The Wilderness Years

If a man is newly married, he must not be sent to war or be pressed into any duty. For one year he is free to stay at home and bring joy to the wife he has married.

Do not take a pair of millstones or even an upper millstone as security for a debt, because that would be taking one’s livelihood as security.

If a man is caught kidnapping one of his Israelite brothers, whether he treats him as a slave or sells him, the kidnapper must die. So you must purge the evil from among you.

In cases of infectious skin diseases, be careful to diligently follow everything the Levitical priests instruct you. Be careful to do as I have commanded them.

Remember what the LORD your God did to Miriam on the journey after you came out of Egypt.

When you lend anything to your neighbor, do not enter his house to collect security.

You are to stand outside while the man to whom you are lending brings the security out to you.

If he is a poor man, you must not go to sleep with the security in your possession;

be sure to return it to him by sunset, so that he may sleep in his own cloak and bless you, and this will be credited to you as righteousness before the LORD your God.

Do not oppress a hired hand who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother or a foreigner residing in one of your towns.

You are to pay his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and depends on them. Otherwise he may cry out to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.

Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.

Do not deny justice to the foreigner or the fatherless, and do not take a widow’s cloak as security.

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you from that place. Therefore I am commanding you to do this.

If you are harvesting in your field and forget a sheaf there, do not go back to get it. It is to be left for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

When you beat the olives from your trees, you must not go over the branches again. What remains will be for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow.

When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you must not go over the vines again. What remains will be for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow.

Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt. Therefore I am commanding you to do this.

If there is a dispute between men, they are to go to court to be judged, so that the innocent may be acquitted and the guilty condemned.

If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall have him lie down and be flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime warrants.

He may receive no more than forty lashes, lest your brother be beaten any more than that and be degraded in your sight.

Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.

When brothers dwell together and one of them dies without a son, the widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother is to take her as his wife and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law for her.

The first son she bears will carry on the name of the dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.

But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, she is to go to the elders at the city gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel. He is not willing to perform the duty of a brother-in-law for me.”