4aand it is told you, and you hear ofit, then you shall inquire diligently. And if itis indeed true and certain that such an1 abomination has been committed in Israel,
5 then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has committed that wicked thing, and ashall stone bto death that man or woman with stones.
6 Whoever is deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three awitnesses; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness.
7 The hands of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So you shall put away the evil from among ayou.
8a“If a matter arises which is too hard for you to judge, between degrees of guilt for bloodshed, between one judgment or another, or between one punishment or another, matters of controversy within your gates, then you shall arise and go up to the bplace which the Lord your God chooses.
9 And ayou shall come to the priests, the Levites, and bto the judge there in those days, and inquire ofthem;cthey shall pronounce upon you the sentence of judgment.
10 You shall do according to the sentence which they pronounce upon you in that place which the Lord chooses. And you shall be careful to do according to all that they order you.
11 According to the sentence of the law in which they instruct you, according to the judgment which they tell you, you shall do; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left from the sentence which they pronounce upon you.
12 Now athe man who acts presumptuously and will not heed the priest who stands to minister there before the Lord your God, or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall put away the evil from Israel.
13aAnd all the people shall hear and fear, and no longer act presumptuously.
Principles Governing Kings
14 “When you come to the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, a‘I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’
If there be found among you . . . man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness—The grand object contemplated in choosing Israel was to preserve the knowledge and worship of the one true God; and hence idolatry of any kind, whether of the heavenly bodies or in some grosser form, is called "a transgression of His covenant." No rank or sex could palliate this crime. Every reported case, even a flying rumor of the perpetration of so heinous an offense, was to be judicially examined; and if proved by the testimony of competent witnesses, the offender was to be taken without the gates and stoned to death, the witnesses casting the first stone at him. The object of this special arrangement was partly to deter the witnesses from making a rash accusation by the prominent part they had to act as executioners, and partly to give a public assurance that the crime had met its due punishment.
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Deuteronomy 17:6:
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