Deuteronomy 22 explained: Laws for Neighbors, Homes and Marriage

Lost and fallen animals (vv. 1-4)

If you found a neighbor's stray animal or anything else they had lost, you were to return it or keep it safe until they came looking, and you were to help lift a fallen animal. The repeated 'do not ignore it' (literally 'do not hide yourself') rules out looking the other way, and an earlier law in Exodus 23 asks the same even for an enemy's animal.

Clothing of the other sex (v. 5)

This forbids a woman to wear a man's things, a broad Hebrew phrase that may also cover gear or weapons, and a man to wear a woman's garment, calling it something the LORD detests. Scholars are unsure what it first targeted, perhaps rites for other gods that involved swapping clothes or a wider concern to keep the sexes distinct, and Jewish and Christian readers differ on how it applies today.

Birds, roofs and mixing (vv. 6-12)

Letting the mother bird go and building a low wall around a flat roof, where people often sat and worked, both show care for life, and the builder carried the guilt if someone fell. The bans on mixing seeds in a vineyard, an ox with a donkey, or wool with linen may have marked Israel as set apart, though the original reasons are uncertain, and the tassels on a cloak's four corners are explained in Numbers 15 as reminders of God's commands.

A bride accused (vv. 13-21)

If a husband who had turned against his bride claimed she had not been a virgin, her parents could show the town elders proof, most likely the stained cloth from the wedding night. If he had lied, he was punished, fined a hundred shekels of silver paid to her father, and barred from ever divorcing her; if no proof was found, she was to be stoned at her father's door, a harsh penalty resting on a sign now known to be unreliable.

Adultery and engaged women (vv. 22-27)

A man caught with another man's wife was to die along with her (v. 22), and an engaged woman was treated almost as a wife. For her, if it happened in a town and she did not cry out, both were stoned, her silence taken as consent. Many readers find this troubling, since fear can leave a person unable to cry out, and silence is not consent. In open country the law assumed she screamed unheard, so only the man died, as in a murder, and it says plainly that she did nothing wrong (vv. 23-27).

Forced marriage; a father's wife (vv. 28-30)

A man who seized an unengaged virgin and slept with her had to pay her father fifty shekels and marry her with no right ever to divorce, and verse 30 forbids a man to marry his father's wife, meaning a stepmother. Translations differ ('rapes her' or 'lay hold on her') and the verb is not the one used in verse 25, so scholars debate how much force is meant; some read the rule as securing her a home where she might otherwise never marry, while others stress that it could bind her for life to her attacker.

Key verse: Deuteronomy 22:1

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on how this law applies now, some sorting it into lasting moral rules (often including verse 5) and ancient Israel's civil and religious rules while others see the whole of it as fulfilled in Jesus, and they also differ on how far its rules about women protected women in their own time and how far they reflect attitudes later Scripture moves beyond.

Something to think about

What do you make of an old law code that asks people to rescue a neighbor's lost animal and also sets punishments that strike you as harsh?