Unsolved Murders
Deuteronomy 21If someone is found slain in the land which YHWH your God gives you to possess, lying in the field, and it isn’t known who has struck him, then your elders and your judges are to come out and measure the distance from the body to the surrounding cities. Then the elders of the city closest to the body are to take a heifer of the herd that hasn’t been worked or drawn in the yoke. The elders of that city are to bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, that is neither plowed nor sown, and break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. Then the priests, the sons of Levi whom YHWH your God has chosen to minister to ʜɪᴍ, will come forward and to bless in the name of YHWH, and according to their ruling every controversy and every assault be decided. All the elders of that city closest to the body are to wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley. They will answer and say, “Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. YHWH, forgive your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and don’t allow innocent blood among your people Israel.” The bloodshed will be forgiven of them. In this manner you will purge the innocent blood from among you, when you do what is right in YHWH’s eyes.
Fair Treatment of Captive Women
When you go out to battle against your enemies, and YHWH your God delivers them into your hands and you carry them away captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you are attracted to her, and desire to take her as your wife, then you are to bring her home to your house. She must shave her head and trim her nails. She is to remove the clothing of her captivity, live in your house, and mourn her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and become her husband, and she will be your wife. If you have no delight in her, then you are let her go where she desires, but you must not sell-sell her for money or treat her as a slave, because you have humiliated her.
The Right of the Firstborn
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, then 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; but he must acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the hated, 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.
A Stubborn Son
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 though they chasten him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother are to take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city and to the gate of his place. They are to tell 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.” All the men of his city are to stone him to death with stones. In this way, you purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear and fear.
If someone has committed a sin worthy of death and is executed, and you hang them on a tree, the body must not remain all night on the tree, but you must bury-bury it the same day. For the one who is hanged is cursed by God. Do not defile your land that YHWH your God is giving you for an inheritance.