Listen, Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! ¹ 

Suppose a man has two wives, one whom he loves more than the other, ¹  and they both ²  bear him sons, with the firstborn being the child of the less loved wife.

Now it is ordinarily an eleven-day journey ¹  from Horeb ²  to Kadesh Barnea ³  by way of Mount Seir. ⁴ 

I thought this was a good idea, ¹  so I sent ²  twelve men from among you, one from each tribe.

You may not sacrifice the Passover in just any of your villages ¹  that the Lord your God is giving you,

Indeed, he may live among you in any place he chooses, in whichever of your villages ¹  he prefers; you must not oppress him.

If a fellow Israelite ¹  from one of your villages ²  in the land that the Lord your God is giving you should be poor, you must not harden your heart or be insensitive ³  to his impoverished condition. ⁴ 

for you may do so ¹  only in the place the Lord chooses in one of your tribal areas – there you may do everything I am commanding you. ² 

Suppose you should hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you as a place to live, that

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.

However, suppose a person hates someone else ¹  and stalks him, attacks him, kills him, ²  and then flees to one of these cities.

If two men ¹  get into a hand-to-hand fight, and the wife of one of them gets involved to help her husband against his attacker, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his genitals, ² 

The Lord will cause your enemies who attack ¹  you to be struck down before you; they will attack you from one direction ²  but flee from you in seven different directions.

“The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies; you will attack them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions and will become an object of terror ¹  to all the kingdoms of the earth.

How can one man chase a thousand of them, ¹  and two pursue ten thousand; unless their Rock had delivered them up, ²  and the Lord had handed them over?

However, it was not until ¹  the first day of the eleventh month ²  of the fortieth year ³  that Moses addressed the Israelites just as ⁴  the Lord had instructed him to do.

Anyone who accidentally killed someone ¹  without hating him at the time of the accident ²  could flee to one of those cities and be safe.

Suppose a man or woman is discovered among you – in one of your villages ¹  that the Lord your God is giving you – who sins before the Lord your God ²  and breaks his covenant

Suppose a Levite comes by his own free will ¹  from one of your villages, from any part of Israel where he is living, ²  to the place the Lord chooses

Suppose he goes with someone else ¹  to the forest to cut wood and when he raises the ax ²  to cut the tree, the ax head flies loose ³  from the handle and strikes ⁴  his fellow worker ⁵  so hard that he dies. The person responsible ⁶  may then flee to one of these cities to save himself. ⁷