Instead, this is what you must do to them: You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, cut down their sacred Asherah poles, and burn up their idols.

So realize that the Lord your God is the true God, the faithful God who keeps covenant faithfully with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

You must by all means destroy all the places where the nations you are about to dispossess worship their gods -- on the high mountains and hills and under every leafy tree.

You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, burn up their sacred Asherah poles, and cut down the images of their gods; you must eliminate their very memory from that place.

You must investigate thoroughly and inquire carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done among you,

the ibex, the gazelle, the deer, the wild goat, the antelope, the wild oryx, and the mountain sheep.

you shall take an awl and pierce a hole through his ear to the door. Then he will become your servant permanently (this applies to your female servant as well).

You must not plant any kind of tree as a sacred Asherah pole near the altar of the Lord your God which you build for yourself.

When it is reported to you and you hear about it, you must investigate carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done in Israel,

Suppose he goes with someone else to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose from the handle and strikes his fellow worker so hard that he dies. The person responsible may then flee to one of these cities to save himself.

If you besiege a city for a long time while attempting to capture it, you must not chop down its trees, for you may eat fruit from them and should not cut them down. A tree in the field is not human that you should besiege it!

However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, and you may use it to build siege works against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.

If a person commits a sin punishable by death and is executed, and you hang the corpse on a tree,

his body must not remain all night on the tree; instead you must make certain you bury him that same day, for the one who is left exposed on a tree is cursed by God. You must not defile your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

If you happen to notice a bird's nest along the road, whether in a tree or on the ground, and there are chicks or eggs with the mother bird sitting on them, you must not take the mother from the young.

But if the accusation is true and the young woman was not a virgin,

the men of her city must bring the young woman to the door of her father's house and stone her to death, for she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by behaving like a prostitute while living in her father's house. In this way you will purge evil from among you.

If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something offensive in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house.

When you beat your olive tree you must not repeat the procedure; the remaining olives belong to the resident foreigner, orphan, and widow.

Whirring locusts will take over every tree and all the produce of your soil.

The Lord appeared in the tent in a pillar of cloud that stood above the door of the tent.

Of Gad he said: Blessed be the one who enlarges Gad. Like a lioness he will dwell; he will tear at an arm -- indeed, a scalp.