Deuteronomy
Chapter 21
1 If a dead person is found in the land that God is giving you, lying in the field, and nobody knows who killed him:
2 Then your leaders and judges will come out, and they will measure to the towns around where the person was killed.
3 The closest city to the dead man, the city’s leaders must take a cow that hasn’t worked or pulled a plow.
4 The leaders of the city must take the cow to a rocky valley that has not been plowed or planted, and they must cut off the cow’s head there in the valley.
5 The Levi priests should come forward; God has chosen them to serve Him and to give blessings in God’s name. They will decide all arguments and cases.
6 All the leaders of the city closest to the man who was killed must wash their hands over the cow that is killed in the valley.
7 They will reply, “Our hands did not kill this person, and our eyes did not see it.”
8 Be kind, God, to your people Israel, whom you have saved, and do not blame them for the killing of innocent people. Then they will be forgiven for that blood.
9 Do what is right to clear yourself of any blame for innocent blood, just as God sees right.
10 When you go out to fight your enemies, and God gives them to you, and you take them as prisoners,
11 If you see a beautiful woman among the prisoners and want her as your wife;
12 You will bring her to your house, and she will shave her head and trim her nails.
13 She must take off her captive clothes, stay in your house, and cry for her parents for a month. After that, you can marry her, and she will be your wife.
14 If you no longer like her, you must let her go wherever she wants; do not sell her for money or treat her as an item to sell, because you have dishonored her.
15 If a man has two wives, one he loves and one he does not, and they both have children for him, the loved and the unloved; and if the oldest son is the son of the unloved wife:
16 When he gives his children what he owns, he must not favor the son of the woman he loves over his first son by the woman he does not love.
17 He must recognize the son from the unloved wife as the firstborn, giving him twice as much as he has because he was the father’s first sign of strength; this son has the right of the firstborn.
18 If a man has a son who is stubborn and refuses to obey his father or his mother, and does not listen to them even after they correct him:
19 His father and mother will take him and bring him to the city elders at the town gate.
20 They will tell the city elders, “Our son is stubborn and won’t listen to us. He eats and drinks too much.”
21 Everyone from his town must throw stones at him until he dies. This removes the evil from your community, and all of Israel will hear about it and be afraid.
22 If a man has done something that deserves death and he is to be executed, and you hang him on a tree:
23 Do not leave his body on the tree overnight; bury him that same day because anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse. Do this so that your land, which God is giving you as an inheritance, will not become unclean.