Deuteronomy 13:5

13:5 As for that prophet or dreamer,¹ he must be executed because he encouraged rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, redeeming you from that place of slavery, and because he has tried to entice you from the way the Lord your God has commanded you to go. In this way you must purge out evil from within.²

Deuteronomy 13:16

13:16 You must gather all of its plunder into the middle of the plaza³ and burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It will be an abandoned ruin⁴ forever – it must never be rebuilt again.

Deuteronomy 15:2

15:2 This is the nature of the cancellation: Every creditor must remit what he has loaned to another person;⁵ he must not force payment from his fellow Israelite,⁶ for it is to be recognized as “the Lord’s cancellation of debts.”

Deuteronomy 16:16

16:16 Three times a year all your males must appear before the Lord your God in the place he chooses for the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Temporary Shelters; and they must not appear before him⁷ empty-handed.

Deuteronomy 17:19

17:19 It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and observe all the words of this law and these statutes and carry them out.

Deuteronomy 22:2

22:2 If the owner⁸ does not live⁹ near you or you do not know who the owner is,¹⁰ then you must corral the animal¹¹ at your house and let it stay with you until the owner looks for it; then you must return it to him.

Deuteronomy 25:5

Respect for the Sanctity of Others

25:5 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband’s brother must go to her, marry her,¹² and perform the duty of a brother-in-law.¹³

¹tn Heb “or dreamer of dreams.” See note on this expression in v. 1.

²tn Heb “your midst” (so NAB, NRSV). The severity of the judgment here (i.e., capital punishment) is because of the severity of the sin, namely, high treason against the Great King. Idolatry is a violation of the first two commandments (Deut 5:6-10) as well as the spirit and intent of the Shema (Deut 6:4-5).

³tn Heb “street.”

⁴tn Heb “mound”; NAB “a heap of ruins.” The Hebrew word תֵּל (tel) refers to this day to a ruin represented especially by a built-up mound of dirt or debris (cf. Tel Aviv, “mound of grain”).

⁵tn Heb “his neighbor,” used idiomatically to refer to another person.

⁶tn Heb “his neighbor and his brother.” The words “his brother” may be a scribal gloss identifying “his neighbor” (on this idiom, see the preceding note) as a fellow Israelite (cf. v. 3). In this case the conjunction before “his brother” does not introduce a second category, but rather has the force of “that is.”

⁷tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 16:1.

⁸tn Heb “your brother” (also later in this verse).

⁹tn Heb “is not.” The idea of “residing” is implied.

¹⁰tn Heb “and you do not know him.”

¹¹tn Heb “it”; the referent (the ox or sheep mentioned in v. 1) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹²tn Heb “take her as wife”; NRSV “taking her in marriage.”

¹³sn This is the so-called “levirate” custom (from the Latin term levir, “brother-in-law”), an ancient provision whereby a man who died without male descendants to carry on his name could have a son by proxy, that is, through a surviving brother who would marry his widow and whose first son would then be attributed to the brother who had died. This is the only reference to this practice in an OT legal text but it is illustrated in the story of Judah and his sons (Gen 38) and possibly in the account of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 2:8; 3:12; 4:6).