The Three Great Festivals^(A)

¹⁴ “Celebrate three festivals a year to honor me. ^15 (B)In the month of Abib, the month in which you left Egypt, celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread in the way that I commanded you. Do not eat any bread made with yeast during the seven days of this festival. Never come to worship me without bringing an offering.

^16 (C)“Celebrate the Harvest Festival when you begin to harvest your crops.

“Celebrate the Festival of Shelters in the autumn, when you gather the fruit from your vineyards and orchards. ¹⁷ Every year at these three festivals all your men must come to worship me, the Lord your God.

¹⁸ “Do not offer bread made with yeast when you sacrifice an animal to me. The fat of animals sacrificed to me during these festivals is not to be left until the following morning.

^19 (D)“Each year bring to the house of the Lord your God the first grain that you harvest.

“Do not cook a young sheep or goat in its mother's milk.

The Lord's Own People^(A)

7 ^(B)“The Lord your God will bring you into the land that you are going to occupy, and he will drive many nations out of it. As you advance, he will drive out seven nations larger and more powerful than you: the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ² When the Lord your God places these people in your power and you defeat them, you must put them all to death. Do not make an alliance with them or show them any mercy. ³ Do not marry any of them, and do not let your children marry any of them, ⁴ because then they would lead your children away from the Lord to worship other gods. If that happens, the Lord will be angry with you and destroy you at once. ^5 (C)So then, tear down their altars, break their sacred stone pillars in pieces, cut down their symbols of the goddess Asherah, and burn their idols.

The Manna and the Quails

16 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim, and on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had left Egypt, they came to the desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai. ² There in the desert they all complained to Moses and Aaron ³ and said to them, “We wish that the Lord had killed us in Egypt. There we could at least sit down and eat meat and as much other food as we wanted. But you have brought us out into this desert to starve us all to death.”

^4 (A)The Lord said to Moses, “Now I am going to cause food to rain down from the sky for all of you. The people must go out every day and gather enough for that day. In this way I can test them to find out if they will follow my instructions. ⁵ On the sixth day they are to bring in twice as much as usual and prepare it.”

⁶ So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “This evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt. ⁷ In the morning you will see the dazzling light of the Lord's presence. He has heard your complaints against him—yes, against him, because we are only carrying out his instructions.” ⁸ Then Moses said, “It is the Lord who will give you meat to eat in the evening and as much bread as you want in the morning, because he has heard how much you have complained against him. When you complain against us, you are really complaining against the Lord.”

⁹ Moses said to Aaron, “Tell the whole community to come and stand before the Lord, because he has heard their complaints.” ¹⁰ As Aaron spoke to the whole community, they turned toward the desert, and suddenly the dazzling light of the Lord appeared in a cloud. ¹¹ The Lord said to Moses, ¹² “I have heard the complaints of the Israelites. Tell them that at twilight they will have meat to eat, and in the morning they will have all the bread they want. Then they will know that I, the Lord, am their God.”

¹³ In the evening a large flock of quails flew in, enough to cover the camp, and in the morning there was dew all around the camp. ¹⁴ When the dew evaporated, there was something thin and flaky on the surface of the desert. It was as delicate as frost. ^15 (B)When the Israelites saw it, they didn't know what it was and asked each other, “What is it?”

Moses said to them, “This is the food that the Lord has given you to eat. ¹⁶ The Lord has commanded that each of you is to gather as much of it as he needs, two quarts for each member of his household.”

¹⁷ The Israelites did this, some gathering more, others less.