¹ Do not let a false statement go further; do not make an agreement with evil-doers to be a false witness.

² Do not be moved to do wrong by the general opinion, or give the support of your words to a wrong decision:

³ But, on the other hand, do not be turned from what is right in order to give support to a poor man's cause.

⁴ If you come across the ox or the ass of one who is no friend to you wandering from its way, you are to take it back to him.

⁵ If you see the ass of one who has no love for you bent down to the earth under the weight which is put on it, you are to come to its help, even against your desire.

⁶ Let no wrong decisions be given in the poor man's cause.

⁷ Keep yourselves far from any false business; never let the upright or him who has done no wrong be put to death: for I will make the evil-doer responsible for his sin.

⁸ Take no rewards in a cause: for rewards make blind those who have eyes to see, and make the decisions of the upright false.

⁹ Do not be hard on the man from a strange country who is living among you; for you have had experience of the feelings of one who is far from the land of his birth, because you yourselves were living in Egypt, in a strange land.

¹⁰ For six years put seed into your fields and get in the increase;

¹¹ But in the seventh year let the land have a rest and be unplanted; so that the poor may have food from it: and let the beasts of the field take the rest. Do the same with your vine-gardens and your olive-trees.

¹² For six days do your work, and on the seventh day keep the Sabbath; so that your ox and your ass may have rest, together with the son of your servant and the man from a strange land living among you.

¹³ Take note of all these things which I have said to you, and let not the names of other gods come into your minds or from your lips.

¹⁴ Three times in the year you are to keep a feast to me.

¹⁵ You are to keep the feast of unleavened bread; for seven days let your bread be without leaven, as I gave you orders, at the regular time in the month Abib (for in it you came out of Egypt); and let no one come before me without an offering:

¹⁶ And the feast of the grain-cutting, the first-fruits of your planted fields: and the feast at the start of the year, when you have got in all the fruit from your fields.

¹⁷ Three times in the year let all your males come before the Lord God.

¹⁸ Do not give the blood of my offering with leavened bread; and do not let the fat of my feast be kept all night till the morning.

¹⁹ The best of the first-fruits of your land are to be taken into the house of the Lord your God. The young goat is not to be cooked in its mother's milk.

²⁰ See, I am sending an angel before you, to keep you on your way and to be your guide into the place which I have made ready for you.

²¹ Give attention to him and give ear to his voice; do not go against him; for your wrongdoing will not be overlooked by him, because my name is in him.

²² But if you truly give ear to his voice, and do whatever I say, then I will be against those who are against you, fighting those who are fighting you.

²³ And my angel will go before you, guiding you into the land of the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Canaanite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, and they will be cut off by my hand.

²⁴ Do not go down on your faces and give worship to their gods, or do as they do; but overcome them completely, and let their pillars be broken down.

²⁵ And give worship to the Lord your God, who will send his blessing on your bread and on your water; and I will take all disease away from among you.

²⁶ All your animals will give birth without loss, not one will be without young in all your land; I will give you a full measure of life.

²⁷ I will send my fear before you, putting to flight all the people to whom you come; all those who are against you will go in flight, turning their backs before you.

²⁸ I will send hornets before you, driving out the Hivite and the Canaanite and the Hittite before your face.

²⁹ I will not send them all out in one year, for fear that their land may become waste, and the beasts of the field be increased overmuch against you.

³⁰ Little by little I will send them away before you, till your numbers are increased and you take up your heritage in the land.

³¹ I will let the limits of your land be from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the waste land to the river Euphrates: for I will give the people of those lands into your power; and you will send them out before you.

³² Make no agreement with them or with their gods.

³³ Let them not go on living in your land, or they will make you do evil against me: for if you give worship to their gods, it will certainly be a cause of sin to you.

¹ When the nations, whose land the Lord your God is giving you, have been cut off by him, and you have taken their place and are living in their towns and in their houses;

² You are to have three towns marked out in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for your heritage.

³ You are to make ready a way, and see that the land which the Lord your God is giving you for your heritage, is marked out into three parts, to which any taker of life may go in flight.

⁴ This is to be the rule for anyone who goes in flight there, after causing the death of his neighbour in error and not through hate;

⁵ For example, if a man goes into the woods with his neighbour for the purpose of cutting down trees, and when he takes his axe to give a blow to the tree, the head of the axe comes off, and falling on to his neighbour gives him a wound causing his death; then the man may go in flight to one of these towns and be safe:

⁶ For if not, he who has the right of punishment may go running after the taker of life in the heat of his wrath, and overtake him because the way is long, and give him a death-blow; though it is not right for him to be put to death because he was not moved by hate.

⁷ And so I am ordering you to see that three towns are marked out for this purpose.

⁸ And if the Lord your God makes wide the limits of your land, as he said in his oath to your fathers, and gives you all the land which he undertook to give to your fathers;

⁹ If you keep and do all these orders which I give you today, loving the Lord your God and walking ever in his ways; then let three more towns, in addition to these three, be marked out for you:

¹⁰ So that in all your land, which the Lord your God is giving you for your heritage, no man may be wrongly put to death, for which you will be responsible.

¹¹ But if any man has hate for his neighbour, and waiting for him secretly makes an attack on him and gives him a blow causing his death, and then goes in flight to one of these towns;

¹² The responsible men of his town are to send and take him, and give him up to the one who has the right of punishment to be put to death.

¹³ Have no pity on him, so that Israel may be clear from the crime of putting a man to death without cause, and it will be well for you.

¹⁴ Your neighbour's landmark, which was put in its place by the men of old times, is not to be moved or taken away in the land of your heritage which the Lord your God is giving you.

¹⁵ One witness may not make a statement against a man in relation to any sin or wrongdoing which he has done: on the word of two or three witnesses a question is to be judged.

¹⁶ If a false witness makes a statement against a man, saying that he has done wrong,

¹⁷ Then the two men, between whom the argument has taken place, are to come before the Lord, before the priests and judges who are then in power;

¹⁸ And the judges will have the question looked into with care: and if the witness is seen to be false and to have made a false statement against his brother,

¹⁹ Then do to him what it was his purpose to do to his brother: and so put away the evil from among you.

²⁰ And the rest of the people, hearing of it, will be full of fear, and never again do such evil among you.

²¹ Have no pity; let life be given for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.