Catholic Evangelization Training Center
Training in the NEW Evangelization
Deuteronomy Chapter 20-23
1 "When you go forth to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
2 And when you draw near to the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people,
3 and shall say to them, `Hear, O Israel, you draw near this day to battle against your enemies: let not your heart faint; do not fear, or tremble, or be in dread of them;
4 for the LORD your God is he that goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.'
5 Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying, `What man is there that has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it.
6 And what man is there that has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed its fruit? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man enjoy its fruit.
7 And what man is there that has betrothed a wife and has not taken her? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man take her.'
8 And the officers shall speak further to the people, and say, 'What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go back to his house, lest the heart of his fellows melt as his heart.'
9 And when the officers have made an end of speaking to the people, then commanders shall be appointed at the head of the people.
10 "When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it.
11 And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you.
12 But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it;
13 and when the LORD your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword,
14 but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you.
15 Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here.
16 But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes,
17 but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Per'izzites, the Hivites and the Jeb'usites, as the LORD your God has commanded;
18 that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the LORD your God.
19 "When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them; for you may eat of them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field men that they should be besieged by you?
20 Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down that you may build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.
1 "If in the land which the LORD your God gives you to possess, any one is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him,
2 then your elders and your judges shall come forth, and they shall measure the distance to the cities which are around him that is slain;
3 and the elders of the city which is nearest to the slain man shall take a heifer which has never been worked and which has not pulled in the yoke.
4 And the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley.
5 And the priests the sons of Levi shall come forward, for the LORD your God has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of the LORD, and by their word every dispute and every assault shall be settled.
6 And 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;
7 and they shall testify, `Our hands did not shed this blood, neither did our eyes see it shed.
8 Forgive, O LORD, thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and set not the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of thy people Israel; but let the guilt of blood be forgiven them.'
9 So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the sight of the LORD.
10 "When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hands, and you take them captive,
11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have desire for her and would take her for yourself as wife,
12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails.
13 And she shall put off her captive's garb, and shall remain in your house and bewail 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.
14 Then, if you have no delight in her, you shall let her go where she will; but you shall not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.
15 "If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other disliked, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the disliked, and if the first-born son is hers that is disliked,
16 then on the day when he assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his sons, he may not treat the son of the loved as the first-born in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the first-born,
17 but he shall acknowledge the first-born, the son of the disliked, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the first issue of his strength; the right of the first-born 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, though they chastise him, will not give heed to them,
19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives,
20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, `This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.'
21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
22 "And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree,
23 his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance.
1 "You shall not see your brother's ox or his sheep go astray, and withhold your help from them; you shall take them back to your brother.
2 And if he is not near you, or if you do not know him, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall be with you until your brother seeks it; then you shall restore it to him.
3 And so you shall do with his ass; so you shall do with his garment; so you shall do with any lost thing of your brother's, which he loses and you find; you may not withhold your help.
4 You shall not see your brother's ass or his ox fallen down by the way, and withhold your help from them; you shall help him to lift them up again.
5 "A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.
6 "If you chance to come upon a bird's nest, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting upon the young or upon the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young;
7 you shall let the mother go, but the young you may take to yourself; that it may go well with you, and that you may live long.
8 "When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if any one fall from it.
9 "You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited to the sanctuary, the crop which you have sown and the yield of the vineyard.
10 You shall not plow with an ox and an ass together.
11 You shall not wear a mingled stuff, wool and linen together.
12 "You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of your cloak with which you cover yourself.
13 "If any man takes a wife, and goes in to her, and then spurns her,
14 and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings an evil name upon her, saying, `I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her the tokens of virginity,'
15 then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the tokens of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate;
16 and the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, `I gave my daughter to this man to wife, and he spurns her;
17 and lo, he has made shameful charges against her, saying, "I did not find in your daughter the tokens of virginity." And yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity.' And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city.
18 Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him;
19 and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver, and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought an evil name upon a virgin of Israel; and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.
20 But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman,
21 then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has wrought folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you.
22 "If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall purge the evil from Israel.
23 "If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her,
24 then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you.
25 "But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die.
26 But to the young woman you shall do nothing; in the young woman there is no offense punishable by death, for this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor;
27 because he came upon her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.
28 "If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found,
29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days.
30 "A man shall not take his father's wife, nor shall he uncover her who is his father's.
1 "He whose testicles are crushed or whose male member is cut off shall not enter the assembly of the LORD.
2 "No bastard shall enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD.
3 "No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation none belonging to them shall enter the assembly of the LORD for ever;
4 because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came forth out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Be'or from Pethor of Mesopota'mia, to curse you.
5 Nevertheless the LORD your God would not hearken to Balaam; but the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loved you.
6 You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days for ever.
7 "You shall not abhor an E'domite, for he is your brother; you shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land.
8 The children of the third generation that are born to them may enter the assembly of the LORD.
9 "When you go forth against your enemies and are in camp, then you shall keep yourself from every evil thing.
10 "If there is among you any man who is not clean by reason of what chances to him by night, then he shall go outside the camp, he shall not come within the camp;
11 but when evening comes on, he shall bathe himself in water, and when the sun is down, he may come within the camp.
12 "You shall have a place outside the camp and you shall go out to it;
13 and you shall have a stick with your weapons; and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it, and turn back and cover up your excrement.
14 Because the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to save you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, that he may not see anything indecent among you, and turn away from you.
15 "You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you;
16 he shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place which he shall choose within one of your towns, where it pleases him best; you shall not oppress him.
17 "There shall be no cult prostitute of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a cult prostitute of the sons of Israel.
18 You shall not bring the hire of a harlot, or the wages of a dog, into the house of the LORD your God in payment for any vow; for both of these are an abomination to the LORD your God.
19 "You shall not lend upon interest to your brother, interest on money, interest on victuals, interest on anything that is lent for interest.
20 To a foreigner you may lend upon interest, but to your brother you shall not lend upon interest; that the LORD your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are entering to take possession of it.
21 "When you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not be slack to pay it; for the LORD your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin in you.
22 But if you refrain from vowing, it shall be no sin in you.
23 You shall be careful to perform what has passed your lips, for you have voluntarily vowed to the LORD your God what you have promised with your mouth.
24 "When you go into your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your vessel.
25 When you go into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain.