Deuteronomy 22:24-30

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 22:24-30 Meaning and Commentary

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.

Footnotes 20

  • [a]. Literally "the two of them"
  • [b]. Literally "because of the fact that"
  • [c]. Literally "he lies down with her"
  • [d]. Or "alone"
  • [e]. Or "slept"
  • [f]. Hebrew "a thing"
  • [g]. Hebrew "to"
  • [h]. Literally "a sin of death"
  • [i]. Literally "for as that"
  • [j]. Literally "a soul/individual person"
  • [k]. Literally "thing/matter"
  • [l]. Hebrew "there was not"
  • [m]. Literally "for her"
  • [n]. Literally "he lies with her"
  • [o]. Literally "the man the [one] lying with her"
  • [p]. Literally "for/as a wife"
  • [q]. Literally "in place of"
  • [r]. Literally "all [of] his days"
  • [s]. Deuteronomy 22:30-23:25 in the English Bible is 23:1-26 in the Hebrew Bible
  • [t]. Literally "not he may reveal the skirt of the garment of his father"
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