¹“If anyone is found slain, lying in the field in the land which the Lᴏʀᴅ your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him, ²then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the slain man to the surrounding cities. ³And it shall be that the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a heifer which has not been worked and which has not pulled with a yoke. ⁴The elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with flowing water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and they shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. ⁵Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the Lᴏʀᴅ your God has chosen them to minister to Him and to bless in the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ; by their word every controversy and every assault shall be settled. ⁶And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley. ⁷Then they shall answer and say, ‘Our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it. ⁸Provide atonement, O Lᴏʀᴅ, for Your people Israel, whom You have redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood to the charge of Your people Israel.’ And atonement shall be provided on their behalf for the blood. ⁹So you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you when you do what is right in the sight of the Lᴏʀᴅ. ¹⁰“When you go out to war against your enemies, and the Lᴏʀᴅ your God delivers them into your hand, and you take them captive, ¹¹and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her and would take her for your wife, ¹²then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. ¹³She shall put off the clothes of her captivity, remain in your house, and mourn her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. ¹⁴And it shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall set her free, but you certainly shall not sell her for money; you shall not treat her brutally, because you have humbled her. ¹⁵“If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the unloved, and if the firstborn son is of her who is unloved, ¹⁶then it shall be, on the day he bequeaths his possessions to his sons, that he must not bestow firstborn status on the son of the loved wife in preference to the son of the unloved, the true firstborn. ¹⁷But he shall acknowledge the son of the unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his. ¹⁸“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not heed them, ¹⁹then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his city. ²⁰And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ ²¹Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall put away the evil from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear. ²²“If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, ²³his body shall not remain overnight on the tree, but you shall surely bury him that day, so that you do not defile the land which the Lᴏʀᴅ your God is giving you as an inheritance; for he who is hanged is accursed of God.

¹A Song. A Psalm of David. O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory. ²Awake, lute and harp! I will awaken the dawn. ³I will praise You, O Lᴏʀᴅ, among the peoples, And I will sing praises to You among the nations. ⁴For Your mercy is great above the heavens, And Your truth reaches to the clouds. ⁵Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, And Your glory above all the earth; ⁶That Your beloved may be delivered, Save with Your right hand, and hear me. ⁷God has spoken in His holiness: “I will rejoice; I will divide Shechem And measure out the Valley of Succoth. ⁸Gilead is Mine; Manasseh is Mine; Ephraim also is the helmet for My head; Judah is My lawgiver. ⁹Moab is My washpot; Over Edom I will cast My shoe; Over Philistia I will triumph.” ¹⁰Who will bring me into the strong city? Who will lead me to Edom? ¹¹Is it not You, O God, who cast us off? And You, O God, who did not go out with our armies? ¹²Give us help from trouble, For the help of man is useless. ¹³Through God we will do valiantly, For it is He who shall tread down our enemies.

¹To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. Do not keep silent, O God of my praise! ²For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful Have opened against me; They have spoken against me with a lying tongue. ³They have also surrounded me with words of hatred, And fought against me without a cause. ⁴In return for my love they are my accusers, But I give myself to prayer. ⁵Thus they have rewarded me evil for good, And hatred for my love. ⁶Set a wicked man over him, And let an accuser stand at his right hand. ⁷When he is judged, let him be found guilty, And let his prayer become sin. ⁸Let his days be few, And let another take his office. ⁹Let his children be fatherless, And his wife a widow. ¹⁰Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg; Let them seek their bread also from their desolate places. ¹¹Let the creditor seize all that he has, And let strangers plunder his labor. ¹²Let there be none to extend mercy to him, Nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children. ¹³Let his posterity be cut off, And in the generation following let their name be blotted out. ¹⁴Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lᴏʀᴅ, And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. ¹⁵Let them be continually before the Lᴏʀᴅ, That He may cut off the memory of them from the earth; ¹⁶Because he did not remember to show mercy, But persecuted the poor and needy man, That he might even slay the broken in heart. ¹⁷As he loved cursing, so let it come to him; As he did not delight in blessing, so let it be far from him. ¹⁸As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment, So let it enter his body like water, And like oil into his bones. ¹⁹Let it be to him like the garment which covers him, And for a belt with which he girds himself continually. ²⁰Let this be the Lᴏʀᴅ’s reward to my accusers, And to those who speak evil against my person. ²¹But You, O God the Lᴏʀᴅ, Deal with me for Your name’s sake; Because Your mercy is good, deliver me. ²²For I am poor and needy, And my heart is wounded within me. ²³I am gone like a shadow when it lengthens; I am shaken off like a locust. ²⁴My knees are weak through fasting, And my flesh is feeble from lack of fatness. ²⁵I also have become a reproach to them; When they look at me, they shake their heads. ²⁶Help me, O Lᴏʀᴅ my God! Oh, save me according to Your mercy, ²⁷That they may know that this is Your hand— That You, Lord, have done it! ²⁸Let them curse, but You bless; When they arise, let them be ashamed, But let Your servant rejoice. ²⁹Let my accusers be clothed with shame, And let them cover themselves with their own disgrace as with a mantle. ³⁰I will greatly praise the Lᴏʀᴅ with my mouth; Yes, I will praise Him among the multitude. ³¹For He shall stand at the right hand of the poor, To save him from those who condemn him.

¹“Hear this, O house of Jacob, Who are called by the name of Israel, And have come forth from the wellsprings of Judah; Who swear by the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ, And make mention of the God of Israel, But not in truth or in righteousness; ²For they call themselves after the holy city, And lean on the God of Israel; The Lᴏʀᴅ of hosts is His name: ³“I have declared the former things from the beginning; They went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear it. Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass. ⁴Because I knew that you were obstinate, And your neck was an iron sinew, And your brow bronze, ⁵Even from the beginning I have declared it to you; Before it came to pass I proclaimed it to you, Lest you should say, ‘My idol has done them, And my carved image and my molded image Have commanded them.’ ⁶“You have heard; See all this. And will you not declare it? I have made you hear new things from this time, Even hidden things, and you did not know them. ⁷They are created now and not from the beginning; And before this day you have not heard them, Lest you should say, ‘Of course I knew them.’ ⁸Surely you did not hear, Surely you did not know; Surely from long ago your ear was not opened. For I knew that you would deal very treacherously, And were called a transgressor from the womb. ⁹“For My name’s sake I will defer My anger, And for My praise I will restrain it from you, So that I do not cut you off. ¹⁰Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. ¹¹For My own sake, for My own sake, I will do it; For how should My name be profaned? And I will not give My glory to another. ¹²“Listen to Me, O Jacob, And Israel, My called: I am He, I am the First, I am also the Last. ¹³Indeed My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, And My right hand has stretched out the heavens; When I call to them, They stand up together. ¹⁴“All of you, assemble yourselves, and hear! Who among them has declared these things? The Lᴏʀᴅ loves him; He shall do His pleasure on Babylon, And His arm shall be against the Chaldeans. ¹⁵I, even I, have spoken; Yes, I have called him, I have brought him, and his way will prosper. ¹⁶“Come near to Me, hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; From the time that it was, I was there. And now the Lᴏʀᴅ God and His Spirit Have sent Me.” ¹⁷Thus says the Lᴏʀᴅ, your Redeemer, The Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lᴏʀᴅ your God, Who teaches you to profit, Who leads you by the way you should go. ¹⁸Oh, that you had heeded My commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, And your righteousness like the waves of the sea. ¹⁹Your descendants also would have been like the sand, And the offspring of your body like the grains of sand; His name would not have been cut off Nor destroyed from before Me.” ²⁰Go forth from Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! With a voice of singing, Declare, proclaim this, Utter it to the end of the earth; Say, “The Lᴏʀᴅ has redeemed His servant Jacob!” ²¹And they did not thirst When He led them through the deserts; He caused the waters to flow from the rock for them; He also split the rock, and the waters gushed out. ²²“There is no peace,” says the Lᴏʀᴅ, “for the wicked.”

¹After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illuminated with his glory. ²And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird! ³For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury.” ⁴And I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. ⁵For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. ⁶Render to her just as she rendered to you, and repay her double according to her works; in the cup which she has mixed, mix double for her. ⁷In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow; for she says in her heart, ‘I sit as queen, and am no widow, and will not see sorrow.’ ⁸Therefore her plagues will come in one day—death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her. ⁹“The kings of the earth who committed fornication and lived luxuriously with her will weep and lament for her, when they see the smoke of her burning, ¹⁰standing at a distance for fear of her torment, saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come.’ ¹¹And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, for no one buys their merchandise anymore: ¹²merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet, every kind of citron wood, every kind of object of ivory, every kind of object of most precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble; ¹³and cinnamon and incense, fragrant oil and frankincense, wine and oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and bodies and souls of men. ¹⁴The fruit that your soul longed for has gone from you, and all the things which are rich and splendid have gone from you, and you shall find them no more at all. ¹⁵The merchants of these things, who became rich by her, will stand at a distance for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, ¹⁶and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city that was clothed in fine linen, purple, and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls! ¹⁷For in one hour such great riches came to nothing.’ Every shipmaster, all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as trade on the sea, stood at a distance ¹⁸and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What is like this great city?’ ¹⁹They threw dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and wailing, and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city, in which all who had ships on the sea became rich by her wealth! For in one hour she is made desolate.’ ²⁰Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her!” ²¹Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “Thus with violence the great city Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found anymore. ²²The sound of harpists, musicians, flutists, and trumpeters shall not be heard in you anymore. No craftsman of any craft shall be found in you anymore, and the sound of a millstone shall not be heard in you anymore. ²³The light of a lamp shall not shine in you anymore, and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall not be heard in you anymore. For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived. ²⁴And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth.”