"They will stir up a crowd to stone you, and they will cut you to pieces with their swords.

Righteous men will condemn them on the charge of adultery and murder, because they practice adultery and their hands are stained with blood."

Let the mob stone them and attack them with swords, kill their children, and burn down their houses.

Then Judah said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, "Return to your father's house and remain a widow until my son Shelah grows up." He said this because he was afraid that Shelah would be killed, as his brothers had been. So Tamar went back home.

About three months later someone told Judah, "Your daughter-in-law Tamar has been acting like a whore, and now she is pregnant." Judah ordered, "Take her out and burn her to death."

If a man commits adultery with the wife of an Israelite, both he and the woman shall be put to death.

"If a man is caught having intercourse with another man's wife, both of them are to be put to death. In this way you will get rid of this evil.

You are to take them outside the town and stone them to death. She is to die because she did not cry out for help, although she was in a town, where she could have been heard. And the man is to die because he had intercourse with someone who was engaged. In this way you will get rid of this evil.

This was how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. His mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they were married, she found out that she was going to have a baby by the Holy Spirit.

Joseph was a man who always did what was right, but he did not want to disgrace Mary publicly; so he made plans to break the engagement privately.

The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought in a woman who had been caught committing adultery, and they made her stand before them all.

In our Law Moses commanded that such a woman must be stoned to death. Now, what do you say?"

"Then you took the sons and the daughters you had borne me and offered them as sacrifices to idols. Wasn't it bad enough to be unfaithful to me,

without taking my children and sacrificing them to idols?

This is what the Sovereign LORD says: "You stripped off your clothes, and like a prostitute, you gave yourself to your lovers and to all your disgusting idols, and you killed your children as sacrifices to idols.

Human beings were made like God, so whoever murders one of them will be killed by someone else.

"Whoever hits someone and kills him is to be put to death.

Murderers must be put to death. They cannot escape this penalty by the payment of money.

They shed your people's blood like water; blood flowed like water all through Jerusalem, and no one was left to bury the dead.

LORD, will you be angry with us forever? Will your anger continue to burn like fire?

But now, LORD, let their children starve to death; let them be killed in war. Let the women lose their husbands and children; let the men die of disease and the young men be killed in battle.

The LORD says, "I will bring such disasters on the human race that everyone will grope about like someone blind. They have sinned against me, and now their blood will be poured out like water, and their dead bodies will lie rotting on the ground."

The LORD God tolerates no rivals; he punishes those who oppose him. In his anger he pays them back.

They poured out the blood of God's people and of the prophets, and so you have given them blood to drink. They are getting what they deserve!"