Kedoshim

"Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy." What follows is a dense weave of daily life: revere mother and father, keep the Sabbaths, make no idols. The corners of the field and the fallen gleanings of harvest and vineyard are left for the poor and the stranger. No stealing, no false dealing, no swearing falsely by the Name; wages are not held overnight; the deaf are not cursed nor a stumbling block set before the blind.

Justice is even-handed — neither favoring the poor nor deferring to the great. No talebearing, no standing by the blood of a neighbor, no hating a brother in the heart; rebuke honestly, take no revenge and bear no grudge — "you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD." Mixtures are restrained: cattle, seed, and cloth each unmixed. Fruit trees wait three years, their fourth-year fruit holy; blood is not eaten; divination, soothsaying, rounding the head's edge, gashing the flesh, and tattooing are forbidden. Rise before the aged. The stranger is loved as a citizen born among you — "for you were strangers in Egypt" — and scales, weights, and measures are honest.

The second chapter sets penalties. Giving one's children to Molech, turning to mediums and familiar spirits, and cursing father or mother carry death or being cut off; the forbidden unions of the previous portion are taken up again with their sentences. The reasoning returns at the close: "You shall be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy, and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine."