Deuteronomy 21

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.