Deuteronomy 13:1-18
13 “When there arises among you a prophet or a dream-seer, and he gives you a token or a prodigy,
2 and the token and prodigy that he told you of in saying ‘Let us follow other gods that you have never known and worship them’ comes true,
3 you are not to listen to that prophet’s words or to that dream-seer, because your God Jehovah is testing you to know whether you do love your God Jehovah with all your hearts and with all your souls.
4 You are to follow your God Jehovah and fear him and keep his commandments and obey him and worship him and hold fast to him.
5 That prophet or dream-seer is to be put to death because he has spoken wrongfully against your God Jehovah who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you out of the slave-quarters, to lead you astray out of the road your God Jehovah commanded you to go in; and you are to rout out the mischief from among you.
6 * “When your brother, your own father’s son or your mother’s, or your son or daughter, or your bosom wife, or your friend who is a second self to you, cajoles you in secret, saying ‘Let us go and worship other gods,’—gods that neither you nor your fathers have known,
7 any of the gods of the nations around you, near you or far off from you from end to end of the earth,—
8 you are not to consent nor listen to him, nor shall your eye have mercy on him, nor shall you spare him or screen him,
9 but kill him; your hand shall be against him first for putting him to death, and the hands of all the people afterward,
10 and you shall stone him to death because he tried to lead you astray from your God Jehovah who brought you out of Egypt, out of the slave-quarters;
11 and all Israel shall hear and be afraid, and never again do among you such a wicked thing as this.
12 “When you hear of one of your cities that your God Jehovah is giving you to live in
13 that some reprobates have gone out from among you and led the inhabitants of their city astray, saying ‘Let us go and worship other gods that you have never known,’
14 you are to look it up and investigate and inquire thoroughly, and, finding the fact is really authentic, this detestable thing has been done among you,
15 * you are to kill off the inhabitants of that city, destroying it and all in it as deodand.
16 And all the booty from it you shall collect in the middle of its square, and burn up the city and all the booty from it as a holocaust to your God Jehovah; and it shall be a permanent ruin, never rebuilt.
17 Not a bit of what was deodand shall stick to your hands, in order that Jehovah may come back from his anger and give you the benefit of sympathy and feel a tenderness for you and multiply you as he swore to your fathers he would,
18 because you obey your God Jehovah, keeping all his commandments that I am enjoining on you today, doing what your God Jehovah approves.
Footnotes
^ 13:6 Var. brother, your own mother’s son, or your son or
^ 13:15 Var. killing off without quarter it and all in it and the cattle
