The In-Dept Study of the Bible
Deuteronomy 17
1 You shall not sacrifice to Yahweh your
God an ox or a sheep in which is a defect or
anything evil; for that is an abomination to
Yahweh your God.
2 If there is found among you, within
any of your gates which Yahweh your God
gives you, a man or woman who does that
which is evil in Yahweh your God’s sight in
transgressing his covenant,
3 and has gone and served other gods
and worshiped them, or the sun, or the
moon, or any of the stars of the sky, which
I have not commanded,
4 and you are told, and you have heard
of it, then you shall inquire diligently. Behold, if it is true, and the thing certain, that
such abomination is done in Israel,
5 then you shall bring out that man or
that woman who has done this evilthing to
your gates, even that same man or woman;
and you shall stone them to death with
stones.
6 At the mouth of two witnesses, or three
witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to
death. Atthe mouth of one witness he shall
not be put to death.
7 The hands ofthe witnesses shall be first
on him to put him to death, and afterward
the hands of all the people. So you shall
remove the evil from among you.
8 If there arises a matter too hard for you
in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke
and stroke, being matters of controversy
within your gates,then you shall arise, and
go up to the place which Yahweh your God
chooses.
9 You shall come to the priests who are
Levites and to the judge who shall be in
those days. You shall inquire, and they
shall give you the verdict.
10 You shall do according to the decisions
of the verdict which they shall give you
from that place which Yahweh chooses.
Youshall observe todo according to allthat
they shall teach you.
11 According to the decisions of the law
which they shall teach you, and according
to the judgment which they shall tell you,
you shall do. You shall not turn away from
the sentence which they announce to you,
to the right hand, nor to the left.
12 The man who does presumptuously in
not listening to the priest who stands to
minister there before Yahwehyour God, or
to the judge, even that man shall die. You
shall put away the evil from Israel.
13 All the people shall hear and fear, and
do no more presumptuously.
14 When you have come to the land
which Yahweh your God gives you, and
possess it and dwell in it, and say, “I will set
a king over me, like all the nations that are
around me,”
15 you shall surely set him whom Yahweh your God chooses as king over yourselves. You shall set as king over you one
from among your brothers. You may not
put a foreigner over you, who is not your
brother.
16 Only he shall not multiply horses to
himself, nor cause the people to return
to Egypt, to the end that he may multiply
horses; because Yahweh has said to you,
“You shall not go back that way again.”
17 He shall not multiply wives to himself,
that his heart not turn away. He shall not
greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.
18 It shall be, when he sits on the throne
of his kingdom, that he shall write himself a copy of this law in a book, out of that
which is before the Levitical priests.
19 It shall be with him, and he shall 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;
20 that 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,
in the middle of Israel.