Nehemiah 10

EasyEnglish Bible

10 These people put their mark of authority on the promise that they had written:

⁹ The Levites were:

²⁸ The other people joined their leaders to make the same promise. They were priests, Levites, guards, singers and temple servants. There were also people who had kept themselves separate from their foreign neighbours so that they could obey God's Law. Their wives, sons and daughters also joined with them, as well as children who were old enough to understand. ²⁹ All these people joined with their leaders and they promised to obey the agreement. They agreed that God should punish them if they did not obey all of God's Law. That was the Law that God had given to his servant Moses. They promised very strongly to obey all the commands, rules and laws of the Lord, our Lord.

³⁰ They said, ‘We promise not to let our daughters marry the foreign people of this land. We will not let our sons marry their daughters. ³¹ If foreign traders come to us on a Sabbath day, we will not buy their things. We will not buy their things on Sabbath days or on any special feast day. Every seventh year we will not plant any crops. We will also remove the debts of other people in every seventh year. They will not have to pay us back.

³² We will obey the command to give a third of a shekel each year to take care of the temple of our God.^{[a] 33} That will pay for the special bread on the table in the temple. It will also pay for grain offerings and burnt offerings each day, as well as offerings on Sabbath days, feasts at each new moon, and other festivals. We will also use it for the sin offerings that take away Israel's guilt. And we will use it for all the work in the temple of our God.

³⁴ Each year we will throw dice to decide when different families must bring wood to the temple of our God. The priests, the Levites and the other people must do this. The wood will burn sacrifices on the altar of the Lord our God. We will do this in the way that the Law of the Lord our God teaches. ³⁵ We will also agree to bring the first crops from our land each year and the first fruits from our trees. We will bring these to the Lord's temple. ³⁶ We will also bring our firstborn sons, as well as the first babies that our cows, sheep and goats give birth to. We will bring them to the priests who serve our God in the temple. That is what God's Law teaches us to do. ³⁷ We will also bring the first of everything that is ready for us to eat. That includes flour, fruit, wine, olive oil and other special offerings. We will bring them all to the priests and they will store them in the rooms of the temple. We will give tithes of the crops that grow on our land to the Levites. They receive the tithes that belong to them in each of the towns where we work. ³⁸ When the Levites receive their tithes, a priest of Aaron's family will be with them. Then the Levites will bring a tenth part of the tithes that they received to store in the temple. ³⁹ The Levites and the other Israelites will bring their gifts of grain, wine and olive oil to store in the temple's rooms. The priests will store them with the things that they use to serve God in the temple. That is the place where the priests who are working at that time, the temple guards and the singers stay.

We agree that we will always take care of the temple of our God.’