Deuteronomy 17

1You shall not sacrifice to Yahweh your God an ox or a sheep that has in it a blemish, any bad thing, for that is an abomination to Yahweh your God.

2If there is found among you, within one of your gates that Yahweh your God is giving you, a man or a woman who does what is evil in the eyes of Yahweh your God by transgressing his covenant,

3and goes and serves other gods and bows down to them, or to the sun or to the moon or to all the host of heaven, which I have not commanded,

4and it is reported to you, and you hear of it, and you investigate thoroughly, and behold, it is true and certain that this abomination has been done in Israel,

5then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who did this evil thing, that man or that woman, and you shall stone them with stones, and they shall die.

6On the testimony of two witnesses or three witnesses, the one to die shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness.

7The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

8If a matter for judgment is too difficult for you—between bloodshed and bloodshed, between one legal claim and another, and between one injury and another, matters of dispute within your gates—then you shall arise and go up to the place that Yahweh your God will choose.

9And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall inquire, and they shall declare to you the decision in the case.

10You shall act according to the word that they declare to you from that place which Yahweh will choose, and you shall be careful to do according to all that they instruct you.

11According to the instruction that they give you, and according to the judgment that they tell you, you shall do; you shall not turn aside from the word that they declare to you, to the right or to the left.

12But the man who acts presumptuously by not listening to the priest who stands there to minister before Yahweh your God, or to the judge—that man shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.

13And all the people shall hear and fear, and shall not act presumptuously again.

14When you come into the land that Yahweh your God is giving you, and you take possession of it and live in it, and you say, “I will set a king over myself, like all the nations that are around me,”

15You shall surely set over yourself a king whom Yahweh your God chooses. From among your brothers you shall set a king over yourself; you may not put over yourself a foreigner, one who is not your brother.

16Only, he must not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt in order to multiply horses, since Yahweh has said to you, ‘You must never return again by this way.’

17And he shall not multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; and he shall not greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.

18And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, from before the Levitical priests.

19And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear Yahweh his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them.

20so that his heart may 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, in order that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his sons, in the midst of Israel.