Shevat 18 – Offer pure sacrifices; administer pure justice…

February 15, 2025

11 – Shevat, Deuteronomy

Moses

Shevat 18, 5785; from sunset February 15, 2025, to sunset February 16, 2025

(The eighteenth day of the eleventh month)

The lower falls of Ein Gedi. Don’t you just want to stick your feet into the water?
Photo credit: Today in the Bible.

This is the name “Mosheh” (מֺשֶׁה – Moses) as seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, written over two thousand years ago.

Moses Repeats the Torah

We’re continuing our look at Moses’ repetition of the Torah, also known as the book of Deuteronomy. The Bible tells us that he began his speech on the first day of the eleventh month; tradition tells us that he completed it on the seventh day of the twelfth month. Today we’re reading through the first portion of Deuteronomy 17 where Moses reminds Israel to offer pure sacrifices and administer pure justice.

Stipulations of the Covenant & Supplementary Requirements

“You shall not sacrifice to the LORD your God a bull or sheep which has any blemish or defect, for that is an abomination to the LORD your God.

“If there is found among you, within any of your gates which the LORD your God gives you, a man or a woman who has been wicked in the sight of the LORD your God, in transgressing His covenant, who has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, either the sun or moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded, and it is told you, and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently. And if it is indeed true and certain that such an abomination has been committed in Israel, then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has committed that wicked thing, and shall stone to death that man or woman with stones.

“Whoever is deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness. The hands of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So you shall put away the evil from among you.

“If a matter arises which is too hard for you to judge, between degrees of guilt for bloodshed, between one judgment or another, or between one punishment or another, matters of controversy within your gates, then you shall arise and go up to the place which the LORD your God chooses. And you shall come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge there in those days, and inquire of them; they shall pronounce upon you the sentence of judgment. You shall do according to the sentence which they pronounce upon you in that place which the LORD chooses. And you shall be careful to do according to all that they order you. According to the sentence of the law in which they instruct you, according to the judgment which they tell you, you shall do; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left from the sentence which they pronounce upon you.

“Now the man who acts presumptuously and will not heed the priest who stands to minister there before the LORD your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall put away the evil from Israel. And all the people shall hear and fear, and no longer act presumptuously. – Deuteronomy 17:1-13 (NKJ)