Deuteronomy 21

1If someone is found slain, lying in the open country in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to take possession of, and no one knows who struck the victim down, 2your elders and your judges are to go out and measure the distance from the body to each of the towns around it. 3The elders of the town nearest the body are to take a heifer from the herd that has never been put to work and has never pulled in a yoke. 4The elders of that town are to lead the heifer down to a valley with a stream that never runs dry, on land that is neither plowed nor sown, and there in the valley they are to break the heifer’s neck. 5The priests, the sons of Levi, are to step forward. The LORD your God has chosen them to serve him and to pronounce blessings in the name of the LORD, and their word is to settle every dispute and every case of assault. 6Then all the elders of the town nearest the body are to wash their hands in the valley over the heifer whose neck was broken. 7They are to declare, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see it done. 8Make atonement for your people Israel, whom you redeemed, LORD, and do not hold the guilt of innocent blood against your people Israel.’ Then the bloodshed will be atoned for on their behalf. 9In this way you will purge the guilt of innocent blood from among you, for you will be doing what is right in the sight of the LORD.

10When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD your God hands them over to you and you take some of them captive, 11and you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry, 12you are to bring her into your home. She is to shave her head, trim her nails, 13and take off the clothes she was wearing when she was captured. She is to stay in your house and mourn for her father and mother a full month. After that you may sleep with her and be her husband, and she will be your wife. 14But if you are no longer pleased with her, you are to let her go free wherever she wishes. You must never sell her for money or treat her as a slave, because you have dishonored her.

15If a man has two wives, one he loves and one he does not, and both have borne him sons, but the firstborn son is the son of the unloved wife, 16then when he divides his property among his sons as their inheritance, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in place of the son of the unloved wife, who is the true firstborn. 17He must acknowledge the son of the unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength, and the right of the firstborn belongs to him.

18Suppose a man has a son who is stubborn and rebellious, who will not obey his father or his mother and will not listen to them even when they discipline him, 19his father and mother are to seize him and bring him out to the elders of his town, to the gate of the place where he lives, 20They are to say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21All the men of his town are then to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you; all Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

22If someone has committed a crime that carries the death penalty and has been put to death, and you hang the body on a tree, 23you must not leave the body on the tree through the night. Be sure to bury it that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not make unclean the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.