The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Torah (Pentateuch) and is recognized as canonical by all major Christian traditions and by Judaism. The English title derives from the Greek 'Deuteronomion', meaning 'second law', reflecting the reaffirmation and expansion of the law given at Sinai. The Hebrew name 'Devarim' means 'words'. The book consists of three discourses by Moses to the children of Israel in the plains of Moab, before they entered the Promised Land, reviewing the history of the desert wandering and reiterating the covenant with God.
Deuteronomy
Chapter 17
You shall not sacrifice to the LORD your God an ox or a sheep in which is a defect or anything evil; for that is an abomination to the LORD your God.
If there is found among you within any of your gates which the LORD your God gives you, a man or woman who does that which is evil in the LORD your God's sight in transgressing his covenant,
and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun, or the moon, or any of the army of the sky, which I have not commanded,
and you are told, and you have heard of it, then you shall inquire diligently. Behold, if it is true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is done in Israel,
then you shall bring out that man or that woman who has done this evil thing to your gates, even that same man or woman; and you shall stone them to death with stones.
At the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death. At the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.
The hand of the witnesses shall be first on him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall remove the evil from among you.
If there arises a matter too hard for you in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within your gates, then you shall arise and go up to the place which the LORD your God shall choose.
You shall come to the priests who are Levites and to the judge who shall be in those days. You shall inquire, and they shall give you the verdict.
You shall do according to the verdict which they give you from that place which the LORD chooses. You shall be careful to do according to all that they teach you.
According to the law which they teach you, and according to the judgment which they tell you, you shall do. You shall not turn away from the sentence which they show you, to the right hand nor to the left.
The man who does presumptuously in not listening to the priest who stands to minister there before the LORD your God, or to the judge, even that man shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.
All the people shall hear and fear, and do no more presumptuously.
When you have come to the land which the LORD your God gives you, and possess it and dwell in it, and shall say, "I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,"
you shall surely set him king over yourselves whom the LORD your God chooses. You shall set one from among your brothers as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother.
Only he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to the end that he may multiply horses; because the LORD has said to you, "You shall not go back that way again."
He shall not multiply wives to himself, that his heart not turn away. He shall not greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.
It shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write a copy of this law in a scroll, before the priests the Levites.
It shall be with him, and he shall read from it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them;
that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he not turn away from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children, in the middle of Israel.