The Bible

Deuteronomy Chapter 17

¹Don't sacrifice to Yahweh your God an ox or a sheep which has a defect [or] anything evil; for that is an abomination to Yahweh your God.

²If there is found among you, within any of your gates which Yahweh your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in Yahweh your God's sight in transgressing his covenant, ³and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun, or the moon, or any of the army of the sky, which I have not commanded, ⁴and you are told, and you have heard of it, then you are to diligently inquire [into it]. Look, if it is true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is [indeed] done in Israel, ⁵then bring out that man or woman who has done this evil thing to your gates, that same man or woman; and you are to stone them to death with stones. ⁶[Only] at the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, is the one who is to die to be put to death. At the mouth of [only] one witness they must not be put to death. ⁷The witnesses' hands are to be first to put to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So you will remove the evil from among you.

⁸If a matter arises too hard for you to judge. Between blood and blood, between plea and plea, or between stroke and stroke. Matters of controversy within your gates, then arise, and go up to the place which Yahweh your God chooses. ⁹Come to the priests who are Levites or to the judge [in office] at that time. Inquire, and they will give you the verdict. ¹⁰Do all the actions of the verdict which they tell you from that place which Yahweh chooses. Be careful to do everything that they teach you. ¹¹You are to do everything just as the decisions of the law which they teach you, and the judgment which they tell you. Don't turn away from the sentence which they announce to you, neither to the right or to the left. ¹²The man who acts presumptuously, in not listening to the priest who stands to minister there before Yahweh your God or to the judge, that man is to die. Purge the evil from Israel. ¹³All the people must hear and fear, and not act presumptuously again.

¹⁴When you've come to the land which Yahweh your God is giving you, and possess it and live in it, and say, "I will appoint a king over me, like all the nations that are around me," ¹⁵surely set a king over yourselves whom Yahweh your God has chosen. Set one from among your brothers as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. ¹⁶Only he mustn't multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, in order to multiply horses; because Yahweh has said to you, "Don't go back that way again." ¹⁷He must'nt multiply wives for himself, or else his heart would turn away. He must'nt greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.

¹⁸When it comes about that he sits on the throne of his kingdom he is to write a copy of this law in a book, from [what is] before the priests, the Levites. ¹⁹It is to be with him, and he will read [from] it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear Yahweh his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them; ²⁰that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he not turn away from the commandment to the right hand, or to the left, to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, among Israel.