The Bible

Deuteronomy Chapter 21

¹If one be found slain in the land which ForeverOne your God gives you to possess it, lying in the field, and it isn't known who has struck him; ²then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure to the cities which are around him who is slain: ³and it shall be, that the city which is nearest to the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take a heifer of the herd, which hasn't been worked with, and which has not drawn in the yoke; ⁴and the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley.

⁵The priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them ForeverOne your God has chosen to minister to him, and to bless in the name of ForeverOne; and according to their word shall every controversy and every stroke be.

⁶All 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 valley; ⁷and they shall answer and say, "Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.

⁸Forgive, ForeverOne, your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and don't allow innocent blood [to remain] in the midst of your people Israel." The blood shall be forgiven them.

⁹So you shall put away the innocent blood from the midst of you, when you shall do what is right in the eyes of ForeverOne.

¹⁰When you go out to battle against your enemies, and ForeverOne your God delivers them into your hands, and you carry them away captive, ¹¹and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have a desire to her, and would take her to you [to be his] wife; ¹²then you shall bring her home to your house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; ¹³and she shall put the clothing of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in your house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that you shall go in to her, and marry her, and she shall be your wife.

¹⁴It shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall let her go where she will; but you shall not sell her at all for money, you shall not deal with her as a slave, because you have humbled her.

¹⁵If a man have two wives, the one beloved, and the other hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers who was hated; ¹⁶then it shall be, in the day that he causes his sons to inherit what he has, that he may not make the son of the beloved the firstborn before the son of the hated, who is the firstborn: ¹⁷but he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the hated, 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.

¹⁸If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and, though they chasten him, will not listen to them; ¹⁹then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out to the elders of his city, and to the gate of his place; ²⁰and they shall tell the elders of his city, "This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard." ²¹All the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones: so you shall put away the evil from the midst of you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

²²If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and you hang him on a tree; ²³his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him the same day; for he who is hanged is accursed of God; that you don't defile your land which ForeverOne your God gives you for an inheritance.