1If a slain person is found lying in the field, in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you to possess, 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 man.
3And the city nearest to the slain man—the elders of that city shall take a heifer of the herd that has not been worked with and that has not pulled in a yoke,
4and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a wadi with ever-flowing water, one that is neither worked nor sown, and there in the wadi they shall break the heifer’s neck.
5Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for Yahweh your God has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of Yahweh, and by their mouth every dispute and every case of assault shall be settled.
6And all the elders of that city, those nearest to the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi,
7and they shall respond and say, “Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see.”
8“Make atonement for your people Israel, whom you redeemed, Yahweh, and do not lay innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel.” And the blood will be atoned for them.
9So you shall purge the innocent blood from your midst, for you will be doing what is right in the eyes of Yahweh.
10When you go out to war against your enemies, and Yahweh your God gives them into your hand and you take captives from them,
11and you see among the captives a woman beautiful in form, and you desire her and would take her for yourself as a wife,
12then you shall bring her into your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails,
13and she shall remove the garment of her captivity from upon her and dwell in your house and mourn her father and her mother for a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall become your wife.
14And if it happens that you take no delight in her, then you shall let her go to herself; you shall not sell her at all for silver, you shall not treat her as merchandise, since you have humbled her.
15If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and they bear him sons—both the loved and the unloved—and the firstborn son belongs to the unloved,
16then on the day he makes his sons inherit what he has, he may not treat the son of the loved wife as firstborn over the son of the unloved wife, who is the firstborn.
17Rather he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved wife, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his vigor; the right of the firstborn is his.
18If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey 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, 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.”
21Then all the men of his city shall stone him with stones so that he dies. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear and fear.
22When a man has committed a sin worthy of a death sentence and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,
23his corpse shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on that day, for one hanged is a curse of God; and you shall not defile your land that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance.
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