King James Version

1 If a slain person is found in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, lying in the field, and it is not known who killed him. 2 And your elders and your judges shall go out and measure to the cities that are around the slain one. 3 And it shall be that the city that is near to the slain will take the elders of that city a heifer that has not been worked with and that has not pulled with a yoke. 4 And the elders of the city brought the heifer to the river Etan, which had not been worked in, and which had not been sown, and they broke the heifer there by the river. 5 And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the Lord your God has chosen them to serve Him and to bless in the name of the Lord, and by their word shall be every dispute and every plague. 6 And all the elders of the city that are nearest to the slain shall wash their hands over the heifer that is broken in the valley. 7 And we answered and said, "Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see it." 8 Atonement for Your people, Israel, whom You redeemed, O Lord, and do not let innocent blood be shed in the midst of Your people Israel, and atonement shall be made for them concerning the blood. 9 And you shall remove the innocent blood from your midst, for you shall do what is right in the eyes of the LORD. 10 When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hand, and you take captive their captives. 11 And you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her, and you may take her as a wife for yourself. 12 And you shall bring her into your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. 13 And you shall remove her garment of captivity from her, and she shall sit in your house and weep for her father and her mother a month of days; and afterward you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 And it shall be, if you do not desire her, and you shall release her for her soul, and you shall not sell her for money; you shall not oppress her, because you have humbled her. 15 When a man has two wives, one loved and the other hated, and they bear him children, the loved and the hated, the firstborn shall be of the hated. 16 And it shall be on the day of his giving inheritance to his sons, whatever he has, he shall not be able to make the son of the beloved the firstborn before the son of the hated, the firstborn. 17 For he will recognize the firstborn son of the hated one, to give him a double portion of all that is found for him, for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his. 18 If a man has a son who is stubborn and rebellious; he does not listen to the voice of his father and to the voice of his mother, and they discipline him, and he does not listen to them. 19 "And his father and mother shall seize him and bring him out to the elders of his city and to the gate of his place." 20 And they shall say to the elders of his city, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he does not listen to our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard." 21 And you shall stone him with stones, all the men of his city, and you shall burn the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear and fear. 22 If there is a man who commits a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree. 23 You shall not let his body remain on the tree overnight, for you shall surely bury him the same day, because a hanging body is a curse of God, and you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.