Deuteronomy 22

1 If you see your kinsman's ox or sheep wandering off loose, don't look the other way as if you didn't see it. Return it promptly.

2 If your fellow Israelite is not close by or you don't know whose it is, take the animal home with you and take care of it until your fellow asks about it. Then return it to him.

3 Do the same if it's his donkey or a piece of clothing or anything else your fellow Israelite loses. Don't look the other way as if you didn't see it.

4 If you see your fellow's donkey or ox injured along the road, don't look the other way. Help him get it up and on its way.

5 A woman must not wear a man's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing. This kind of thing is an abomination to God, your God.

6 When you come across a bird's nest alongside the road, whether in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, don't take the mother with the young.

7 You may take the babies, but let the mother go so that you will live a good and long life.

8 When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof to make it safe so that someone doesn't fall off and die and your family become responsible for the death.

9 Don't plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard. If you do, you will forfeit what you've sown, the total production of the vineyard.

10 Don't plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.

11 Don't wear clothes of mixed fabrics, wool and linen together.

12 Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you use to cover yourself.

13 If a man marries a woman, sleeps with her, and then turns on her,

14 calling her a slut, giving her a bad name, saying, "I married this woman, but when I slept with her I discovered she wasn't a virgin,"

15 then the father and mother of the girl are to take her with the proof of her virginity to the town leaders at the gate.

16 The father is to tell the leaders, "I gave my daughter to this man as wife and he turned on her, rejecting her.

17 And now he has slanderously accused her, claiming that she wasn't a virgin. But look at this, here is the proof of my daughter's virginity." And then he is to spread out her blood-stained wedding garment before the leaders for their examination.

18 The town leaders then are to take the husband, whip him,

19 fine him a hundred pieces of silver, and give it to the father of the girl. The man gave a virgin girl of Israel a bad name. He has to keep her as his wife and can never divorce her.

20 But if it turns out that the accusation is true and there is no evidence of the girl's virginity,

21 the men of the town are to take her to the door of her father's house and stone her to death. She acted disgracefully in Israel. She lived like a whore while still in her parents' home. Purge the evil from among you.

22 If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both must die. Purge that evil from Israel.

23 If a man comes upon a virgin in town, a girl who is engaged to another man, and sleeps with her,

24 take both of them to the town gate and stone them until they die - the girl because she didn't yell out for help in the town and the man because he raped her, violating the fiancŽe of his neighbor. You must purge the evil from among you.

25 But if it was out in the country that the man found the engaged girl and grabbed and raped her, only the man is to die, the man who raped her.

26 Don't do anything to the girl; she did nothing wrong. This is similar to the case of a man who comes across his neighbor out in the country and murders him;

27 when the engaged girl yelled out for help, there was no one around to hear or help her.

28 When a man comes upon a virgin who has never been engaged and grabs and rapes her and they are found out,

29 the man who raped her has to give her father fifty pieces of silver. He has to marry her because he took advantage of her. And he can never divorce her.

30 A man may not marry his father's ex-wife - that would violate his father's rights.

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.

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.