Deuteronomy 21-23

Common English Bible

Unsolved homicides

21 If a corpse is found on the ground the Lord your God is giving you to possess, lying in a field, and the identity of the killer is unknown, ² your elders and judges must come out and measure the distances to the cities nearest the body. ³ Once it is determined which city is closest to the dead body, its elders must take a young cow that hasn’t been used or yet pulled a plow, ⁴ and those elders will take the cow down to a ravine with a flowing stream—one that has not been plowed or planted—and they will break the cow’s neck right there in the river valley. ⁵ Then the priests, the descendants of Levi, will step forward because the Lord your God selected them to minister for him and to bless in the Lord’s name, and because every legal dispute and case of assault is decided by them. ⁶ All the elders of the city closest to the corpse will wash their hands over the cow whose neck was broken in the river valley. ⁷ They will then solemnly state: “Our hands did not shed this blood. Our eyes did not see it happen. ⁸ Lord, please forgive your people Israel, whom you saved. Don’t put the guilt of innocent bloodshed on your people Israel.”

Then the bloodguilt will be forgiven them.

⁹ But you must remove^[a] innocent bloodshed from your community; do only what is right in the Lord’s eyes.

Foreign wives

¹⁰ When you wage war against your enemies and the Lord hands them over to you and you take prisoners, ¹¹ if you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you fall in love with her and take her as your wife, ¹² bringing her into your home, she must shave her head, cut her nails, ¹³ remove her prisoner’s clothing, and live in your house, mourning her father and her mother for one month. After that, you may consummate the marriage. You will be her husband, and she will be your wife. ¹⁴ But if you aren’t pleased with her, you must send her away as she wishes. You are not allowed to sell her for money or treat her as a slave because you have humiliated her.

Right of the oldest son

¹⁵ Now suppose a man has two wives—one of them loved and the other unloved. Both wives bear children, but the oldest male is the unloved wife’s child. ¹⁶ On the day when the man decides what will go to each of his children as an inheritance, he isn’t allowed to treat his loved wife’s son as the oldest male rather than his unloved wife’s son, who is the real oldest male. ¹⁷ Instead, he must acknowledge the unloved wife’s son as the oldest male, giving to him two-thirds of everything that he owns, because that son is the earliest produce of his physical power. The oldest male’s rights belong to that son.

Rebellious children

¹⁸ Now if someone has a consistently stubborn and rebellious child, who refuses to listen to their father and mother—even when the parents discipline him, he won’t listen to them— ¹⁹ the father and mother will take the son before the elders of that city at its gates. ²⁰ Then they will inform the city’s elders: “This son of ours is consistently stubborn and rebellious, refusing to listen to us. What’s more, he’s wild and a drunkard.”

²¹ Then all the people of that town will stone him until he dies.

Remove^[b] such evil from your community! All Israel will hear about this and be afraid.

Hanging

²² Now if someone is guilty of a capital crime, and they are executed, and you then hang them on a tree, ²³ you must not leave the body hanging on the tree but must bury it the same day because God’s curse is on those who are hanged.^[c] Furthermore, you must not pollute the ground that the Lord your God is giving to you as an inheritance.

Rules for property and mixtures

22 Don’t just watch your fellow Israelite’s ox or sheep wandering around and do nothing about it. You must return the animal to its owner. ² If the owner doesn’t live nearby, or you don’t know who owns the animal, then you must take care of it. It should stay with you until your fellow Israelite comes looking for it, at which point you must return it to him.

³ Do the same thing in the case of a donkey. Do the same thing in the case of a piece of clothing. Do the same thing in the case of anything that your fellow Israelite loses and you end up finding. You are not allowed to sit back and do nothing about it.

⁴ Don’t just watch your fellow Israelite’s donkey or ox fall down in the road and do nothing about it. You must help your fellow Israelite get the animal up again.

⁵ Women must not wear men’s clothes, and men must not wear women’s clothes. Everyone who does such things is detestable to the Lord your God.

⁶ If you come across a bird’s nest along your way, whether in a tree or on the ground, with baby birds or eggs, and the mother is sitting on the baby birds or eggs, do not remove the mother from her young. ⁷ You must let the mother go, though you may take the young for yourself so that things go well for you and so you can prolong your life.

⁸ Whenever you build a new house, you must build a railing for the roof so that you don’t end up with innocent blood on your hands because someone fell off of it.

⁹ Don’t plant your vineyards with two types of seed; otherwise, the entire crop that you have planted and the produce of the vineyard will be unusable.^[d]

¹⁰ Don’t plow with an ox and a donkey together.

¹¹ Don’t wear clothes that mix wool and linen together.

¹² Make tassels for the four corners of the coat you wear.

Virgin bride

¹³ Suppose a man gets married and consummates the marriage but subsequently despises his wife. ¹⁴ He then spreads false claims about her to the point that she has a bad reputation, because he said such things as, “I married this woman, but when I went to have sex with her, I couldn’t find any proof that she was a virgin.”

¹⁵ At that point, the young woman’s father and mother will bring proof of her virginity to the city’s elders at the city gate. ¹⁶ The young woman’s father will say to the elders: “I gave my daughter to this man to be his wife, but he doesn’t like her anymore. ¹⁷ That’s why he has spread false claims about her, saying, ‘I couldn’t find any proof that your daughter was a virgin.’ But look! Here’s proof of my daughter’s virginity.” At that point they will spread out the blanket in front of the city’s elders. ¹⁸ The city’s elders must then take that husband and punish him. ¹⁹ They will fine him one hundred silver shekels, giving that to the young woman’s father, because that husband gave one of Israel’s virgin daughters a bad reputation. Moreover, she must remain his wife; he is never allowed to divorce her.

²⁰ However, if the claim is true and proof of the young woman’s virginity can’t be produced, ²¹ then the city’s elders will bring the young woman to the door of her father’s house. The citizens of that city must stone her until she dies because she acted so sinfully in Israel by having extramarital sex while still in her father’s house.

Remove^[e] such evil from your community!

Inappropriate sexual behavior

²² If a man is found having sex with a woman who is married to someone else, both of them must die—the man who was having sex with the woman and the woman herself.

Remove such evil from Israel!

²³ If a young woman who is a virgin is engaged to one man and another man meets up with her in a town and has sex with her, ²⁴ you must bring both of them to the city gates there and stone them until they die—the young woman because she didn’t call for help in the city, and the man because of the fact that he humiliated his neighbor’s wife.

Remove such evil from your community!

²⁵ But if the man met up with the engaged woman in a field, grabbing her and having sex with her there, only the man will die. ²⁶ Don’t do anything whatsoever to the young woman. She hasn’t committed any capital crime—rather, this situation is exactly like the one where someone attacks his neighbor and kills him.^{[f] 27} Since the man met up with her in a field, the engaged woman may well have called out for help, but there was no one to rescue her.

²⁸ If a man meets up with a young woman who is a virgin and not engaged, grabs her and has sex with her, and they are caught in the act, ²⁹ the man who had sex with her must give fifty silver shekels to the young woman’s father. She will also become his wife because he has humiliated her. He is never allowed to divorce her.

^30 [g] A man cannot marry his father’s former wife so that his father’s private matters are not exposed.^[h]

The Lord’s assembly

23 ^[i] No man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off can belong to the Lord’s assembly. ² No one born of an illegitimate marriage^[j] can belong to the Lord’s assembly either. Not even the tenth generation of such children can belong to the Lord’s assembly. ³ Ammonites and Moabites can’t belong to the Lord’s assembly. Not even the tenth generation of such people can belong to the Lord’s assembly, as a rule, ⁴ because they didn’t help you with food or water on your journey out of Egypt, and because they hired Balaam, Beor’s son, from Pethor of Mesopotamia to curse you. ⁵ But the Lord your God wasn’t interested in listening to Balaam. The Lord your God turned that curse into a blessing because the Lord your God loves you. ⁶ So don’t be concerned with their health and well-being as long as you live.

⁷ Don’t detest Edomites, because they are your relatives. Don’t detest Egyptians because you were immigrants in their land. ⁸ Children born to them are permitted to belong to the Lord’s assembly starting with the third generation.

Rules for the war camp

⁹ When you are camped in battle against your enemies, guard yourself from every possible evil. ¹⁰ If an individual in the camp becomes polluted due to a nighttime emission, he must exit the camp area and not reenter. ¹¹ When the next evening arrives, he must wash with water; and when the sun sets, he can come back to the camp.

¹² The latrines^[k] must be outside the camp. You will use them there, outside the camp. ¹³ Carry a shovel with the rest of your gear; once you have relieved yourself, use it to dig a hole, then refill it, covering your excrement.

¹⁴ Do these things because the Lord your God travels with you, right in the middle of your camp, ready to save you and to hand your enemies over to you. For this reason your camp must be holy. The Lord must not see anything indecent among you, or he will turn away from you.

Escaped slaves

¹⁵ Don’t return slaves to owners if they’ve escaped and come to you. ¹⁶ They can stay with you: in your own community or in any place they select from one of your cities, whatever seems good to them. Don’t oppress them.

Consecrated workers

¹⁷ No Israelite daughter is allowed to be a consecrated worker.^[l] Neither is any Israelite son allowed to be a consecrated worker.^{[m] 18} Don’t bring a female prostitute’s fee or a male prostitute’s^[n] payment to the Lord your God’s temple to pay a solemn promise because both of these things are detestable to the Lord your God.

Charging interest

¹⁹ Don’t charge your fellow Israelites interest—whether on money, provisions, or anything one might loan. ²⁰ You can charge foreigners interest, but not your fellow Israelite. Do this so that the Lord your God blesses you in all your work on the land you are entering to possess.

Solemn promise

²¹ When you make a promise to the Lord your God, don’t put off making good on it, because the Lord your God will certainly be expecting it from you; delaying would make you guilty. ²² Now if you simply don’t make any promises, you won’t be guilty of anything. ²³ But whatever you say, you should be sure to make good on, exactly according to the promise you freely made to the Lord your God because you promised it with your own mouth.

Neighbor’s goods

²⁴ If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you can eat as many grapes as you like, until full, but don’t carry any away in a basket. ²⁵ If you go into your neighbor’s grain field, you can pluck ears by hand, but you aren’t allowed to cut off any of your neighbor’s grain with a sickle.