Deuteronomy 21

¹If a slain person is found in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess, lying in the field, and it is not known who struck him down,

²Then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities that are around the slain person.

³And it shall be, the city that is nearest to the slain man -- the elders of that city shall take a heifer of the herd that has not been worked, that has not pulled a yoke.

⁴And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a perennial wadi, one that is never tilled or sown, and they shall break the heifer's neck there in the wadi.

⁵Then 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 shall every dispute and every blow be decided.

⁶And all the elders of that city who are nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi.

⁷And they shall declare and say, 'Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see it.'

⁸Forgive your people Israel whom you have redeemed, O LORD, and do not let innocent blood remain in the midst of your people Israel; and the bloodguilt shall be forgiven them.

⁹And you shall purge the innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of the LORD.

¹⁰When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hand, and you take them captive,

¹¹and you see among the captives a woman beautiful in appearance, and you desire her and take her for yourself as wife,

¹²then you shall bring her into your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails.

¹³She shall remove the garment of her captivity from upon her, and shall dwell in your house, and shall weep for her father and her mother a month of days; and after that you may come to her and marry her, and she shall be your wife.

¹⁴And it shall be, if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she will; you shall not in any case sell her for money; you shall not treat her as a slave, because you have humiliated her.

¹⁵If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other hated, and both have borne him sons, the loved wife and the hated, and the firstborn son belongs to the hated,

¹⁶then it shall be, when he wills his inheritance to his sons, he is not able to treat the son of the beloved as firstborn ahead of the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn.

¹⁷For the firstborn, the son of the hated, he shall acknowledge, to give him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his vigor; to him belongs the right of the firstborn.

¹⁸If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not listen to the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and though they discipline him, he does not listen to them,

¹⁹then his father and his mother shall seize him and bring him out to the elders of his city and to the gate of his place.

²⁰And they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he does not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.'

²¹And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, and he shall die, and you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear and fear.

²²And if a man has committed a sin deserving of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,

²³His corpse shall not remain overnight on the tree, for you shall indeed bury him that very day, for a hanged man is a curse of God; and you shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.