Community Care and Concern
Deuteronomy 22When you must see your brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, do not hide yourself from them. You are to bring-bring them again to your brother. If your brother isn’t near to you, or if you don’t know him, then you are to bring it home to your house, and it will be with you until your brother comes looking for it. Then you are to restore it to him. You are to do the same with his donkey, with his garment, and with every other lost thing of your brother’s, which he has lost and you have found. You may not hide yourself. You must not see your brother’s donkey or his ox fallen down by the way, and hide yourself from them. You are to help-help lift them up again.
A woman is not to wear men’s clothing, and a man is not to put on women’s clothing, for whoever does these things is an abomination to YHWH your God.
If you come across a bird’s nest on the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the hen sitting on the young, or on the eggs, you must not take the hen with the young. You must release-release the hen, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days.
When you build a new house, you must make a railing around your roof, so that you don’t bring blood on your house if anyone falls from there.
You must not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest all the fruit be defiled, the seed which you have sown, and the increase of the vineyard. You must not plow with an ox and a donkey together. You must not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.
You are to make yourselves fringes+22:12 or, tassels on the four corners of your cloak with which you cover yourself.
Marriage and Sexual Misconduct
If a man takes a wife, and goes in to her, and comes to hates her, accuses her of shameful things, gives her a bad name, and says, “I took this woman, and when I came near to her, I didn’t find evidence of virginity,” then the young woman’s father and mother are to take and bring evidence of the young lady’s virginity to the elders of the city in the gate. The young lady’s father will tell the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man as his wife, but he hates her. See, he has accused her of shameful things, saying, ‘I didn’t find in your daughter the evidence of virginity,’ and yet this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” They are to spread the cloth before the elders of the city. The elders of that city are to take the man and chastise him. They are to fine him one hundred shekels of silver,+22:19 A shekel is 10 grams or about 0.35 ounces, so 100 shekels is about a kilogram or 2.2 pounds. and give them to the father of the young lady, because he has given a bad name to a virgin of Israel. She will be his wife, and he may not divorce her for all of his days.
But if this charge is true and that the evidence of the young woman’s virginity can be found, then they must bring the young lady to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city are to stone her to death with stones, because she has done folly in Israel and played the prostitute in her father’s house. So you must purge the evil from among you.
If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they must both die, the man who lay with the woman and the woman. So you must purge the evil from Israel. If there is a virgin who is engaged to a man, but another man finds her in the city and lies with her, then y’all must bring them both out to the city gate stone them to death with stones—the young woman because she didn’t cry out in the city, and the man because he has violated his neighbor’s wife. So you must purge the evil from among you. But if the man finds young woman who is engaged in the field, and the man overpowers her to lie with her, then only the man who has done this with her must die. But you must not do anything to the young woman. There is no sin worthy of death in the young woman. This matter is like that of a man attacking his neighbor and killing him, for he found her in the field, and though the engaged young woman cried out, there was no one to save her. If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, and is not engaged, seizes her to lie with her, and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her must give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels+22:29 A shekel is about 10 grams or about 0.35 ounces. of silver. She will become his wife, because he violated her. He may not divorce her all of his days. A man is not take his father’s wife, and must not uncover his father’s skirt.