Emor

The priests are held to a stricter standard. They may not defile themselves for the dead except for the nearest kin; they do not shave bald spots or gash their flesh; their marriages are restricted, and the high priest — the anointed one — may not mourn even father or mother, or leave the sanctuary, and marries only a virgin of his own people. A priest with a physical blemish eats the holy food but does not approach to offer it. The rules extend to who may eat of the sacred donations — no outsider, but the priest's household — and to eating them in purity.

The offerings themselves must be unblemished, whether from Israelite or stranger; an animal is acceptable from the eighth day, and is not slaughtered on the same day as its young. The Name is not to be profaned — "I will be sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel."

Then the calendar of the appointed times, the moadim, laid out in order: the Sabbath every seventh day; Pesach on the fourteenth of the first month, with the seven days of unleavened bread; the omer of the first harvest waved after the Sabbath, and fifty days counted to Shavuot with its new grain offering, its two loaves, its offerings — and, set inside the harvest law, the corners and gleanings again left for the poor and the stranger; the first of the seventh month, a rest marked by horn blasts; the tenth, Yom Kippur, a day of atonement and self-denial; and the fifteenth, Sukkot, seven days in booths with the fruit of the hadar tree, palm fronds, leafy boughs, and willows of the brook, "so that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of Egypt." Two short laws follow — the clear oil for the continual lamp, and the twelve loaves set before the LORD each Sabbath — and the portion closes with the blasphemer, held in custody until the ruling comes, and the restatement of one standard of justice for stranger and citizen alike.