Deuteronomy 18–21

Shares for Priests and Levites

18The priests are from the tribe of Levi, and that tribe will not receive a share of the land with the Israelites. They will eat the offerings made to the Lord by fire, which is their share. ²They will not inherit any of the land like their brothers, but they will inherit the Lord himself, as he has promised them.

³When you offer a bull or sheep as a sacrifice, you must share with the priests, giving them the shoulder, the cheeks, and the inner organs. ⁴Give them the first of your grain, new wine, and oil, as well as the first wool you cut from your sheep. ⁵The Lord your God has chosen the priests and their descendants out of all your tribes to stand and serve the Lord always.

⁶If a Levite moves from one of your towns anywhere in Israel where he lives and comes to the place the Lord will choose, because he wants to serve the Lord there, ⁷he may serve the Lord his God. He will be like his fellow Levites who serve there before the Lord. ⁸They all will have an equal share of the food. That is separate from what he has received from the sale of family possessions.

Do Not Follow Other Nations

⁹When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, don’t learn to do the hateful things the other nations do. ¹⁰Don’t let anyone among you offer a son or daughter as a sacrifice in the fire. Don’t let anyone use magic or witchcraft, or try to explain the meaning of signs. ¹¹Don’t let anyone try to control others with magic, and don’t let them be mediums or try to talk with the spirits of dead people. ¹²The Lord hates anyone who does these things. Because the other nations do these things, the Lord your God will force them out of the land ahead of you. ¹³But you must be innocent in the presence of the Lord your God.

The Lord’s Special Prophet

¹⁴The nations you will force out listen to people who use magic and witchcraft, but the Lord your God will not let you do those things. ¹⁵The Lord your God will give you a prophet like me, who is one of your own people. Listen to him. ¹⁶This is what you asked the Lord your God to do when you were gathered at Mount Sinai. You said, “Don’t make us listen to the voice of the Lord our God again, and don’t make us look at this terrible fire anymore, or we will die.”

¹⁷So the Lord said to me, “What they have said is good. ¹⁸So I will give them a prophet like you, who is one of their own people. I will tell him what to say, and he will tell them everything I command. ¹⁹This prophet will speak for me; anyone who does not listen when he speaks will answer to me. ²⁰But if a prophet says something I did not tell him to say as though he were speaking for me, or if a prophet speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must be killed.”

²¹You might be thinking, “How can we know if a message is not from the Lord?” ²²If what a prophet says in the name of the Lord does not happen, it is not the Lord’s message. That prophet was speaking his own ideas. Don’t be afraid of him.

Cities of Safety

19When the Lord your God gives you land that belongs to the other nations, nations that he will destroy, you will force them out and live in their cities and houses. ²Then choose three cities in the middle of the land the Lord your God is giving you as your own. ³Build roads to these cities, and divide the land the Lord is giving you into three parts so that someone who kills another person may run to these cities.

⁴This is the rule for someone who kills another person and runs to one of these cities in order to save his life. But the person must have killed a neighbor without meaning to, not out of hatred. ⁵For example, suppose someone goes into the forest with a neighbor to cut wood and swings an ax to cut down a tree. If the ax head flies off the handle, hitting and killing the neighbor, the one who killed him may run to one of these cities to save his life. ⁶Otherwise, the dead person’s relative who has the duty of punishing a murderer might be angry and chase him. If the city is far away, the relative might catch and kill the person, even though he should not be killed because there was no intent to kill his neighbor. ⁷This is why I command you to choose these three cities.

^8–9Carefully obey all these laws I’m giving you today. Love the Lord your God, and always do what he wants you to do. Then the Lord your God will enlarge your land as he promised your ancestors, giving you the whole land he promised to them. After that, choose three more cities of safety ¹⁰so that innocent people will not be killed in your land, the land that the Lord your God is giving you as your own. By doing this you will not be guilty of allowing the death of innocent people.

¹¹But if a person hates his neighbor and, after hiding and waiting, attacks and kills him and then runs to one of these cities for safety, ¹²the elders of his own city should send for the murderer. They should bring the person back from the city of safety and hand him over to the relative who has the duty of punishing the murderer. ¹³Show no mercy. You must remove from Israel the guilt of murdering innocent people so that things will go well for you.

¹⁴Do not move the stone that marks the border of your neighbor’s land, which people long ago set in place. It marks what you inherit in the land the Lord your God is giving you as your own.

Rules About Witnesses

¹⁵One witness is not enough to accuse a person of a crime or sin. A case must be proved by two or three witnesses.

¹⁶If a witness lies and accuses a person of a crime, ¹⁷the two people who are arguing must stand in the presence of the Lord before the priests and judges who are on duty. ¹⁸The judges must check the matter carefully. The witness who is a liar, lying about a fellow Israelite, ¹⁹must be punished. He must be punished in the same way the other person would have been punished. You must get rid of the evil among you. ²⁰The rest of the people will hear about this and be afraid, and no one among you will ever do such an evil thing again. ²¹Show no mercy. A life must be paid for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot.

Laws for War

20When you go to war against your enemies and you see horses and chariots and an army that is bigger than yours, don’t be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, will be with you. ²The priest must come and speak to the army before you go into battle. ³He will say, “Listen, Israel! Today you are going into battle against your enemies. Don’t lose your courage or be afraid. Don’t panic or be frightened, ⁴because the Lord your God goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies and to save you.”

⁵The officers should say to the army, “Has anyone built a new house but not given it to God? He may go home, because he might die in battle and someone else would get to give his house to God. ⁶Has anyone planted a vineyard and not begun to enjoy it? He may go home, because he might die in battle and someone else would enjoy his vineyard. ⁷Is any man engaged to a woman and not yet married to her? He may go home, because he might die in battle and someone else would marry her.” ⁸Then the officers should also say, “Is anyone here afraid? Has anyone lost his courage? He may go home so that he will not cause others to lose their courage, too.” ⁹When the officers finish speaking to the army, they should appoint commanders to lead it.

¹⁰When you march up to attack a city, first make them an offer of peace. ¹¹If they accept your offer and open their gates to you, all the people of that city will become your slaves and work for you. ¹²But if they do not make peace with you and fight you in battle, you should surround that city. ¹³The Lord your God will give it to you. Then kill all the men with your swords, ¹⁴and you may take everything else in the city for yourselves. Take the women, children, and animals, and you may use these things the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. ¹⁵Do this to all the cities that are far away, that do not belong to the nations nearby.

¹⁶But leave nothing alive in the cities of the land the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁷Completely destroy these people: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded. ¹⁸Otherwise, they will teach you what they do for their gods, and if you do these hateful things, you will sin against the Lord your God.

¹⁹If you surround and attack a city for a long time, trying to capture it, do not destroy its trees with an ax. You can eat the fruit from the trees, but do not cut them down. These trees are not the enemy, so don’t make war against them. ²⁰But you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build devices to attack the city walls, until the city is captured.

A Person Found Murdered

21Suppose someone is found murdered, lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you as your own, and no one knows who killed the person. ²Your elders and judges should go to where the body was found, and they should measure how far it is to the nearby cities. ³The elders of the city nearest the body must take a young cow that has never worked or worn a yoke, ⁴and they must lead her down to a valley that has never been plowed or planted, with a stream flowing through it. There they must break the young cow’s neck. ⁵The priests, the sons of Levi, should come forward, because they have been chosen by the Lord your God to serve him and to give blessings in the Lord’s name. They are the ones who decide cases of quarreling and attacks. ⁶Then all the elders of the city nearest the murdered person should wash their hands over the young cow whose neck was broken in the valley. ⁷They should declare: “We did not kill this person, and we did not see it happen. ⁸Lord, remove this sin from your people Israel, whom you have saved. Don’t blame your people, the Israelites, for the murder of this innocent person.” And so the…