1 If anyone is found slain, lying in the field in the land which Jehovah your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who has struck him,
2 then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the one slain to the surrounding cities.
3 And it shall be that the elders of the city nearest to the slain person shall take a heifer from the herd which has not been worked and which has not drawn with a yoke.
4 And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with a flowing stream, which is neither plowed nor sown, and they shall break the heifers neck there in the valley.
5 And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near (for Jehovah your God has chosen them to serve Him and to bless in the name of Jehovah), and by their word every controversy and every stroke shall be tried.
6 And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain person shall wash their hands in the stream over the heifer whose neck was broken.
7 And they shall answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it.
8 Provide atonement, O Jehovah, for Your people Israel, whom You have redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood to the charge of Your people Israel. And the blood shall be covered.
9 Thus you shall put away innocent blood from among you when you do what is right in the eyes of Jehovah.
10 When you go out to war against your enemies, and Jehovah your God has delivered them into your hand, and you have taken them captive,
11 and you see among the captives a woman with a beautiful figure, and desire her and would take her for your wife,
12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and do her nails.
13 She shall put off the clothes of her captivity, remain in your house, and mourn her father and her mother a month of days; after that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
14 And it shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall set her free, but you certainly shall not sell her for money; you shall not treat her as a slave, because you have humbled her.
15 If a man has two wives, one loved and the other hated, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the hated, and if the firstborn son is of her who is hated,
16 then it shall be, on the day he bequeaths his possessions to his sons, that he shall not make the son of the loved wife the firstborn before the son of the hated, the true firstborn.
17 But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated wife as the firstborn by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.
18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not obey them,
19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, 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 will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.
21 Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones; thus you shall put away the evil from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear.
22 If a man is guilty of a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you have hung him on a tree,
23 his corpse shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which Jehovah your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanging is accursed of God.