Deuteronomy 21

¹ ‘In the land Yahweh is giving you as your possession, if a murdered man is discovered lying in open country and it is not known who killed him,

² your elders and scribes must go and measure the distance between the victim and

³ the surrounding towns, and establish which town is nearest the victim. Then the elders of that town are to take a heifer that has not yet been put to work or used as a draught animal under the yoke.

⁴ And the elders of that town must bring the heifer down to a watercourse that is never dry at a spot that has been neither ploughed nor sown, and there by the watercourse they must break the heifer’s neck.

⁵ And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall then come forward, for these are the men Yahweh your God has chosen to do him service and to bless in the name of Yahweh, and it is their business to settle all cases of dispute or of violence.

⁶ All the elders of the town nearest the murdered man shall then wash their hands in the watercourse, over the slaughtered heifer.

⁷ They are to pronounce these words, “Our hands did not shed this blood and our eyes saw nothing.

⁸ Cover your people Israel whom you have redeemed, Yahweh, and let no innocent blood be shed among your people Israel.” So they will be covered against blood-vengeance.

⁹ You must banish all shedding of innocent blood from among you if you mean to do what is right in the eyes of Yahweh.

¹⁰ ‘When you go to war against your enemies and Yahweh your God delivers them into your power and you take prisoners,

¹¹ if you see a beautiful woman among the prisoners and find her desirable, you may make her your wife

¹² and bring her to your home. She is to shave her head and cut her nails

¹³ and take off her prisoner’s garb; she is to stay inside your house and must mourn her father and mother for a full month. Then you may go to her and be a husband to her, and she shall be your wife.

¹⁴ Should she cease to please you, you will let her go where she wishes, not selling her for money: you are not to make any profit out of her, since you have had the use of her.

¹⁵ If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and the loved one and the unloved both bear him children, and if the first-born son is of the unloved wife,

¹⁶ then when the man comes to bequeath his goods to his sons, he may not treat the son of the wife whom he loves as the first-born at the expense of the son of the wife he does not love, the true first-born.

¹⁷ He must acknowledge as first-born the son of the wife he does not love and give to him a double share of his estate, for this son is the first-fruit of his strength, and the right of the first-born is his.

¹⁸ If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not listen to the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and even when they punish him still will not pay attention to them,

¹⁹ his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of the town at the gate of that place.

²⁰ And they shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious and will not listen to us; he is a wastrel and a drunkard”.

²¹ Then all his fellow citizens shall stone him to death. You must banish this evil from your midst. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

²² If a man guilty of a capital offence is put to death and you hang him on a tree,

²³ his body must not remain on the tree overnight; you must bury him the same day, for one who has been hanged is accursed of God, and you must not defile the land that Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance.