all the people gathered together in the plaza which was in front of the Water Gate. They asked Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the lord had commanded Israel.
They discovered written in the law that the lord had commanded through Moses that the Israelites should live in temporary shelters during the festival of the seventh month,
“This is to be a perpetual statute for you. In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you must humble yourselves and do no work of any kind, both the native citizen and the foreigner who resides in your midst,
“Tell the Israelites, ‘In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you must have a complete rest, a memorial announced by loud horn blasts, a holy assembly.
Know for sure that I will then enable the nations to give me acceptable praise. All of them will invoke the Lord’s name when they pray, and will worship him in unison.
Every day they continued to gather together by common consent in the temple courts, breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and humble hearts,
The group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one said that any of his possessions was his own, but everything was held in common.
I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to agree together, to end your divisions, and to be united by the same mind and purpose.
Three times a year all your males must appear before the Lord your God in the place he chooses for the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Temporary Shelters; and they must not appear before him empty-handed.