Daily Text and Bible Reading: Sunday, March 2 [Press play below]

20.1 “If you go to war against your enemies and you see their horses and chariots and troops that outnumber yours, do not be afraid of them, for Jehovah your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt is with you.
20.2 When you are about to go into battle, the priest should approach and address the people.
20.3 He should tell them, ‘Hear, O Israel, you are about to do battle with your enemies. Do not be fainthearted. Do not be afraid or be terrified or tremble because of them,
20.4 for Jehovah your God is marching with you to fight for you against your enemies and to save you.’
20.5 “The officers too should tell the people, ‘Who has built a new house and has not inaugurated it? Let him return to his house. Otherwise, he may die in the battle and another man will inaugurate it.
20.6 And who has planted a vineyard and not begun to use it? Let him go and return to his house. Otherwise, he may die in the battle and another man will begin to use it.
20.7 And who has become engaged to a woman and has not married her? Let him go and return to his house. Otherwise, he might die in the battle and another man will marry her.’
20.8 The officers should also ask the people, ‘Who is fearful and fainthearted? He should return to his house, so that he may not cause his brothers to lose heart as he has.’
20.9 When the officers have finished speaking to the people, they should appoint chiefs of the armies to lead the people.
20.10 “If you approach a city to fight against it, you should also announce to it terms of peace.
20.11 If it gives a peaceful answer to you and opens up to you, all the people found there will become yours for forced labor, and they will serve you.
20.12 But if it refuses to make peace with you and instead goes to war with you, you should besiege it,
20.13 and Jehovah your God will certainly give it into your hand, and you must strike down every male in it with the sword.
20.14 However, the women, the children, the livestock, and everything that is in the city, all its spoil, you may plunder for yourself, and you will eat the spoil of your enemies, which Jehovah your God has given to you.
20.15 “That is what you will do to all the cities very far away from you that are not of the cities of these nearby nations.
20.16 But in the cities of these peoples, which Jehovah your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not allow any breathing thing to live.
20.17 Instead, you should devote them completely to destruction, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, just as Jehovah your God has commanded you;
20.18 so that they may not teach you to follow all their detestable practices that they have done for their gods, causing you to sin against Jehovah your God.
20.19 “If you lay siege to a city in order to capture it and you have been fighting against it for many days, you should not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. You may eat from them, but you should not cut them down. For should you besiege a tree of the field as you would a man?
20.20 You may destroy only a tree that you know is not used for food. You may cut it down and build siegeworks against the city that is making war against you, until it falls.
21.1 “If someone is found slain in a field of the land that Jehovah your God is giving you to possess and it is not known who killed him,
21.2 your elders and judges should go out and measure the distance from the dead body to the cities that surround it.
21.3 Then the elders of the city nearest to the body should take from the herd a young cow that has never been put to work, that has never pulled in a yoke,
21.4 and the elders of that city should lead the young cow down to a valley running with water where no tilling or sowing of seed has been done, and they should break the neck of the young cow there in the valley.
21.5 “And the priests, the Levites, will approach because Jehovah your God has chosen them to minister to him, to pronounce blessings in the name of Jehovah. They will declare how every dispute involving violence should be resolved.
21.6 Then all the elders of the city who are nearest to the dead body should wash their hands over the young cow whose neck was broken in the valley,
21.7 and they should declare, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed.
21.8 Do not hold this against your people Israel, whom you redeemed, O Jehovah, and do not let guilt for innocent blood remain among your people Israel.’ Then the bloodguilt will not be held against them.
21.9 In this way you will remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst by doing what is right in Jehovah’s eyes.
21.10 “If you go to war against your enemies and Jehovah your God defeats them for you and you take them captive,
21.11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you are attracted to her and you want to take her as your wife,
21.12 you may bring her into your house. She should then shave her head, attend to her nails,
21.13 and remove the clothing of her captivity, and dwell in your house. She will weep for her father and her mother a whole month, and afterward you may have relations with her; you will become her husband and she will become your wife.
21.14 But if you are not pleased with her, you should then let her go wherever she wishes. But you may not sell her for money or treat her harshly, since you have humiliated her.
21.15 “If a man has two wives and he loves one more than the other and both have borne sons to him and the firstborn son belongs to the unloved one,
21.16 on the day that he gives his inheritance to his sons, he will not be allowed to treat the son of the loved one as his firstborn at the expense of the son of the unloved one, the firstborn.
21.17 He should recognize as the firstborn the unloved one’s son by giving him the double portion of everything he has, for that one is the beginning of his procreative power. The right of the firstborn’s position belongs to him.
21.18 “If a man has a son who is stubborn and rebellious and he does not obey his father or his mother, and they have tried to correct him but he refuses to listen to them,
21.19 his father and his mother should take hold of him and bring him out to the elders at the gate of his city
21.20 and say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, and he refuses to obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’
21.21 Then all the men of his city must stone him to death. So you must remove what is bad from your midst, and all Israel will hear and become afraid.
21.22 “If a man commits a sin deserving the sentence of death and he has been put to death and you have hung him on a stake,
21.23 his dead body should not remain all night on the stake. Instead, you should be sure to bury him on that day, because the one hung up is something accursed of God, and you should not defile your land that Jehovah your God is giving you as an inheritance.
22.1 “If you see your brother’s bull or his sheep going astray, do not deliberately ignore it. You should without fail lead it back to your brother.
22.2 But if your brother does not live near you or you do not know him, you should bring the animal to your house, and it will remain with you until your brother searches for it. Then you should return it to him.
22.3 That is what you should do with his donkey, with his clothing, and with anything that your brother has lost and you have found. You must not ignore it.
22.4 “If you see your brother’s donkey or his bull fall down on the road, you must not deliberately ignore it. You should without fail help him raise the animal up.
22.5 “A woman must not put on the clothing of a man, nor should a man wear the clothing of a woman. For anyone doing so is detestable to Jehovah your God.
22.6 “If you happen upon a bird’s nest along the road with young ones or eggs, whether in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young ones or the eggs, you must not take the mother together with her young.
22.7 Be sure to send the mother away, but you may take the young for yourself. Do this so that it may go well with you and you may live long.
22.8 “If you build a new house, you must also make a parapet for your roof, so that you may not bring bloodguilt on your house because of someone falling from it.
22.9 “You must not sow your vineyard with two sorts of seed. Otherwise, everything produced from the seed you sow as well as the product of the vineyard will be forfeited to the sanctuary.
22.10 “You must not plow with a bull and a donkey together.
22.11 “You must not wear clothing made of wool and linen mixed together.
22.12 “You should make tassels on the four corners of the clothing you wear.
22.13 “If a man takes a wife and has relations with her but then comes to hate her
22.14 and he accuses her of misconduct and gives her a bad name by saying: ‘I have taken this woman, but when I had relations with her, I did not find evidence that she was a virgin,’
22.15 the father and mother of the girl should produce the evidence of the girl’s virginity for the elders at the gate of the city.
22.16 The girl’s father must say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man as a wife, but he hates her
22.17 and is accusing her of misconduct by saying: “I have found out that your daughter does not have evidence of virginity.” Now this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ They will then spread out the cloth before the elders of the city.
22.18 The city elders will take the man and discipline him.
22.19 They will fine him 100 silver shekels and give them to the girl’s father, because the man defamed a virgin of Israel, and she will continue to be his wife. He will not be allowed to divorce her as long as he lives.
22.20 “If, though, the accusation is true, and there is no evidence that the girl was a virgin,
22.21 they should bring the girl out to the entrance of her father’s house, and the men of her city should stone her to death, because she has committed a disgraceful act in Israel by committing sexual immorality in the house of her father. So you must remove what is bad from your midst.
22.22 “If a man is found lying down with a woman who is the wife of another man, both of them must die together, the man who lay down with the woman as well as the woman. So you must remove what is bad out of Israel.
22.23 “If a virgin is engaged to a man, and another man happens to meet her in the city and lies down with her,
22.24 you should bring them both out to the gate of that city and stone them to death, the girl because she did not scream in the city and the man because he humiliated the wife of his fellow man. So you must remove what is evil from your midst.
22.25 “If, however, the man happened to meet the engaged girl in the field and the man overpowered her and lay down with her, the man who lay down with her is to die by himself,
22.26 and you must do nothing to the girl. The girl has not committed a sin deserving of death. This case is the same as when a man attacks his fellow man and murders him.
22.27 For he happened to meet her in the field, and the engaged girl screamed, but there was no one to rescue her.
22.28 “If a man happens to meet a virgin girl who is not engaged and he seizes her and lies down with her and they are discovered,
22.29 the man who lay down with her must give the girl’s father 50 silver shekels, and she will become his wife. Because he humiliated her, he will not be allowed to divorce her as long as he lives.
22.30 “No man should take his father’s wife, so that he may not dishonor his father.