¹If a slain person is found on the ground that Yahweh your God is giving you to take possession of it, lying in the field, and it is not known who struck him,

²then your elders and your judges will go out and measure to the cities that are around the slain one.

³And it will be that the city nearest to the slain one, the elders of that city will take a heifer of the herd, one that has not been worked, that has not drawn with a yoke.

⁴And the elders of that city will bring the heifer down to an ever-flowing wadi, which is not tilled and is not sown; and there they will break the neck of the heifer in the wadi.

⁵Then the priests, the sons of Levi, will draw near; for Yahweh your God has chosen them to serve him and to bless in the name of Yahweh, and by their mouth every dispute and every blow will be decided.

⁶And all the elders of that city, those nearest to the slain one, will wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi.

⁷And they will answer and say: Our hands did not pour out this blood, and our eyes did not see it.

⁸Cover for your people Israel, whom you ransomed, O Yahweh, and do not put innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel; and the blood will be covered for them.

⁹And you will purge the innocent blood from your midst, for you will do 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 captive their prisoners.

¹¹and you see among the captives a woman beautiful in figure, and you become attached to her, and you take her for yourself as a wife.

¹²then you bring her into the middle of your house, and she shaves her head and attends to her nails.

¹³She removes the garment of her captivity from herself, and dwells in your house, and weeps for her father and her mother a full month; and after that you go in to her and become her husband, and she becomes your wife.

¹⁴And it will happen, if you take no delight in her, that you let her go where her being desires; but you will not sell her at all for silver, you will not treat her as a slave, since you have humbled her.

¹⁵When a man has two wives, the one loved, and the other hated, and they bear him sons, the loved one and the hated one, and the firstborn son belongs to the hated one,

¹⁶And it will happen that on the day he makes his sons inherit what will be his, he will not be able to make the son of the loved one firstborn in front of the son of the hated one, the firstborn.

¹⁷Rather, he must acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the hated one, by giving him a double portion of all that is found to be his; for he is the beginning of his strength, and the right of the firstling is his.

¹⁸When a man has a son who is stubborn and rebellious, not listening to the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and they discipline him, yet he does not listen to them.

¹⁹then his father and his mother seized in it, and his city brought forth him to the elders of and to the gate of his place;

²⁰and they will say to the elders of his city, our son stubborn and rebelled, his there is was not heard in our voice, glutton and a drunkard.

²¹Then all the men of his city will stone him with stones, and he will die; and you will purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear and be afraid.

²²And when there is in a man a sin carrying a sentence of death, and he is put to death, then you hang him on a tree,

²³His carcass will not stay the night on the tree, but you must bury him on that day, for one who is hanged is a curse of God; and you will not defile your ground, which Yahweh your God gives you as an inheritance.