1 If you see your brother's ox or his sheep wandering, do not go by without helping, but take them back to your brother.
2 If their owner is not near, or if you are not certain who he is, then take the beast to your house and keep it till its owner comes in search of it, and then you are to give it back to him.
3 Do the same with his ass or his robe or anything which has gone from your brother's keeping and which you have come across: do not keep it to yourself.
4 If you see your brother's ox or his ass falling down on the road, do not go by without giving him help in lifting it up again.
5 It is not right for a woman to be dressed in man's clothing, or for a man to put on a woman's robe: whoever does such things is disgusting to the Lord your God.
6 If by chance you see a place which a bird has made for itself in a tree or on the earth, with young ones or eggs, and the mother bird seated on the young ones or on the eggs, do not take the mother bird with the young:
7 See that you let the mother bird go, but the young ones you may take; so it will be well for you and your life will be long.
8 If you are building a house, make a railing for the roof, so that the blood of any man falling from it will not come on your house.
9 Do not have your vine-garden planted with two sorts of seed: or all of it may become a loss, the seed you have put in as well as the increase.
10 Do not do your ploughing with an ox and an ass yoked together.
11 Do not have clothing made of two sorts of thread, wool and linen together.
12 On the four edges of your robe, with which your body is covered, put ornaments of twisted threads.
13 If any man takes a wife, and having had connection with her, has no delight in her,
14 And says evil things about her and gives her a bad name, saying, I took this woman, and when I had connection with her it was clear to me that she was not a virgin:
15 Then let the girl's father and mother put before the responsible men of the town, in the public place, signs that the girl was a virgin:
16 And let the girl's father say to the responsible men, I gave my daughter to this man for his wife, but he has no love for her;
17 And now he has put shame on her, saying that she is not a virgin; but here is the sign that she is a virgin. Then they are to put her clothing before the responsible men of the town.
18 Then the responsible men of the town are to give the man his punishment;
19 They will take from him a hundred shekels of silver, which are to be given to the father of the girl, because he has given an evil name to a virgin of Israel: she will go on being his wife, he may never put her away all his life.
20 But if what he has said is true, and she is seen to be not a virgin,
21 Then they are to make the girl come to the door of her father's house and she will be stoned to death by the men of the town, because she has done evil and put shame on Israel, by acting as a loose woman in her father's house: so you are to put away evil from among you.
22 If a man is taken in the act of going in to a married woman, the two of them, the man as well as the woman, are to be put to death: so you are to put away the evil from Israel.
23 If a young virgin has given her word to be married to a man, and another man meeting her in the town, has connection with her;
24 Then you are to take the two of them to the doorway of the town, and have them stoned to death; the young virgin, because she gave no cry for help, though it was in the town, and the man, because he has put shame on his neighbour's wife: so you are to put away evil from among you.
25 But if the man, meeting such a virgin in the open country, takes her by force, then only the man is to be put to death;
26 Nothing is to be done to the virgin, because there is no cause of death in her: it is the same as if a man made an attack on his neighbour and put him to death:
27 For he came across her in the open country, and there was no one to come to the help of the virgin in answer to her cry.
28 If a man sees a young virgin, who has not given her word to be married to anyone, and he takes her by force and has connection with her, and discovery is made of it;
29 Then the man will have to give the virgin's father fifty shekels of silver and make her his wife, because he has put shame on her; he may never put her away all his life.
30 A man may not take his father's wife or have sex relations with a woman who is his father's.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Deuteronomy 22
Commentary on Deuteronomy 22 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 22
De 22:1-4. Of Humanity toward Brethren.
1. Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them, &c.—"Brother" is a term of extensive application, comprehending persons of every description; not a relative, neighbor, or fellow countryman only, but any human being, known or unknown, a foreigner, and even an enemy (Ex 23:4). The duty inculcated is an act of common justice and charity, which, while it was taught by the law of nature, was more clearly and forcibly enjoined in the law delivered by God to His people. Indifference or dissimulation in the circumstances supposed would not only be cruelty to the dumb animals, but a violation of the common rights of humanity; and therefore the dictates of natural feeling, and still more the authority of the divine law, enjoined that the lost or missing property of another should be taken care of by the finder, till a proper opportunity occurred of restoring it to the owner.
De 22:5-12. The Sex to Be Distinguished by Apparel.
5. The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment—Though disguises were assumed at certain times in heathen temples, it is probable that a reference was made to unbecoming levities practised in common life. They were properly forbidden; for the adoption of the habiliments of the one sex by the other is an outrage on decency, obliterates the distinctions of nature by fostering softness and effeminacy in the man, impudence and boldness in the woman as well as levity and hypocrisy in both; and, in short, it opens the door to an influx of so many evils that all who wear the dress of another sex are pronounced "an abomination unto the Lord."
6, 7. If a bird's nest chance to be before thee—This is a beautiful instance of the humanizing spirit of the Mosaic law, in checking a tendency to wanton destructiveness and encouraging a spirit of kind and compassionate tenderness to the tiniest creatures. But there was wisdom as well as humanity in the precept; for, as birds are well known to serve important uses in the economy of nature, the extirpation of a species, whether of edible or ravenous birds, must in any country be productive of serious evils. But Palestine, in particular, was situated in a climate which produced poisonous snakes and scorpions; and the deserts and mountains would have been overrun with them as well as immense swarms of flies, locusts, mice, and vermin of various kinds if the birds which fed upon them were extirpated [Michaelis]. Accordingly, the counsel given in this passage was wise as well as humane, to leave the hen undisturbed for the propagation of the species, while the taking of the brood occasionally was permitted as a check to too rapid an increase.
8. thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence—The tops of houses in ancient Judea, as in the East still, were flat, being composed of branches or twigs laid across large beams, and covered with a cement of clay or strong plaster. They were surrounded by a parapet breast high. In summer the roof is a favorite resort for coolness, and accidents would frequently happen from persons incautiously approaching the edge and falling into the street or court; hence it was a wise and prudent precaution in the Jewish legislator to provide that a stone balustrade or timber railing round the roof should form an essential part of every new house.
9. Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds—(See on Le 19:19).
10. Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together—Whether this association, like the mixture of seeds, had been dictated by superstitious motives and the prohibition was symbolical, designed to teach a moral lesson (2Co 6:14), may or may not have been the case. But the prohibition prevented a great inhumanity still occasionally practised by the poorer sort in Oriental countries. An ox and ass, being of different species and of very different characters, cannot associate comfortably, nor unite cheerfully in drawing a plough or a wagon. The ass being much smaller and his step shorter, there would be an unequal and irregular draft. Besides, the ass, from feeding on coarse and poisonous weeds, has a fetid breath, which its yoke fellow seeks to avoid, not only as poisonous and offensive, but producing leanness, or, if long continued, death; and hence, it has been observed always to hold away its head from the ass and to pull only with one shoulder.
11. thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts—The essence of the crime (Zep 1:8) consisted, not in wearing a woollen and a linen robe, but in the two stuffs being woven together, according to a favorite superstition of ancient idolaters (see on Le 19:19).
12. thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters—or, according to some eminent biblical interpreters, tassels on the coverlet of the bed. The precept is not the same as Nu 15:38.
13-30. If a man take a wife, &c.—The regulations that follow might be imperatively needful in the then situation of the Israelites; and yet, it is not necessary that we should curiously and impertinently inquire into them. So far was it from being unworthy of God to leave such things upon record, that the enactments must heighten our admiration of His wisdom and goodness in the management of a people so perverse and so given to irregular passions. Nor is it a better argument that the Scriptures were not written by inspiration of God to object that this passage, and others of a like nature, tend to corrupt the imagination and will be abused by evil-disposed readers, than it is to say that the sun was not created by God, because its light may be abused by wicked men as an assistant in committing crimes which they have meditated [Horne].