1. If someone is found slain in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess, lying in the field, and it isn’t known who has struck him;
2. then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure to the cities which are around him who is slain.
3. It shall be that the elders of the city which is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer of the herd, which hasn’t been worked with, and which has not drawn in the yoke.
4. The elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither ploughed nor sown, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley.
5. The priests the sons of Levi shall come near; for them the Lord your God has chosen to minister to him, and to bless in the Lord’s name; and according to their word shall every controversy and every assault be decided.
6. All the elders of that city, who are nearest to the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley.
7. They shall answer and say, “Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.
8. Forgive, the Lord, your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and don’t allow innocent blood amongst your people Israel.” The blood shall be forgiven them.
9. So you shall put away the innocent blood from amongst you, when you shall do that which is right in the Lord’s eyes.
10. When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands, and you carry them away captive,
11. and see amongst the captives a beautiful woman, and you have a desire to her, and desire to take her as your wife;
12. then you shall bring her home to your house. She shall shave her head and trim her nails.
13. She shall take off the clothing of her captivity, and shall remain in your house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month. After that you shall go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
14. It shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall let her go where she desires; but you shall not sell her at all for money. You shall not deal with her as a slave, because you have humbled her.
15. If a man has two wives, the one beloved, and the other hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son is hers who was hated;
16. then it shall be, in the day that he causes his sons to inherit that which he has, that he may not give the son of the beloved the rights of the firstborn before the son of the hated, who is the firstborn;