“If in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess
someone is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not
known who killed him, then your elders and your judges shall come
out, and they shall measure the distance to the surrounding cities.
And the elders of the city that is nearest to the slain man shall
take a heifer that has never been worked and that has not pulled in
a yoke. And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to
a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and
shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley. Then the
priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the LORD your
God has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of
the LORD, and by their word every dispute and every assault shall
be settled. And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain
man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in
the valley, and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this
blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. Accept atonement, O LORD, for
your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not set the
guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that
their blood guilt be atoned for.’ So you shall purge the guilt of
innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the
sight of the LORD.
“When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your
God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, and you
see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take
her to be your wife, and you bring her home to your house, she
shall shave her head and pare her nails. And she shall take off the
clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house
and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you
may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she
wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat
her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.
“If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and
both the loved and the unloved have borne him children, and if the
firstborn son belongs to the unloved, then on the day when he
assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his sons, he may not
treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the
son of the unloved, who is the firstborn, but he shall acknowledge
the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double
portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his
strength. The right of the firstborn is his.
“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the
voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they
discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his
mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of
his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall
say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and
rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a
drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death
with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all
Israel shall hear, and fear.
“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is
put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain
all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a
hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that
the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.
