# Deuteronomy 21

> Lumin Translation

Source: https://www.lumin.faith/read/deuteronomy/21

Lumin’s own translation, drafted with AI from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, checked verse by verse against them, and approved by Lumin. Brackets mark verses not found in the earliest manuscripts.

How it was made: https://www.lumin.faith/lumin-translation.md

1. If someone is found slain, lying in the open country in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him,
2. your elders and your judges are to go out and measure the distance to the cities around the body.
3. The elders of the city nearest the body are to take a heifer from the herd that has never been worked and has never pulled in a yoke.
4. The elders of that city are to bring the heifer down to a valley with a flowing stream, where the land is not plowed or sown, and there in the valley they are to break the heifer’s neck.
5. Then the priests, the sons of Levi, are to come forward, for Yahweh your God has chosen them to serve him and to bless in the name of Yahweh, and by their word every dispute and every case of assault is to be settled.
6. All the elders of the city nearest the body are to wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley,
7. and they are to declare, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see it.
8. Yahweh, make atonement for your people Israel, whom you redeemed, and do not let the guilt of innocent blood remain among your people Israel.’ Then the bloodshed will be atoned for them.
9. So you will purge the guilt of innocent blood from among you, for you will be doing what is right in the eyes of Yahweh.
10. When you go out to war against your enemies, and Yahweh your God hands them over to you and you take them captive,
11. if you see among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife.
12. Bring her into your home, and she is to shave her head and trim her nails.
13. She is to take off the clothes she wore as a captive, live in your house, and mourn for her father and mother a full month. After that you may go to her and be her husband, and she will be your wife.
14. If you are no longer pleased with her, you must let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her for money or treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.
15. If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, and the firstborn son belongs to the unloved wife,
16. then on the day he gives his property to his sons as an inheritance, he may not treat the son of the loved wife as the firstborn in place of the son of the unloved wife, who is the firstborn.
17. Instead, he must acknowledge the son of the unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of everything he has. For he is the first sign of his father’s strength; the right of the firstborn belongs to him.
18. If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father or his mother, and who will not listen to them even when they discipline him,
19. his father and mother are to take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town, at the gate of the place where he lives.
20. They are to say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’
21. Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
22. If a man has committed a sin that deserves the death penalty and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,
23. his body must not remain on the tree overnight. You must bury him that same day, for anyone who is hanged is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance.

## Nearby chapters

[Deuteronomy 20](https://www.lumin.faith/read/deuteronomy/20.md)
[Deuteronomy 22](https://www.lumin.faith/read/deuteronomy/22.md)

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