 1 If one is found dead in the land that the Lord your God gives you to possess it, lying in the field and it is not known who has killed him, 2 then your elders and your judges shall measure to the cities that are around him who is dead. 3 The city nearest to the slain one, the elders of that city shall take a heifer that has not been worked with and that has not drawn in the yoke. 4 The elders of that city shall bring down the heifer to an ever flowing stream that is neither plowed nor sown and shall strike off the heifer's neck there in the stream. 5 The priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near. 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 shall every controversy and every stroke be tried. 6 All the elders of that city nearest to the slain one, shall wash their hands over the heifer that has been beheaded in the stream. 7 They shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen. 8 Be merciful, O Lord, to your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood to the charge of your people Israel. And the blood shall be forgiven them. 9 So you shall put away innocent blood from among you, when you do the right in the sight of the Lord. 10 When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God has delivered them to you and you have taken them captive, 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire to her, that you would take her for your wife, 12 then you shall bring her home to your house. And she shall shave her head and dress her nails. 13 She shall put off the clothing of her captivity, and shall remain in your house, and shall sorrow for her father and her mother a full month. And after that you shall go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 If you have no delight in her, then you let her go wherever she will. But you must not sell her for silver and you must not make her a slave, because you have humbled her. 15 If a man has two wives, one beloved and another hated, and they have borne him sons, the beloved and the hated. And if the firstborn son was of her that was hated, 16 then in the day when he makes his sons to inherit what he has, he may not cause the son of the beloved firstborn to inherit before the son of the hated one, who is truly the firstborn. 17 But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated as the firstborn by giving him a double portion of all that he has. For he is the beginning of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his. 18 If a man has a son who is stubborn and rebels, who will not obey his father's voice or his mother's voice, even when they have chastened him he will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall lay hold on him and bring him out to the elders of his city, and to the gate of his place. 20 They shall say to the elders of his city, this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard. 21 All the men of his city shall stone him with stones so that he dies. So shall you put evil away from you, and all Israel shall hear and fear. 22 If a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and if he is put to death and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body must not remain all night on the tree. But you shall surely bury him that day for one who is hanged is accursed of God, so that your land may not be defiled that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.
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