4. When it is reported to you and you hear about it, you must investigate carefully. If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done in Israel,
5. you must bring to your city gates that man or woman who has done this wicked thing – that very man or woman – and you must stone that person to death.
6. At the testimony of two or three witnesses they must be executed. They cannot be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.
7. The witnesses must be first to begin the execution, and then all the people are to join in afterward. In this way you will purge evil from among you.
8. If a matter is too difficult for you to judge – bloodshed, legal claim, or assault – matters of controversy in your villages – you must leave there and go up to the place the Lord your God chooses.
9. You will go to the Levitical priests and the judge in office in those days and seek a solution; they will render a verdict.
10. You must then do as they have determined at that place the Lord chooses. Be careful to do just as you are taught.
11. You must do what you are instructed, and the verdict they pronounce to you, without fail. Do not deviate right or left from what they tell you.
12. The person who pays no attention to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the verdict – that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel.
13. Then all the people will hear and be afraid, and not be so presumptuous again.
14. When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,”
15. you must select without fail a king whom the Lord your God chooses. From among your fellow citizens you must appoint a king – you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites.