17 You shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or sheep with a blemish or any defect whatsoever, for that is an abomination to the Lord your God.
2 If there is found among you within any of your towns which the Lord your God gives you a man or woman who does what is wicked in the sight of the Lord your God by transgressing His covenant,
3 Who has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or moon or any of the host of the heavens, which I have forbidden,
4 And it is told and you hear of it, then inquire diligently. And if it is certainly true that such an abomination has been committed in Israel,
5 Then you shall bring forth to your town’s gates that man or woman who has done that wicked thing and you shall stone that man or woman to death.
6 On the evidence of two or three witnesses he who is worthy of death shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness.
7 The hands of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from among you.
8 If there arises a matter too hard for you in judgment—between one kind of bloodshed and another, between one legality and another, between one kind of assault and another, matters of controversy within your towns—then arise and go to the place which the Lord your God chooses.
9 And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall consult them and they shall make clear to you the decision.
10 And you shall do according to the decision which they declare to you from that place which the Lord chooses; and you shall be watchful to do according to all that they tell you;
11 According to the decision of the law which they shall teach you and the judgment which they shall announce to you, you shall do; you shall not turn aside from the verdict they give you, [a]either to the right hand or the left.
12 The man who does presumptuously and will not listen to the priest who stands to minister there before the Lord your God or to the judge, that man shall die; so you shall purge the evil from Israel.
13 And all the people shall hear and [reverently] fear, and not act presumptuously again.
14 When you come to the land which the Lord your God gives you and you possess it and live there, and then say, We will set a king over us like all the nations that are about us,
15 You shall surely set as king over you him whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner, who is not your brother, over you.
16 But he shall not multiply horses to himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to multiply horses, since the Lord said to you, You shall never return that way.
17 And he shall not multiply wives to himself, that his [mind and] heart turn not away; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.
18 And when he sits on his royal throne, he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, out of what is before the Levitical priests.
19 And he shall keep it with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn [reverently] to fear the Lord his God, by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them,
20 That his [mind and] heart may not be lifted up above his brethren and that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left; so that he may continue long, he and his sons, in his kingdom in Israel.
Footnotes
- Deuteronomy 17:11 The Hebrew is obscure.