Deuteronomy 21

¹ In case someone mortally wounded is found on the ground that Yahweh your Elohim is giving to you to tenant it, having fallen in the field, and it is not known who smote him fatally, ² then your elders and your judges will go forth and measure the distance to the cities that are around the mortally wounded one. ³ And it will come to be that of the city nearest to the mortally wounded one, the elders of that city will take a heifer of the herd by which no one has been served and which has not drawn in a yoke. ⁴ The elders of that city will bring the heifer down to a perennial watercourse by which no one was served and it was not sown, and they will behead the heifer there in the watercourse. ⁵ Then the priests, the sons of Levi, will come close, for Yahweh your Elohim has chosen them to minister to Him and to bless in the name of Yahweh, and at their bidding every contention and every assault shall come to be settled. ⁶ Then all the elders of that city, the ones nearest to the mortally wounded one, shall wash their hands over the beheaded heifer in the watercourse, ⁷ and they will respond and say: Our hands, they have not shed this blood, and our eyes, they have not seen it. ⁸ Make a propitiatory shelter for Your people, Israel, whom You have ransomed, Yahweh, and let not guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people, Israel. Thus a propitiatory shelter for them will be made concerning this bloodshed. ⁹ So you yourself shall eradicate the shedding of innocent blood from among you, for you shall do what is upright in the eyes of Yahweh. ¹⁰ When you go forth for battle against your enemy, and Yahweh your Elohim delivers him into your hand, and you capture his captives, ¹¹ and you see among the captives a woman of lovely shape and are attached to her and take her to yourself as a wife, ¹² then you will bring her into the midst of your household, where she will shave her head and pare her nails. ¹³ She will put away the garment of her captivity from her and dwell in your house. Then she will lament her father and her mother a month of days, and afterward you may come to her and may possess her, and she will become yours as a wife. ¹⁴ Should it come to be that you find no delight in her, then you will dismiss her to go at her soul's desire. You shall not sell, yea sell her for silver; you shall not make a chattel of her, inasmuch as you have humiliated her. ¹⁵ In case a man should come to have two wives, the one loved and the other disliked, and they bear sons for him, the loved and the disliked, but the firstborn is the son of the disliked one, ¹⁶ then it will come to be in the day when he gives allotments to his sons of that which is his, that he should not be able to treat as firstborn the son of the loved in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the firstborn. ¹⁷ For he shall recognize the firstborn son of the disliked by giving to him a double share of all that is being found his; since he is the beginning of his virility, the customary right of the firstborn belongs to him. ¹⁸ In case a son of a man should become stubborn and rebellious, and he is not hearkening to the voice of his father or to the voice of his mother, and they discipline him, but he does not hearken to them, ¹⁹ then his father and his mother will grasp him and bring him forth to the elders of his city, at the gate of his place. ²⁰ They will say to the elders of his city: This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He is not hearkening to our voice. He is a glutton and carouser. ²¹ Then all the men of his city will pelt him with stones so that he dies. Thus you will eradicate the evil from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear. ²² In case there should be in a man a sin incurring a judgment of death so that he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, ²³ his carcass shall not lodge on the tree all night, for you shall entomb, yea entomb him on that day, for one being hung is under a malediction of Elohim, and you shall not defile your ground that Yahweh your Elohim is giving to you as an allotment.