Deuteronomy 21

But if a slain man is found in the land which the Lord your God gives you to inherit, fallen in the plain, and they do not know who struck him,

your council of elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities around the slain man.

And the city nearest to the slain man, the council of elders of that city shall take a heifer from the cattle which has not been worked and which has not drawn a yoke;

and the council of elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a rough valley which has not been worked nor sown, and they shall hamstring the heifer in the valley.

And the priests, the Levites, shall come forward, for the Lord your God chose them to stand before him and to bless in his name, and by their mouth shall be every dispute and every plague.

And all the council of elders of that city, those nearest to the slain man, shall wash their hands over the head of the heifer that was hamstrung in the valley,

and they shall answer and say: Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes have not seen it.

Be merciful to your people Israel, whom you redeemed, O Lord, out of the land of Egypt, that innocent blood may not be among your people Israel; and the blood shall be atoned for them.

And you shall remove the innocent blood from among your own selves, if you do what is good and pleasing before the Lord your God.

But when you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands, and you plunder their plunder,

and you see among the plunder a woman beautiful in appearance and you desire her and take her for yourself as a wife,

then you shall bring her inside into your house, and you shall shave her head and trim her nails.

And you shall remove from her the garments of her captivity, and she shall dwell in your house and shall mourn her father and mother for a month of days; and after that you shall go in to her and live together with her, and she shall be your wife.

And it shall be, if you do not want her, you shall send her away free, and she shall not at all be sold for silver; you shall not deal treacherously with her, because you have humiliated her.

But if a man has two wives, one of them loved and one of them hated, and both the loved and the hated bear him children, and the firstborn son is the son of the hated one,

then on the day when he apportions his possessions as an inheritance to his sons, he shall not be able to give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the loved one, passing over the firstborn son of the hated one.

But he shall acknowledge the firstborn son of the hated one, to give him a double portion of all that is found belonging to him, because this one is the beginning of his children, and to him belong the rights of the firstborn.

But if someone has a son who is disobedient and contentious, not obeying the voice of his father and the voice of his mother, and they discipline him and he does not listen to them,

then his father and his mother shall seize him and bring him out to the council of elders of his city and to the gate of his place,

and they shall say to the men of their city: This son of ours is disobedient and contentious, he does not obey our voice, he squanders in feasting and is a drunkard.

And the men of his city shall stone him with stones, and he shall die; and you shall remove the evil one from among your own selves, and the rest shall hear and be afraid.

If there is in someone a sin deserving a judgment of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,

his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on that same day, because everyone hanged on a tree is cursed by God; and you shall not defile the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.