21:1   "If you find a slain person lying in the open country in the land which the LORD your God gives you to possess, and no one knows who has struck him,

21:2   then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which lie around the slain one.

21:3   "It shall occur that the city which locates nearest to the slain man, namely, the elders of that city, shall take a heifer of the herd, which has not worked and which has not pulled in a yoke;

21:4   and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which no one has plowed or sown, and shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley.

21:5  "Then 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 every dispute and every assault they shall settle.

21:6   "All the elders of that city which lie nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley;

21:7   and they shall answer and say, 'Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it.

21:8  ' Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, O LORD, and do not place the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel.' And they shall receive forgiveness for bloodguiltiness.

21:9   " So you shall remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do right in the eyes of the LORD.

21:10   "When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive,

21:11  and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself,

21:12  then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails.

21:13   "She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and become her husband and she shall become your wife.

21:14  "It shall happen, if you do not find her pleasing, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled her.

21:15   "If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved,

21:16   then it shall occur in the day he wills what he has to his sons, he cannot make the son of the loved the firstborn before the son of the unloved, who actually came into the world first.

21:17  "But he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he represents the beginning of his strength; to him belongs the right of the firstborn.

21:18   "If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them,

21:19   then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown.

21:20   "They shall say to the elders of his city, 'This son of ours behaves stubbornly and rebellious, he will not obey us, he lives his life as a glutton and a drunkard.'

21:21   " Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it and fear.

21:22   "If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and you put him to death, and you hang him on a tree,

21:23   his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who hangs has become accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance.