Deuteronomy 21:1-17 ▼

1 If one slain is found in the land that YHWH your God is giving you to possess, lying in the field, and it is not known who killed him,

2 then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure to the cities that are surrounding the slain one.

3 And it shall be that the city nearest to the slain man, the elders of that city will take a heifer of the herd, which has not been worked in it and which has not pulled with a yoke,

4 and the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer to an enduring valley, which neither is plowed nor sown, and they shall break the neck there of the heifer in the valley.

5 And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near; for YHWH your God has chosen them to serve and to bless in the name of YHWH, and by their mouth shall be settled every controversy and every assault.

6 And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain one shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley,

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

8 Receive atonement for Your people Israel, whom You have redeemed, O YHWH, and lay not innocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel.” And for the blood atonement shall be provided to them.

9 And you shall remove the innocent blood from among you when you do right in the eyes of YHWH.

10 When you go out to war against your enemies, and YHWH your God delivers them into your hand, and you have taken captive its captivity,

11 and you see among the captives a woman beautiful in appearance, and you have delighted in her and would take her as your wife,

12 you shall bring her into the midst of your household, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails,

13 and she shall remove the clothes of her captivity from her and remain in your house and mourn her father and her mother a full month. And after that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be to you wife.

14 And it shall be, if you have no delight in her, that you send her away at her desire. And surely you shall not sell her for silver, nor shall you treat her brutally, upon that you have humbled her.

15 If a man has two wives, one loved and one hated, and they have borne to him sons, the loved and the hated, and the firstborn son is to the hated one,

16 then it shall come to pass on the day he assigns his inheritance to his sons that are to him, that he must not bestow firstborn status on the son of the loved wife over the face of the son of the hated one, the firstborn.

17 But the firstborn son of the hated wife he shall acknowledge by giving him a double portion of all that is found to him, for he is the beginning of his strength; to him is the right of the firstborn.