shall be present in all your confines for seven days. And by morning, there shall not remain any of the flesh which was immolated on the first day in the evening.

⁵ You cannot immolate the Passover in any of your cities, which the Lord your God will give to you, that you wish,

⁶ but only in the place which the Lord your God will choose, so that his name may dwell there. You shall immolate the Passover in the evening, upon the setting of the sun, which is the time when you departed from Egypt.

⁷ And you shall cook and eat it in the place which the Lord your God will choose, and, rising up in the morning, you shall go into your tent.

⁸ For six days, you shall eat unleavened bread. And on the seventh day, because it is the assembly of the Lord your God, you shall do no work.

⁹ You shall number for yourself seven weeks from that day, the day on which you put the sickle to the grain field.

¹⁰ And you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks, to the Lord your God, with a voluntary oblation from your hand, which you shall offer according to the blessing of the Lord your God.

¹¹ And you shall feast in the sight of the Lord your God: you, your son and your daughter, your man servant and your woman servant, and the Levite who is within your gates, and the new arrival as well as the orphan and the widow, who abide with you, in the place which the Lord your God will choose, so that his name may dwell there.

¹² And you shall recall that you were a servant in Egypt. And you shall preserve and carry out the things that have been instructed.

¹³ Likewise, you shall celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days, when you will have gathered your fruits from the orchard and the winepress.¹

1. 16:13The word ‘area’ is often translated as ‘threshing floor’ (referring to the grain harvest). However, in the context of the fall harvest in Israel, which is not of grain but of fruits, it refers to a plot of land for fruit trees, hence the translation of orchard.(Conte)

¹⁴ And you shall feast at the time of your festival: you, your son and daughter, your man servant and woman servant, likewise the Levite and the new arrival, the orphan and the widow, who are within your gates.

¹⁵ For seven days you shall celebrate feasts to the Lord your God in the place which the Lord will choose. And the Lord your God will bless you in all your crops, and in every work of your hands. And you shall be joyful.

¹⁶ Three times a year, all your males shall appear in the sight the Lord your God in the place which he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Tabernacles. No one shall appear before the Lord empty.

¹⁷ But each one shall offer according to what he will have, according to the blessing of the Lord his God, which he will give to him.

¹⁸ You shall appoint judges and magistrates at all your gates, which the Lord your God will give to you, throughout each of your tribes, so that they may judge the people with a just judgment,

¹⁹ and not so as to show favoritism to either side. You shall not accept a person’s reputation, nor gifts. For gifts blind the eyes of the wise and alter the words of the just.

²⁰ You shall justly pursue what is just, so that you may live and possess the land, which the Lord your God will give to you.

²¹ You shall not plant a sacred grove, nor shall you plant any tree near the altar of the Lord your God;

²² you shall neither make nor set up for yourself a statue. These things the Lord your God hates.”