Bible Verses About Government

your elders and judges must come out and measure the distance from the victim to the neighboring cities.

Then the elders of the city nearest the victim shall take a heifer that has never been yoked or used for work,

bring the heifer to a valley with running water that has not been plowed or sown, and break its neck there by the stream.

And the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to serve Him and pronounce blessings in His name and to give a ruling in every dispute and case of assault.

Then all the elders of the city nearest the victim shall wash their hands by the stream over the heifer whose neck has been broken,

and they shall declare, “Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it.

Accept this atonement, O LORD, for Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, and do not hold the shedding of innocent blood against them.” And the bloodshed will be atoned for.

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and does not listen to them when disciplined,

his father and mother are to lay hold of him and bring him to the elders of his city, to the gate of his hometown,

and say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he does not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.”

Then all the men of his city will stone him to death. So you must purge the evil from among you, and all Israel will hear and be afraid.

Suppose a man marries a woman, has relations with her, and comes to hate her,

and he then accuses her of shameful conduct and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman and had relations with her, but I discovered she was not a virgin.”

Then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring the proof of her virginity to the city elders at the gate

and say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he has come to hate her.

And now he has accused her of shameful conduct, saying, ‘I discovered that your daughter was not a virgin.’ But here is the proof of her virginity.” And they shall spread out the cloth before the city elders.

Then the elders of that city shall take the man and punish him.

They are also to fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given a virgin of Israel a bad name. And she shall remain his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.

If, however, this accusation is true, and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found,

she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house, and there the men of her city will stone her to death. For she has committed an outrage in Israel by being promiscuous in her father’s house. So you must purge the evil from among you.

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.”

Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak with him. If he persists and says, “I do not want to marry her,”

his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal, spit in his face, and declare, “This is what is done to the man who will not maintain his brother’s line.”

There he captured a young man of Succoth and interrogated him. The young man wrote down for him the names of the seventy-seven leaders and elders of Succoth.

And Gideon went to the men of Succoth and said, “Here are Zebah and Zalmunna, about whom you taunted me, saying, ‘Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna already in your possession, that we should give bread to your weary men?’”