Unsolved murder
21
📚If someone is found slain in the land which the LORD your God gives you to possess, lying in the field, and it is not known who has killed him, 2 📚then your elders and your judges must come out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the one who has been slain. 3 📚And it must be done like this: the elders of that city which is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer which has not been put to work and which has not pulled in the yoke, 4 📚and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with flowing water, which has not been plowed or sown, and break the heifer’s neck there in the valley; 21:4 The heifer which had done no wrong died to remove the guilt and cleanse the land (compare 1 Pet 3:18).⚜
5 📚and the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to serve him and to bless in the name of the LORD, and by their word every controversy and every act of violence must be settled. 6 📚And all the elders of that city which is nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer that has its neck broken in the valley, 7 📚and they shall respond and say, “Our hands have not shed this blood, and our eyes have not seen it done. 8 📚Be merciful, O LORD, to your people Israel whom you have redeemed, and do not put innocent blood to the account of your people Israel”. And the bloodshed will be forgiven them. 9 📚In this way you must purge the guilt of innocent blood from among you, by doing what is right in the sight of the LORD.
Captive women
10 📚When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God has given them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, 11 📚and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, to take her as your wife, 12 📚then you may bring her home to your house; and she must shave her head, and trim her nails, 13 📚and take off the clothes of her captivity, and remain in your house, mourning for her father and her mother for a full month. And after that you shall go in to her, and be her husband; and she shall be your wife. 14 📚And if it happens that you are not pleased with her, then you may let her go wherever she wishes. But you must not at all sell her for money, because you have humbled her; you must not make merchandise of her.
21:10-14 Even a woman captured from an enemy people must be treated with kindness and respect.⚜
Rights of the firstborn
15 📚If a man has two wives, one loved and the other hated, and both of them, the loved and the hated, have borne him children, and if the firstborn son belongs to the one who is hated, 16 📚then, when it comes about that he causes his sons to inherit what he has, he must not make the son of the loved one the firstborn ahead of the son of the hated one who is, in fact, the firstborn. 17 📚But he must acknowledge the son of the hated one as the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he has. For he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.
Punishment for a rebellious son
18 📚If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and who will not listen to them even after they have punished him, 19 📚then his father and his mother shall seize him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of his place, 20 📚and they shall say to the elders of his city, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton, and a drunkard”. 21 📚And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, so that he dies 📖. In this way you must purge evil from among you; and all Israel will hear and be afraid.
Various rules and laws
22 📚And if a man has committed a sin deserving death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 📚his body must not remain all night on the tree, but you must bury him that day (for a hanged person is accursed by God), so that your land, which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, does not become defiled.