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a victim is found murdered, lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him, 2 then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the body of the victim to the surrounding cities. 3 Then the elders of the city nearest the victim shall take a heifer that has not been worked and has never worn a yoke. 4 The elders of that city must bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, to a place that has not been ploughed or sown, and they are to break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. 5 Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister to Him and pronounce blessings in the name of the Lord; and by their ruling all cases of dispute and assault will be settled.
6 “All the elders of that city nearest to the victim shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, 7 and they shall declare, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. 8 O Lord, forgive Your people Israel, whom You have redeemed, and do not hold the guilt of innocent blood against Your people Israel’. Then they will be atoned for the guilt of bloodshed. 9 So you will purge from yourselves the guilt of innocent blood, for you will be doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord.
10 “When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, 11 If you see a beautiful woman whom you desire among the captives, and you want to take her for a wife for yourself, 12 then you are to bring her into your house. She must shave her head, trim her nails, 13 and remove the clothing she was wearing when she was captured. She is to remain in your house and mourn her father and mother for a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall become your wife. 14 However, if you are not pleased with her, you must let her go free whenever she wishes. But you must not sell her for money or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonoured her.
15 “If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, but the firstborn is the son of the unloved wife, 16 then on the day that he wills his possessions to his sons, he cannot treat the son of the loved wife as the firstborn in preference to the son of the unloved wife, who is the firstborn. 17 He must acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved wife, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the first sign of his virility; the rights of the firstborn belongs to him.
18 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them even after they discipline him, 19 then his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders of his city at the gate of that place. 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 Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you, and all Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
22 “If a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his body must not hang overnight on the tree, but you shall buried him that same day, since anyone who has been hanged is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.”