10 When you wage war against your enemies and the Lord hands them over to you and you take prisoners, 11 if you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you fall in love with her and take her as your wife, 12 bringing her into your home, she must shave her head, cut her nails, 13 remove her prisoner’s clothing, and live in your house, mourning her father and her mother for one month. After that, you may consummate the marriage. You will be her husband, and she will be your wife. 14 But if you aren’t pleased with her, you must send her away as she wishes. You are not allowed to sell her for money or treat her as a slave because you have humiliated her.
15 Now suppose a man has two wives—one of them loved and the other unloved. Both wives bear children, but the oldest male is the unloved wife’s child. 16 On the day when the man decides what will go to each of his children as an inheritance, he isn’t allowed to treat his loved wife’s son as the oldest male rather than his unloved wife’s son, who is the real oldest male. 17 Instead, he must acknowledge the unloved wife’s son as the oldest male, giving to him two-thirds of everything that he owns, because that son is the earliest produce of his physical power. The oldest male’s rights belong to that son.
18 Now if someone has a consistently stubborn and rebellious child, who refuses to listen to their father and mother—even when the parents discipline him, he won’t listen to them— 19 the father and mother will take the son before the elders of that city at its gates. 20 Then they will inform the city’s elders: “This son of ours is consistently stubborn and rebellious, refusing to listen to us. What’s more, he’s wild and a drunkard.”
21 Then all the people of that town will stone him until he dies.
Remove such evil from your community! All Israel will hear about this and be afraid.
22 Now if someone is guilty of a capital crime, and they are executed, and you then hang them on a tree, 23 you must not leave the body hanging on the tree but must bury it the same day because God’s curse is on those who are hanged. Furthermore, you must not pollute the ground that the Lord your God is giving to you as an inheritance.
1 Don’t just watch your fellow Israelite’s ox or sheep wandering around and do nothing about it. You must return the animal to its owner. 2 If the owner doesn’t live nearby, or you don’t know who owns the animal, then you must take care of it. It should stay with you until your fellow Israelite comes looking for it, at which point you must return it to him.
3 Do the same thing in the case of a donkey. Do the same thing in the case of a piece of clothing. Do the same thing in the case of anything that your fellow Israelite loses and you end up finding. You are not allowed to sit back and do nothing about it.
4 Don’t just watch your fellow Israelite’s donkey or ox fall down in the road and do nothing about it. You must help your fellow Israelite get the animal up again.
5 Women must not wear men’s clothes, and men must not wear women’s clothes. Everyone who does such things is detestable to the Lord your God.
6 If you come across a bird’s nest along your way, whether in a tree or on the ground, with baby birds or eggs, and the mother is sitting on the baby birds or eggs, do not remove the mother from her young. 7 You must let the mother go, though you may take the young for yourself so that things go well for you and so you can prolong your life.
8 Whenever you build a new house, you must build a railing for the roof so that you don’t end up with innocent blood on your hands because someone fell off of it.
9 Don’t plant your vineyards with two types of seed; otherwise, the entire crop that you have planted and the produce of the vineyard will be unusable.
10 Don’t plow with an ox and a donkey together.
11 Don’t wear clothes that mix wool and linen together.
12 Make tassels for the four corners of the coat you wear.
13 Suppose a man gets married and consummates the marriage but subsequently despises his wife. 14 He then spreads false claims about her to the point that she has a bad reputation, because he said such things as, “I married this woman, but when I went to have sex with her, I couldn’t find any proof that she was a virgin.”
15 At that point, the young woman’s father and mother will bring proof of her virginity to the city’s elders at the city gate. 16 The young woman’s father will say to the elders: “I gave my daughter to this man to be his wife, but he doesn’t like her anymore. 17 That’s why he has spread false claims about her, saying, ‘I couldn’t find any proof that your daughter was a virgin.’ But look! Here’s proof of my daughter’s virginity.” At that point they will spread out the blanket in front of the city’s elders. 18 The city’s elders must then take that husband and punish him. 19 They will fine him one hundred silver shekels, giving that to the young woman’s father, because that husband gave one of Israel’s virgin daughters a bad reputation. Moreover, she must remain his wife; he is never allowed to divorce her.
20 However, if the claim is true and proof of the young woman’s virginity can’t be produced, 21 then the city’s elders will bring the young woman to the door of her father’s house. The citizens of that city must stone her until she dies because she acted so sinfully in Israel by having extramarital sex while still in her father’s house.
Remove such evil from your community!
22 If a man is found having sex with a woman who is married to someone else, both of them must die—the man who was having sex with the woman and the woman herself.
Remove such evil from Israel!
23 If a young woman who is a virgin is engaged to one man and another man meets up with her in a town and has sex with her, 24 you must bring both of them to the city gates there and stone them until they die—the young woman because she didn’t call for help in the city, and the man because of the fact that he humiliated his neighbor’s wife.
Remove such evil from your community!
25 But if the man met up with the engaged woman in a field, grabbing her and having sex with her there, only the man will die. 26 Don’t do anything whatsoever to the young woman. She hasn’t committed any capital crime—rather, this situation is exactly like the one where someone attacks his neighbor and kills him. 27 Since the man met up with her in a field, the engaged woman may well have called out for help, but there was no one to rescue her.
28 If a man meets up with a young woman who is a virgin and not engaged, grabs her and has sex with her, and they are caught in the act, 29 the man who had sex with her must give fifty silver shekels to the young woman’s father. She will also become his wife because he has humiliated her. He is never allowed to divorce her.
30 A man cannot marry his father’s former wife so that his father’s private matters are not exposed.
1 No man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off can belong to the Lord’s assembly. 2 No one born of an illegitimate marriage can belong to the Lord’s assembly either. Not even the tenth generation of such children can belong to the Lord’s assembly. 3 Ammonites and Moabites can’t belong to the Lord’s assembly. Not even the tenth generation of such people can belong to the Lord’s assembly, as a rule, 4 because they didn’t help you with food or water on your journey out of Egypt, and because they hired Balaam, Beor’s son, from Pethor of Mesopotamia to curse you. 5 But the Lord your God wasn’t interested in listening to Balaam. The Lord your God turned that curse into a blessing because the Lord your God loves you. 6 So don’t be concerned with their health and well-being as long as you live.
7 Don’t detest Edomites, because they are your relatives. Don’t detest Egyptians because you were immigrants in their land. 8 Children born to them are permitted to belong to theLord’s assembly starting with the third generation.
9 When you are camped in battle against your enemies, guard yourself from every possible evil. 10 If an individual in the camp becomes polluted due to a nighttime emission, he must exit the camp area and not reenter. 11 When the next evening arrives, he must wash with water; and when the sun sets, he can come back to the camp.
12 The latrines must be outside the camp. You will use them there, outside the camp.13 Carry a shovel with the rest of your gear; once you have relieved yourself, use it to dig a hole, then refill it, covering your excrement.
14 Do these things because the Lord your God travels with you, right in the middle of your camp, ready to save you and to hand your enemies over to you. For this reason your camp must be holy. The Lord must not see anything indecent among you, or he will turn away from you.
15 Don’t return slaves to owners if they’ve escaped and come to you. 16 They can stay with you: in your own community or in any place they select from one of your cities, whatever seems good to them. Don’t oppress them.
17 No Israelite daughter is allowed to be a consecrated worker. Neither is any Israelite son allowed to be a consecrated worker. 18 Don’t bring a female prostitute’s fee or a male prostitute’s payment to the Lord your God’s temple to pay a solemn promise because both of these things are detestable to the Lord your God.
19 Don’t charge your fellow Israelites interest—whether on money, provisions, or anything one might loan. 20 You can charge foreigners interest, but not your fellow Israelite. Do this so that the Lord your God blesses you in all your work on the land you are entering to possess.
21 When you make a promise to the Lord your God, don’t put off making good on it, because the Lord your God will certainly be expecting it from you; delaying would make you guilty. 22 Now if you simply don’t make any promises, you won’t be guilty of anything.23 But whatever you say, you should be sure to make good on, exactly according to the promise you freely made to the Lord your God because you promised it with your own mouth.
24 If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you can eat as many grapes as you like, until full, but don’t carry any away in a basket. 25 If you go into your neighbor’s grain field, you can pluck ears by hand, but you aren’t allowed to cut off any of your neighbor’s grain with a sickle.
1 Let’s say a man marries a woman, but she isn’t pleasing to him because he’s discovered something inappropriate about her. So he writes up divorce papers, hands them to her, and sends her out of his house. 2 She leaves his house and ends up marrying someone else. 3 But this new husband also dislikes her, writes up divorce papers, hands them to her, and sends her out of his house (or suppose the second husband dies). 4 In this case, the first husband who originally divorced this woman is not allowed to take her back and marry her again after she has been polluted in this way because the Lord detests that. Don’t pollute the land the Lord your God is giving to you as an inheritance.
5 A newly married man doesn’t have to march in battle. Neither should any related duties be placed on him. He is to live free of such responsibilities for one year, so he can bring joy to his new wife.
6 Millstones or even just the upper millstone must not be pawned, because that would be pawning someone’s livelihood.
7 If someone is caught kidnapping their fellow Israelites, intending to enslave the Israelite or sell them, that kidnapper must die. Remove such evil from your community!
8 Be on guard against outbreaks of skin disease by being very careful about what you do. You must carefully do everything the levitical priests teach you, just as I have commanded them. 9 Remember, after all, what the Lord your God did to Miriam on your departure from Egypt!
10 When you make any type of loan to your neighbor, don’t enter their house to receive the collateral. 11 You must wait outside. The person to whom you are lending will bring the collateral to you out there. 12 Moreover, if the person is poor, you are not allowed to sleep in their pawned coat. 13 Instead, be certain to give the pawned coat back by sunset so they can sleep in their own coat. They will bless you, and you will be considered righteous before the Lord your God.
14 Don’t take advantage of poor or needy workers, whether they are fellow Israelites or immigrants who live in your land or your cities. 15 Pay them their salary the same day, before the sun sets, because they are poor, and their very life depends on that pay, and so they don’t cry out against you to the Lord. That would make you guilty.
16 Parents shouldn’t be executed because of what their children have done; neither should children be executed because of what their parents have done. Each person should be executed for their own guilty acts.
17 Don’t obstruct the legal rights of an immigrant or orphan. Don’t take a widow’s coat as pledge for a loan. 18 Remember how you were a slave in Egypt but how the Lord your God saved you from that. That’s why I’m commanding you to do this thing.
19 Whenever you are reaping the harvest of your field and you leave some grain in the field, don’t go back and get it. Let it go to the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows so that the Lord your God blesses you in all that you do. 20 Similarly, when you beat the olives off your olive trees, don’t go back over them twice. Let the leftovers go to the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows. 21 Again, when you pick the grapes of your vineyard, don’t pick them over twice. Let the leftovers go to the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows. 22 Remember how you were a slave in Egypt. That’s why I am commanding you to do this thing.
1 Now two people have a disagreement and they enter into litigation and their case is decided, with the judges declaring one person legally right and the other legally liable. 2 If the guilty party is to be beaten, the presiding judge will have that person lie down and be punished in his presence—the number of blows in measure with the guilt determined.3 Give no more than forty blows. If more than that is given, your fellow Israelite would be completely disgraced in your eyes.
4 Don’t muzzle an ox while it is threshing grain.
5 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not go outside the family and marry a stranger. Instead, her brother-in-law should go to her and take her as his wife. He will then consummate the marriage according to the brother-in-law’s duty. 6 The brother-in-law will name the oldest male son that she bears after his dead brother so that his brother’s legacy will not be forgotten in Israel. 7 If the brother does not want to marry his sister-in-law, she can go to the elders at the city gate, informing them: “My brother-in-law refuses to continue his brother’s legacy in Israel. He’s not willing to perform the brother-in-law’s duty with me.” 8 The city’s elders will summon him and talk to him about this. If he doesn’t budge, insisting, “I don’t want to marry her,”9 then the sister-in-law will approach him while the elders watch. She will pull the sandal off his foot and spit in his face. Then she will exclaim: “That’s what’s done to any man who won’t build up his own brother’s family!” 10 Subsequently, that man’s family will be known throughout Israel as “the house of the removed sandal.”
11 If two men are fighting with each other—a man and his fellow Israelite—and the wife of one of them gets into the fight, trying to save her husband from his attacker and does so by reaching out and grabbing his genitals, 12 you must cut off her hand. Show no mercy.
13 Don’t have two different types of money weights in your bag, a heavy one and a light one. 14 Don’t have two different types of ephahs in your house, a large one and a small one. 15 Instead, you must have only one weight, complete and correct, and only one ephah, also complete and correct, so that your life might be long in the fertile land the Lord your God is giving you. 16 What’s more, all who do such things, all who do business dishonestly, are detestable to the Lord your God. 17 Remember, after all, what Amalek did to you on your departure from Egypt: 18 how he met up with you on the way, striking from behind those who were lagging back because you were weak and tired, and because he didn’t fear God. 19 So once the Lord your God gives you relief from all the enemies that surround you in the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you must wipe out Amalek’s memory from under the heavens. Don’t forget this!
Scripture taken from the Common English Bible®, CEB® Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Common English Bible.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. The "CEB" and "Common English Bible" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Common English Bible. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Common English Bible.