Deuteronomy 20–23

Chapter 20

Laws of Warfare

¹“When you go out to battle against your enemies and see ^ahorses and chariots and people more numerous than you, ^bdo not be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt, is with you.

²“When you are approaching the battle, the priest shall come near and speak to the people.

³“He shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel, you are approaching the battle against your enemies today. Do not be fainthearted. ^aDo not be afraid, or panic, or tremble before them,

⁴for the Lord your God ^ais the one who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.’

⁵“The officers also shall speak to the people, saying, ‘Who is the man that has built a new house and has not ^adedicated it? Let him depart and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would dedicate it.

⁶‘Who is the man that has planted a vineyard and has not ¹begun to use its fruit? Let him depart and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would begin to use its fruit.

⁷‘^aAnd who is the man that is engaged to a woman and has not ¹married her? Let him depart and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man ²would marry her.’

⁸“Then the officers shall speak further to the people and say, ‘^aWho is the man that is afraid and fainthearted? Let him depart and return to his house, so that ¹he might not make his brothers’ hearts melt like his heart.’

⁹“When the officers have finished speaking to the people, they shall appoint commanders of armies at the head of the people.

¹⁰“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall ¹offer it terms of peace.

¹¹“If it ¹agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your ^aforced labor and shall serve you.

¹²“However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.

¹³“When the Lord your God gives it into your hand, ^ayou shall strike all the ¹men in it with the edge of the sword.

¹⁴“Only the women and the children and ^athe animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall ¹use the spoil of your enemies which the Lord your God has given you.

¹⁵“Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations ¹nearby.

¹⁶“^aOnly in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.

¹⁷“But you shall ¹utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you,

¹⁸so that they may not teach you to do ^aaccording to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would ^bsin against the Lord your God.

¹⁹“When you besiege a city a long time, to make war against it in order to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them; for you may eat from them, and you shall not cut them down. ¹For is the tree of the field a man, that it should ²be besieged by you?

²⁰“Only the trees which you know ¹are not fruit trees you shall destroy and cut down, that you may construct siegeworks against the city that is making war with you until it falls.

Chapter 21

Expiation of a Crime

¹“If a slain person is found lying in the open country in the land which the Lord your God gives you to ¹possess, and it is not known who has struck him,

²then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the slain one.

³“It shall be that the city which is nearest to the slain man, that is, the elders of that city, shall take a heifer of the herd, which has not been worked and which has not pulled in a yoke;

⁴and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which has not been plowed or sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley.

⁵“Then ^athe priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the Lord your God has chosen them to serve Him and to bless in the name of the Lord; and every dispute and every ¹assault ²shall be settled by them.

⁶“All the elders of that city ¹which is nearest to the slain man shall ^awash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley;

⁷and they shall answer and say, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it.

⁸‘¹Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, O Lord, and do not place the guilt of ^ainnocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel.’ And the bloodguiltiness shall be ²forgiven them.

⁹“^aSo you shall remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.

Domestic Relations

¹⁰“When you go out to battle against your enemies, and ^athe Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive,

¹¹and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself,

¹²then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall ^ashave her head and ¹trim her nails.

¹³“She shall also ¹remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and ^amourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.

¹⁴“It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go ¹wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not ²mistreat her, because you have ^ahumbled her.

¹⁵“If a man has two wives, the one loved and ^athe other ¹unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved,

¹⁶then it shall be in the day he ¹wills what he has to his sons, he cannot make the son of the loved the firstborn before the son of the ²unloved, who is the firstborn.

¹⁷“But he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the ¹unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that ²he has, for he is the ^abeginning of his strength; ^bto him belongs the right of the firstborn.

¹⁸“If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will ^anot obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them,

¹⁹then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city ¹at the gateway of his hometown.

²⁰“They shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’

²¹“^aThen all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so ^byou shall remove the evil from your midst, and ^call Israel will hear of it and fear.

²²“If a man has committed a sin ^aworthy of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,

^23ahis corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for ^bhe who is hanged is ¹accursed of God), so that you ^cdo not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.

Chapter 22

Sundry Laws

¹“^aYou shall not see your ¹countryman’s ox or his sheep straying away, and ²pay no attention to them; you shall certainly bring them back to your countryman.

²“If your countryman is not near you, or if you do not know him, then you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall remain with you until your countryman looks for it; then you shall restore it to him.

³“Thus you shall do with his donkey, and you shall do the same with his garment, and you shall do likewise with anything lost by your countryman, which he has lost and you have found. You are not allowed to ¹neglect them.

⁴“You shall not see your countryman’s donkey or his ox fallen down on the way, and ¹pay no attention to them; you shall certainly help him to raise them up.

⁵“A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.

⁶“If you happen to come upon a bird’s nest along the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, ^ayou shall not take the mother with the young;

⁷you shall certainly let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, ^ain order that it may be well with you and that you may prolong your days.

⁸“When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you will not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone falls from it.

⁹“^aYou shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, or ¹all the produce of the seed which you have sown and the increase of the vineyard will become defiled.

¹⁰“^aYou shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.

¹¹“^aYou shall not wear a material mixed of wool and linen together.

¹²“^aYou shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of your garment with which you cover yourself.

Laws on Morality

¹³“^aIf any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then ¹turns against her,

¹⁴and charges her with shameful deeds and ¹publicly defames her, and says, ‘I took this woman, but when I came near her, I did not find her a virgin,’

¹⁵then the girl’s father and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of the girl’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate.

¹⁶“The girl’s father shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man for a wife, but he ¹turned against her;

¹⁷and behold, he has charged her with shameful deeds, saying, “I did not find your daughter a virgin.” But ¹this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city.

¹⁸“So ^athe elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him,

¹⁹and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give it to the girl’s father, because he ¹publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. And she shall remain his wife; he cannot ²divorce her all his days.

²⁰“But if this ^1acharge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin,

²¹then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her…