Deuteronomy 17

The AIT Bible

Sacrificing Unblemished Animals

1You shall not sacrifice to Yahweh your God an ox or a sheep in which there is a blemish, any evil thing, for that is an abomination to Yahweh your God.

The Penalty for Idolatry

2If there is found in your midst, in one of your gates that Yahweh your God is giving you, a man or a woman who does what is evil in the eyes of Yahweh your God, transgressing his covenant,

3and he has gone and served other gods and bowed down to them, whether to the sun or to the moon or to any of the host of the heavens, which I have not commanded—

4and if it is told to you and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently, and behold, it is true, the matter is confirmed, this abomination has been done in Israel,

5then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has done this evil thing—the man or the woman—and you shall stone them with stones, and they shall die.

6On the testimony of two witnesses or three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness.

7The hand of the witnesses shall be against him first to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people; so you shall purge the evil from your midst.

The Supreme Legal Authority

8If a case is too difficult for you to judge—between blood and blood, between claim and claim, or between plague and plague, matters of dispute within your gates—then you shall rise and go up to the place that Yahweh your God chooses.

9And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall inquire, and they shall declare to you the verdict of the case.

10Then you shall act according to the word that they declare to you from that place that Yahweh chooses, and you shall be careful to do according to all that they instruct you.

11According to the instruction that they teach you and according to the judgment that they tell you, you shall act; you shall not turn aside from the word that they declare to you, to the right or to the left.

12And the man who acts presumptuously by not listening to the priest who stands to minister there before Yahweh your God, or to the judge, that man shall die; so you shall purge the evil from Israel.

13And all the people shall hear and fear, and shall not act presumptuously again.

Laws Concerning a King

14When you come into the land that Yahweh your God is giving you, and you take possession of it and dwell in it, and you say, ‘Let me set a king over myself like all the nations that are around me,’

15you shall surely set over yourself a king whom Yahweh your God chooses. From among your brothers you shall set a king over yourself; you may not put over yourself a foreigner, who is not your brother.

16Only he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt in order to multiply horses, for Yahweh has said to you, ‘You shall never again return by this way.’

17And he shall not multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; and he shall not greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.

18And it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll, before the Levitical priests.

19And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear Yahweh his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them,

20so that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right or to the left, so that he may prolong his days over his kingdom, he and his sons, in the midst of Israel.

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