You are to rejoice in your festival, you, your son, your daughter, your male and female slaves, the Levites, the resident foreigners, the orphans, and the widows who are in your villages.

You are to celebrate the festival seven days before the Lord your God in the place he chooses, for he will bless you in all your productivity and in whatever you do; so you will indeed rejoice!

Every one of you must give as you are able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.

You must not pervert justice or show favor. Do not take a bribe, for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and distort the words of the righteous.

You must not sacrifice to him a bull or sheep that has a blemish or any other defect, because that is considered offensive to the Lord your God.

by serving other gods and worshiping them -- the sun, moon, or any other heavenly bodies which I have not permitted you to worship.

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,

you must bring to your city gates that man or woman who has done this wicked thing -- that very man or woman -- and you must stone that person to death.

At the testimony of two or three witnesses they must be executed. They cannot be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.

The witnesses must be first to begin the execution, and then all the people are to join in afterward. In this way you will purge evil from among you.

If a matter is too difficult for you to judge -- bloodshed, legal claim, or assault -- matters of controversy in your villages -- you must leave there and go up to the place the Lord your God chooses.

You will go to the Levitical priests and the judge in office in those days and seek a solution; they will render a verdict.

You must then do as they have determined at that place the Lord chooses. Be careful to do just as you are taught.

You must do what you are instructed, and the verdict they pronounce to you, without fail. Do not deviate right or left from what they tell you.

The person who pays no attention to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the verdict -- that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel.

When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, "I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,"

Moreover, he must not accumulate horses for himself or allow the people to return to Egypt to do so, for the Lord has said you must never again return that way.

When he sits on his royal throne he must make a copy of this law on a scroll given to him by the Levitical priests.

It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and observe all the words of this law and these statutes and carry them out.

Then he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens or turn from the commandments to the right or left, and he and his descendants will enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom in Israel.

This shall be the priests' fair allotment from the people who offer sacrifices, whether bull or sheep -- they must give to the priest the shoulder, the jowls, and the stomach.

For the Lord your God has chosen them and their sons from all your tribes to stand and serve in his name permanently.

Suppose a Levite comes by his own free will from one of your villages, from any part of Israel where he is living, to the place the Lord chooses

He must eat the same share they do, despite any profits he may gain from the sale of his family's inheritance.

Whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord and because of these detestable things the Lord your God is about to drive them out from before you.

Those nations that you are about to dispossess listen to omen readers and diviners, but the Lord your God has not given you permission to do such things.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you -- from your fellow Israelites; you must listen to him.

This accords with what happened at Horeb in the day of the assembly. You asked the Lord your God: "Please do not make us hear the voice of the Lord our God any more or see this great fire any more lest we die."

The Lord then said to me, "What they have said is good.

I will raise up a prophet like you for them from among their fellow Israelites. I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them whatever I command.

I will personally hold responsible anyone who then pays no attention to the words that prophet speaks in my name.

"But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die.

Now if you say to yourselves, 'How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?' --

whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him."

When the Lord your God destroys the nations whose land he is about to give you and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and houses,

You shall build a roadway and divide into thirds the whole extent of your land that the Lord your God is providing as your inheritance; anyone who kills another person should flee to the closest of these cities.

Now this is the law pertaining to one who flees there in order to live, if he has accidentally killed another without hating him at the time of the accident.

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.

Therefore, I am commanding you to set apart for yourselves three cities.

If the Lord your God enlarges your borders as he promised your ancestors and gives you all the land he pledged to them,

and then you are careful to observe all these commandments I am giving you today (namely, to love the Lord your God and to always walk in his ways), then you must add three more cities to these three.

However, suppose a person hates someone else and stalks him, attacks him, kills him, and then flees to one of these cities.

The elders of his own city must send for him and remove him from there to deliver him over to the blood avenger to die.

A single witness may not testify against another person for any trespass or sin that he commits. A matter may be legally established only on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

then both parties to the controversy must stand before the Lord, that is, before the priests and judges who will be in office in those days.

The judges will thoroughly investigate the matter, and if the witness should prove to be false and to have given false testimony against the accused,

you must do to him what he had intended to do to the accused. In this way you will purge evil from among you.

The rest of the people will hear and become afraid to keep doing such evil among you.

When you go to war against your enemies and see chariotry and troops who outnumber you, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, is with you.

As you move forward for battle, the priest will approach and say to the soldiers,

"Listen, Israel! Today you are moving forward to do battle with your enemies. Do not be fainthearted. Do not fear and tremble or be terrified because of them,

for the Lord your God goes with you to fight on your behalf against your enemies to give you victory."

Moreover, the officers are to say to the troops, "Who among you has built a new house and not dedicated it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else dedicate it.

Or who among you has planted a vineyard and not benefited from it? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else benefit from it.

Or who among you has become engaged to a woman but has not married her? He may go home, lest he die in battle and someone else marry her."

In addition, the officers are to say to the troops, "Who among you is afraid and fainthearted? He may go home so that he will not make his fellow soldier's heart as fearful as his own."

Then, when the officers have finished speaking, they must appoint unit commanders to lead the troops.

When you approach a city to wage war against it, offer it terms of peace.

If it accepts your terms and submits to you, all the people found in it will become your slaves.

If it does not accept terms of peace but makes war with you, then you are to lay siege to it.

The Lord your God will deliver it over to you and you must kill every single male by the sword.

This is how you are to deal with all those cities located far from you, those that do not belong to these nearby nations.

As for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive.

so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God.

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.

your elders and judges must go out and measure how far it is to the cities in the vicinity of the corpse.

Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked -- that has never pulled with the yoke --

and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. There at the wadi they are to break the heifer's neck.

Then the Levitical priests will approach (for the Lord your God has chosen them to serve him and to pronounce blessings in his name, and to decide every judicial verdict)

Do not blame your people Israel whom you redeemed, O Lord, and do not hold them accountable for the bloodshed of an innocent person." Then atonement will be made for the bloodshed.

In this manner you will purge out the guilt of innocent blood from among you, for you must do what is right before the Lord.

When you go out to do battle with your enemies and the Lord your God allows you to prevail and you take prisoners,

if you should see among them an attractive woman whom you wish to take as a wife,

you may bring her back to your house. She must shave her head, trim her nails,

Suppose a man has two wives, one whom he loves more than the other, and they both bear him sons, with the firstborn being the child of the less loved wife.

In the day he divides his inheritance he must not appoint as firstborn the son of the favorite wife in place of the other wife's son who is actually the firstborn.

Rather, he must acknowledge the son of the less loved wife as firstborn and give him the double portion of all he has, for that son is the beginning of his father's procreative power -- to him should go the right of the firstborn.

If a person has a stubborn, rebellious son who pays no attention to his father or mother, and they discipline him to no avail,

his father and mother must seize him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his city.

They must declare to the elders of his city, "Our son is stubborn and rebellious and pays no attention to what we say -- he is a glutton and drunkard."

Then all the men of his city must stone him to death. In this way you will purge out wickedness from among you, and all Israel will hear about it and be afraid.

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.

When you see your neighbor's ox or sheep going astray, do not ignore it; you must return it without fail to your neighbor.

If the owner does not live near you or you do not know who the owner is, then you must corral the animal at your house and let it stay with you until the owner looks for it; then you must return it to him.

You shall do the same to his donkey, his clothes, or anything else your neighbor has lost and you have found; you must not refuse to get involved.

When you see your neighbor's donkey or ox fallen along the road, do not ignore it; instead, you must be sure to help him get the animal on its feet again.

A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor should a man dress up in women's clothing, for anyone who does this is offensive to the Lord your God.

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.

You must be sure to let the mother go, but you may take the young for yourself. Do this so that it may go well with you and you may have a long life.

If you build a new house, you must construct a guard rail around your roof to avoid being culpable in the event someone should fall from it.

You must not plant your vineyard with two kinds of seed; otherwise the entire yield, both of the seed you plant and the produce of the vineyard, will be defiled.

The young woman's father must say to the elders, "I gave my daughter to this man and he has rejected her.

They will fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman's father, for the man who made the accusation ruined the reputation of an Israelite virgin. She will then become his wife and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.

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 is caught having sexual relations with a married woman both the man who had relations with the woman and the woman herself must die; in this way you will purge evil from Israel.

If a virgin is engaged to a man and another man meets her in the city and has sexual relations with her,

you must bring the two of them to the gate of that city and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry out though in the city and the man because he violated his neighbor's fianc?e; in this way you will purge evil from among you.

But if the man came across the engaged woman in the field and overpowered her and raped her, then only the rapist must die.

You must not do anything to the young woman -- she has done nothing deserving of death. This case is the same as when someone attacks another person and murders him,