You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female slave, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Moses Accepted as Mediator.
They have quickly turned aside from the way I commanded them, making for themselves a molten calf and bowing down to it, sacrificing to it and crying out, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”
Whoever walks righteously and speaks honestly, who spurns what is gained by oppression, Who waves off contact with a bribe, who stops his ears so as not to hear of bloodshed, who closes his eyes so as not to look on evil—
Let none of you plot evil against another in your heart, nor love a false oath. For all these things I hate—oracle of the Lord. Three Oracles: Judah and the Nations.
but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and destitute elemental powers? Do you want to be slaves to them all over again?
Having heaped up all its spoils in the middle of its square, you shall burn the city with all its spoils as a whole burnt offering to the Lord, your God. Let it be a heap of ruins forever, never to be rebuilt.
Be careful not to entertain the mean thought, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” so that you would begrudge your kin who is in need and give nothing, and your kin would cry to the Lord against you and you would be held guilty.
For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment handed down to them.
They went out from us, but they were not really of our number; if they had been, they would have remained with us. Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number.