Deuteronomy 18–21

Chapter 18

¹“The Levitical priests, that is, all the tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the offerings by fire to the Lord, and his rightful dues. ²They shall have no inheritance among their brethren; the Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them. ³And this shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether it be ox or sheep: they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach. ⁴The first fruits of your grain, of your wine and of your oil, and the first of the fleece of your sheep, you shall give him. ⁵For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes, to stand and minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for ever.

⁶“And if a Levite comes from any of your towns out of all Israel, where he lives—and he may come when he desires—to the place which the Lord will choose, ⁷then he may minister in the name of the Lord his God, like all his fellow-Levites who stand to minister there before the Lord. ⁸They shall have equal portions to eat, besides what he receives from the sale of his patrimony.^m

⁹“When you come into the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. ¹⁰There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, ¹¹or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. ¹²For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord; and because of these abominable practices the Lord your God is driving them out before you. ¹³You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. ¹⁴For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, give heed to soothsayers and to diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you so to do.

¹⁵“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren—him you shall heed— ¹⁶just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷And the Lord said to me, ‘They have rightly said all that they have spoken. ¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. ¹⁹And whoever will not give heed to my words which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. ²⁰But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ ²¹And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’— ²²when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you need not be afraid of him.

Chapter 19

¹“When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God gives you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, ²you shall set apart three cities for you in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess. ³You shall prepare the roads, and divide into three parts the area of the land which the Lord your God gives you as a possession, so that any manslayer can flee to them.

⁴“This is the provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life. If any one kills his neighbor unintentionally without having been at enmity with him in time past— ⁵as when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to one of these cities and save his life; ⁶lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue the manslayer and overtake him, because the way is long, and wound him mortally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he was not at enmity with his neighbor in time past. ⁷Therefore I command you, You shall set apart three cities. ⁸And if the Lord your God enlarges your border, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land which he promised to give to your fathers— ⁹provided you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I command you this day, by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in his ways—then you shall add three other cities to these three, ¹⁰lest innocent blood be shed in your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed be upon you.

¹¹“But if any man hates his neighbor, and lies in wait for him, and attacks him, and wounds him mortally so that he dies, and the man flees into one of these cities, ¹²then the elders of his city shall send and fetch him from there, and hand him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may die. ¹³Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, so that it may be well with you.

¹⁴“In the inheritance which you will hold in the land that the Lord your God gives you to possess, you shall not remove your neighbor’s landmark, which the men of old have set.

¹⁵“A single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed; only on the evidence of two witnesses, or of three witnesses, shall a charge be sustained. ¹⁶If a malicious witness rises against any man to accuse him of wrongdoing, ¹⁷then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days; ¹⁸the judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, ¹⁹then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you. ²⁰And the rest shall hear, and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. ²¹Your eye shall not pity; it shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

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…