Deuteronomy 20–22

Chapter 20

¹“When you go forth to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them; for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. ²And when you draw near to the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people, ³and shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel, you draw near this day to battle against your enemies: let not your heart faint; do not fear, or tremble, or be in dread of them; ⁴for the Lord your God is he that goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.’ ⁵Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying, ‘What man is there that has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it. ⁶And what man is there that has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed its fruit? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man enjoy its fruit. ⁷And what man is there that has betrothed a wife and has not taken her? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man take her.’ ⁸And the officers shall speak further to the people, and say, ‘What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go back to his house, lest the heart of his fellows melt as his heart.’ ⁹And when the officers have made an end of speaking to the people, then commanders shall be appointed at the head of the people.

¹⁰“When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. ¹¹And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. ¹²But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; ¹³and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, ¹⁴but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. ¹⁵Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. ¹⁶But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, ¹⁷but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded; ¹⁸that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the Lord your God.

¹⁹“When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them; for you may eat of them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field men that they should be besieged by you? ²⁰Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down that you may build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.

Chapter 21

¹“If in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess, any one is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him, ²then your elders and your judges shall come forth, and they shall measure the distance to the cities which are around him that is slain; ³and the elders of the city which is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer which has never been worked and which has not pulled in the yoke. ⁴And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. ⁵And the priests the sons of Levi shall come forward, for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of the Lord, and by their word every dispute and every assault shall be settled. ⁶And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley; ⁷and they shall testify, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, neither did our eyes see it shed. ⁸Forgive, O Lord, thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and set not the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of thy people Israel; but let the guilt of blood be forgiven them.’ ⁹So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord.

¹⁰“When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hands, and you take them captive, ¹¹and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have desire for her and would take her for yourself as wife, ¹²then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails. ¹³And she shall put off her captive’s garb, and shall remain in your house and bewail her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. ¹⁴Then, if you have no delight in her, you shall let her go where she will; but you shall not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.

¹⁵“If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other disliked, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the disliked, and if the first-born son is hers that is disliked, ¹⁶then on the day when he assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his sons, he may not treat the son of the loved as the first-born in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the first-born, ¹⁷but he shall acknowledge the first-born, the son of the disliked, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the first issue of his strength; the right of the first-born is his.

¹⁸“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chastise him, will not give heed to them, ¹⁹then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, ²⁰and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ ²¹Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

²²“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, ²³his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.

Chapter 22

¹“You shall not see your brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and withhold your help from them; you shall take them back to your brother. ²And if he is not near you, or if you do not know him, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall be with you until your brother seeks it; then you shall restore it to him. ³And so you shall do with his ass; so you shall do with his garment; so you shall do with any lost thing of your brother’s, which he loses and you find; you may not withhold your help. ⁴You shall not see your brother’s ass or his ox fallen down by the way, and withhold your help from them; you shall help him to lift them up again.

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

⁶“If you chance to come upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting upon the young or upon the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young; ⁷you shall let the mother go, but the young you may take to yourself; that it may go well with you, and that you may live long.

⁸“When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if any one fall from it.

⁹“You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited to the sanctuary, the crop which you have sown and the yield of the vineyard. ¹⁰You shall not plow with an ox and an ass together. ¹¹You shall not wear a mingled stuff, wool and linen together.

¹²“You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of your cloak with which you cover yourself.

¹³“If any man takes a wife, and goes in to her, and then spurns her, ¹⁴and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings an evil name upon her, saying, ‘I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her the tokens of virginity,’ ¹⁵then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the tokens of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate; ¹⁶and the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man to wife, and he spurns her; ¹⁷and lo, he has made shameful charges against her, saying, “I did not find in your daughter the tokens of virginity.” And yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city. ¹⁸Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him; ¹⁹and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver, and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought an evil name upon a virgin of Israel; and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. ²⁰But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman, ²¹then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has wrought folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you.

²²“If a man is found lying with the wife of…