Study Desk

If you are not able to give a decision as to who is responsible for a death, or who is right in a cause, or who gave the first blow in a fight, and there is a division of opinion about it in your town: then go to the place marked out by the Lord your God;

And any man who, in his pride, will not give ear to the priest whose place is there before the Lord your God, or to the judge, is to be put to death: you are to put away the evil from Israel.

When you have come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken it for a heritage and are living in it, if it is your desire to have a king over you, like the other nations round about you;

Then see that you take as your king the man named by the Lord your God: let your king be one of your countrymen, not a man of another nation who is not one of yourselves.

And it is to be with him for his reading all the days of his life, so that he may be trained in the fear of the Lord his God to keep and do all the words of this teaching and these laws:

For he, and his sons after him for ever, have been marked out by the Lord your God from all your tribes, to do the work of priests in the name of the Lord.

Then he will do the work of a priest in the name of the Lord his God, with all his brothers the Levites who are there before the Lord.

When you have come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, do not take as your example the disgusting ways of those nations.

For all who do such things are disgusting to the Lord; and because of these disgusting things the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

You are to be upright in heart before the Lord your God.

For these nations, whose land you are taking, give attention to readers of signs and to those using secret arts: but the Lord your God will not let you do so.

The Lord your God will give you a prophet from among your people, like me; you will give ear to him;

In answer to the request you made to the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the great meeting, when you said, Let not the voice of the Lord my God come to my ears again, and let me not see this great fire any more, or death will overtake me.

When the nations, whose land the Lord your God is giving you, have been cut off by him, and you have taken their place and are living in their towns and in their houses;

You are to have three towns marked out in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for your heritage.

You are to make ready a way, and see that the land which the Lord your God is giving you for your heritage, is marked out into three parts, to which any taker of life may go in flight.

And if the Lord your God makes wide the limits of your land, as he said in his oath to your fathers, and gives you all the land which he undertook to give to your fathers;

If you keep and do all these orders which I give you today, loving the Lord your God and walking ever in his ways; then let three more towns, in addition to these three, be marked out for you:

So that in all your land, which the Lord your God is giving you for your heritage, no man may be wrongly put to death, for which you will be responsible.

Your neighbour's landmark, which was put in its place by the men of old times, is not to be moved or taken away in the land of your heritage which the Lord your God is giving you.