Deuteronomy 10:14-21 (Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council – Vespers – 7th Sunday of Pascha)
(also read for the Ecumenical Teachers and Hierarchs: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom – 1/30)
And you answered me, ‘The thing that you have spoken is good for us to do.’ So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and set them as heads over you, commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds, commanders of fifties, commanders of tens, and officers, throughout your tribes. And I charged your judges at that time, ‘Hear the cases between your brethren, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien that is with him. You shall not be partial in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike; you shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s; and the case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.’ And I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do. “And we set out from Horeb, and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw, on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as the LORD our God commanded us; and we came to Ka’desh-bar’nea. And I said to you, ‘You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the LORD our God gives us. Behold, the LORD your God has set the land before you; go up, take possession, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has told you; do not fear or be dismayed.’