Deuteronomy 17

Modern English Version

17 You must not sacrifice to the Lord your God any bull or sheep that has a blemish or any defect, for that is detestable to the Lord your God.

² If there be found among you, within any of your gates which the Lord your God gives you, man or woman, who has acted wickedly in the sight of the Lord your God, by transgressing His covenant, ³ and has gone and served other gods and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded, ⁴ and if it is told to you, and you have heard of it, and investigated diligently, and it is true, and the matter is certain that such a detestable thing has happened in Israel, ⁵ then you must bring forth that man or that woman who has committed that wicked thing to your gates, that very man or woman, and stone them with stones until they die. ⁶ On the testimony of two or three witnesses he that is to die must be put to death, but on the testimony of one witness he cannot be put to death. ⁷ The hands of the witnesses shall be 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.

Courts of Law

⁸ If there arises a matter too difficult for you in judgment, between one kind of bloodshed and another, between one kind of lawsuit and another, and between one kind of assault and another, matters of controversy within your gates, then you must arise and go up to the place where the Lord your God shall choose. ⁹ You must go to the Levitical priests or to the judge in office those days, and inquire, and they will show you the verdict of judgment. ¹⁰ You shall do according to the verdict which they declare to you from the place where the Lord will choose to show you, and you must be careful to do all that they instruct you to do. ¹¹ You must do according to the terms of the law which they instruct you and according to the verdict which they tell you. You must not deviate from the sentence which they show you, to the right or to the left. ¹² The man who acts presumptuously and does not listen to the priest who stands to minister before the Lord your God, or to the judge—that man must die, and you must purge the evil from Israel. ¹³ Then all the people will hear, and fear, and not act presumptuously again.

Appointing a King

¹⁴ When you have come into the land which the Lord your God gives you and possess it and dwell there and then say, “I will set a king over me just like all the nations that are around me,” ¹⁵ you must set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. You must select a king over you who is from among your brothers. You may not select a foreigner over you who is not your countryman. ¹⁶ What is more, he shall not accumulate horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order that he accumulate horses, for as the Lord has said to you, “You must not go back that way ever again.” ¹⁷ He shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he acquire for himself excess silver and gold.

¹⁸ It must be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write a copy of this law for himself on a scroll before the priests, the Levites. ¹⁹ It must be with him, and he must read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, and carefully observe all the words of this law and these statutes, and do them, ²⁰ that his heart will not be lifted up above his brothers and so that he may not turn aside from the commandment, to the right or to the left, to the end, so that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the midst of Israel.