Chapter 22
Helping Your Neighbor. 1 If you see your neighbor’s ox or sheep straying away, do not ignore it, but take it back to your neighbor. 2 If your neighbor does not live nearby or you do not know whose animal it is, take it to your own home and keep it there until your neighbor comes looking for it. Then give it back to him. 3 You are to do the same if you find his donkey or his cloak or anything that your neighbor loses. You are not to ignore it. 4 If you see your neighbor’s donkey or ox fall on the road, do not ignore it. Help him to get it up again.
Incidental Rules. 5 A woman is not to wear a man’s clothing, nor is a man to wear a woman’s clothing. The Lord, your God, detests all who do such things.[a]
6 If you come across a bird’s nest with young ones or eggs along the way, either in a tree or lying on the ground, and the mother bird is sitting upon the young ones or the eggs, do not take the mother with the young. 7 You can take the young ones, but let the mother go, so that things may go well with you and you may live a long life.
8 When you build a new house, place a parapet around your roof so that you do not bring blood guilt upon your house if anyone should fall from it.
9 You should not plant two different types of seed in your vineyard. If you do, the fruit of the seed you planted and the fruit in your vineyard will both be defiled.
10 Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.
11 Do not wear clothing made of wool and linen woven together.
12 You are to make fringes on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself.[b]
13 Rules for Sexual Relationships. If a man takes a woman and has sex with her, but then he grows to hate her 14 and he charges her with shameful deeds and publicly defames her name saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her I discovered that she was not a virgin,” 15 have the father and mother of the young woman give proof of the young woman’s virginity to the elders at the town gate.[c] 16 The young woman’s father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man to be his wife, and he has grown to hate her. 17 Now he has slandered her saying, ‘I discovered that your daughter was not a virgin.’ Here is proof of my daughter’s virginity.” They will then spread the cloth out before the elders. 18 The elders will take the man and punish him. 19 They will fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman because this man defamed the name of one of the virgins of Israel. She will continue to be his wife, and he cannot divorce her as long as he lives. 20 If, however, the charge is true and there is no proof of the young woman’s virginity, 21 she is to be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of the town will stone her to death. She did a disgraceful thing in Israel, committing fornication in her father’s house. You must purge this evil from your midst.[d]
22 If a man is discovered sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with the woman and the woman must be put to death. You must purge the evil from Israel.
23 If a man encounters a young woman who is betrothed to another man and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the city gate and stone them to death, the young woman because she was inside of the city and did not cry out, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
25 But if a man encounters a young woman betrothed to another man in the countryside and he overcomes her and has sex with her, then only the man who has done this is to die. 26 Do nothing to the young woman, for she has not committed a sin deserving death. This matter is just like when a man attacks and murders his neighbor, 27 for the man found the young woman in the countryside, and though the betrothed might have screamed out, there was no one there to rescue her.
28 If a man encounters a young woman who is a virgin but she is not betrothed, and he overcomes her and has sex with her and they are discovered, 29 he must pay the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her, and he can never divorce her for as long as he lives.
Footnotes
- Deuteronomy 22:5 Syrian and Canaanite practices, perhaps connected with sacral prostitution.
- Deuteronomy 22:12 See Num 15:37-39. The law was still in force in the time of Christ (Mt 9:20).
- Deuteronomy 22:15 The blanket or bedsheet used during the first night of marriage; the parents carefully preserved it.
- Deuteronomy 22:21 An unfaithful fiancée is regarded as an adulteress, because a betrothal had the juridical effects of marriage.