Deuteronomy 22

1 "You shall not watch the ox of your neighbor or his sheep or goat straying and ignore them; certainly you shall return them to your neighbor.

2 And if your countryman [is] not near you or you do not know {who he is}, then you shall bring it {to your household}, and it shall be with you {until your countryman seeks after it}, and you shall return it to him.

3 And thus [also] you shall do regarding his donkey, and thus you shall do concerning his garment, and so you shall do with respect to all [of] the lost property of your countryman that is lost from him and you find it; you are not allowed to withhold help.

4 "You shall not see the donkey of your neighbor or his ox fallen on the road and you ignore them; certainly you must help them [get] up [along] with him.

5 "The apparel of a man shall not be [put] on a woman, and a man shall not wear the clothing of a woman, because everyone who does these things is detestable to Yahweh your God.

6 "If a bird's nest is found {before you} on the road in any tree or on the ground, [and there are] chicks or eggs, and the mother [is] lying down on the chicks or the eggs, you shall not take the mother along with the young;

7 you shall certainly let the mother go, but you may take the young for yourselves; [do this] {so that it may go well} for you and {you may live long in the land}.

8 "When you build a new house then you shall make a parapet wall for your roof, so that you will not bring bloodguilt on your house {if anyone should fall from it}.

9 "You shall not sow your vineyard [with] differing kinds [of seed], so that you shall not forfeit {the whole harvest}, [both] the seed that you sowed and the yield of the vineyard.

10 "You shall not plow with an ox and with a donkey [yoked] together.

11 "You shall not wear woven material [made of] wool and linen [mixed] together.

12 "You shall make tassels for yourselves on the four corners of your clothing with which you cover [yourself].

13 "If a man takes a woman and {he has sex with her}, but [he] then {dislikes her},

14 and {he accuses her falsely}, and {he defames her}, and he says 'This woman I took and I lay with her and {I discovered that she was not a virgin},'

15 then [in defense] the father of the young woman shall take, along with her mother, and [together] they must bring out the [evidence of] the virginity of the young woman [to display it] to the elders of the city {at the city gate}.

16 And [then] the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, 'I gave my daughter to this man as wife, but he [now] {dislikes} her,

17 and now look {he has accused her falsely}, saying, "I did not find {your daughter a virgin}," but here [is] [evidence of] the virginity of my daughter'; and they shall spread the cloth [out] {before} the elders of the city.

18 Then the elders of that city shall take the man, and they shall discipline him.

19 Then they shall fine him [a] hundred [shekels of] silver, and they shall give [them] to the father of the young woman, for {he defamed an Israelite young woman}, and {she shall become his wife}; he will not be allowed {to divorce her} all his days.

20 "But if {this charge} was true, {and the signs of virginity were not found} for the young woman,

21 and [then] they shall bring out the young woman to the doorway of the house of her father, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones, and she shall die, because she did a disgraceful thing in Israel {by playing the harlot} [in] the house of her father, and so you shall purge the evil from your midst.

22 "If a man is found lying {with a married woman}, then they shall both die; {both of them}, the man who lay with the woman and the woman [also], so you shall purge the evil from Israel.

23 "If it happens [that] a young woman, a virgin, [is] engaged to a man, [and] a man finds her in the town and lies with her,

24 then you shall bring out {both of them} to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them with stones so that they shall die, the young woman because she did not cry out in the town, and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife; and so you shall purge the evil from your midst.

25 "But if the man finds the young engaged woman in the field and the man overpowers her and {he has sex with her}, then the man only must die who lay with her.

26 But you shall not do anything to the young woman, [for] there is not [reckoned] against the young woman {a sin deserving death}; {it is similar to when} a man rises up against his neighbor and murders him, {a fellow human being}, [just] so [is] this {case},

27 for he found her in the field, the engaged young woman cried out, but there was no rescuer {to help her}.

28 "If a man finds a young woman, a virgin [who] is not engaged, and he seizes her and {he has sex with her} and they are caught,

29 then {the man who lay with her} shall give to the father of the young woman fifty [shekels] of silver, and she shall become {his wife} {because} he violated her, and he is not allowed to divorce her {during his lifetime}.

30 A man may not take the wife of his father, and [so] {he may not dishonor his father}.

Deuteronomy 22 Commentary

Chapter 22

Of humanity towards brethren. (1-4) Various precepts. (5-12) Against impurity. (13-30)

Verses 1-4 If we duly regard the golden rule of "doing to others as we would they should do unto us," many particular precepts might be omitted. We can have no property in any thing that we find. Religion teaches us to be neighbourly, and to be ready to do all good offices to all men. We know not how soon we may have occasion for help.

Verses 5-12 God's providence extends itself to the smallest affairs, and his precepts do so, that even in them we may be in the fear of the Lord, as we are under his eye and care. Yet the tendency of these laws, which seem little, is such, that being found among the things of God's law, they are to be accounted great things. If we would prove ourselves to be God's people, we must have respect to his will and to his glory, and not to the vain fashions of the world. Even in putting on our garments, as in eating or in drinking, all must be done with a serious regard to preserve our own and others' purity in heart and actions. Our eye should be single, our heart simple, and our behaviour all of a piece.

Verses 13-30 These and the like regulations might be needful then, and yet it is not necessary that we should curiously examine respecting them. The laws relate to the seventh commandment, laying a restraint upon fleshly lusts which war against the soul.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or "brother"
• [b]. Literally "him"
• [c]. Literally "to the midst of your house"
• [d]. Or "remain"
• [e]. Literally "the seeking of your countryman after it"
• [f]. Or "to"
• [g]. Or "to"
• [h]. Or "to"
• [i]. Or "brother"
• [j]. Literally "on"
• [k]. Literally "before your face"
• [l]. Hebrew "for you"
• [m]. Literally "he/it is good"
• [n]. Literally "and you may make long/extend days"
• [o]. Hebrew "and"
• [p]. Or "fence/rail"
• [q]. Literally "if should fall the falling from it"
• [r]. Literally "the entire fullness"
• [s]. Hebrew "for you"
• [t]. Literally "and he goes unto her"
• [u]. Literally "hates her"
• [v]. Literally "he puts to her deeds of words"
• [w]. Literally "he brings forth against her a bad name"
• [x]. Literally "I found not with her virginity"
• [y]. Literally "toward the city gate"
• [z]. Literally "hates"
• [aa]. Literally "he put deeds of words"
• [ab]. Literally "to your daughter virginity"
• [ac]. Literally "to the face of"
• [ad]. Literally "for he brought out a bad name against the virgin of Israel"
• [ae]. Literally "and for him she shall become as wife"
• [af]. Literally "to send her out"
• [ag]. Literally "the thing"
• [ah]. Literally "and they were not found [evidence of] virginity"
• [ai]. Literally "to play the harlot/to prostitute [herself]"
• [aj]. Literally "with a woman, a young woman of a husband"
• [ak]. Literally "also/even the two of them"
• [al]. Literally "the two of them"
• [am]. Literally "because of the fact that"
• [an]. Literally "he lies down with her"
• [ao]. Or "alone"
• [ap]. Or "slept"
• [aq]. Hebrew "a thing"
• [ar]. Hebrew "to"
• [as]. Literally "a sin of death"
• [at]. Literally "for as that"
• [au]. Literally "a soul/individual person"
• [av]. Literally "thing/matter"
• [aw]. Hebrew "there was not"
• [ax]. Literally "for her"
• [ay]. Literally "he lies with her"
• [az]. Literally "the man the [one] lying with her"
• [ba]. Literally "for/as a wife"
• [bb]. Literally "in place of"
• [bc]. Literally "all [of] his days"
• [bd]. Deuteronomy 22:30-23:25 in the English Bible is 23:1-26 in the Hebrew Bible
• [be]. Literally "not he may reveal the skirt of the garment of his father"

Chapter Summary

INTRODUCTION TO DEUTERONOMY 22

In this chapter are various laws, concerning care of a neighbour's cattle gone astray or in distress, and of anything lost by him, De 22:1-4, forbidding one sex to wear the apparel, of another, De 22:5 and the taking away of the dam with the young found in a bird's nest, De 22:6,7, ordering battlements to be made in a new house, De 22:8, prohibiting mixtures in sowing, ploughing, and in garments, De 22:9-11, requiring fringes on the four quarters of a garment, De 22:12, fining a man that slanders his wife, upon producing the tokens of her virginity, De 22:13-19 but if these cannot be produced, then orders are given that she be put to death, De 22:20-21, then follow other laws, punishing with death the adulterer and adulteress, and one that hath ravished a betrothed damsel, De 22:22-27, amercing a person that lies with a virgin not betrothed and she consenting, and obliging him to marry her, and not suffering him to divorce her, De 22:28-29 and another against a man's lying with his father's wife, De 22:30.