דברים כ״ב

If you see your fellow Israelite’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your peer. If your fellow Israelite does not live near you or you do not know who [the owner] is, you shall bring it home and it shall remain with you until your peer claims it; then you shall give it back. You shall do the same with their donkey; you shall do the same with their garment; and so too shall you do with anything that your fellow Israelite loses and you find: you must not remain indifferent. If you see your fellow Israelite’s donkey or ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it; you must raise it together. A woman must not put on man’s apparel,^aapparel Or “weapons”; so Targum. nor shall a man wear woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is abhorrent to the ETERNAL your God. If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life. When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it. You shall not sow your vineyard with a second kind of seed, else the crop—from the seed you have sown—and the yield of the vineyard may not be used. You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. You shall not wear cloth combining wool and linen. You shall make tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself. A man takes a woman to wife and cohabits with her. Then he takes an aversion to her and makes up charges against her and defames her, saying, “This is the woman I took to wife; but when I approached her, I found that she was not a virgin.” In such a case, the father and mother of the young woman shall produce the evidence of the young woman’s virginity before the elders of the town at the gate. And the young woman’s father shall say to the elders, “To this man I gave my own daughter to wife, but he has taken an aversion to her; so he has made up charges, saying, ‘I did not find your daughter a virgin.’ But here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity!” And they shall spread out the cloth before the elders of the town. The elders of that town shall then take that man and flog him, and they shall fine him a hundred [shekels of] silver and give it to the young woman’s father; for [that man] has defamed a virgin in Israel. Moreover, she shall remain his wife; he shall never have the right to divorce her. But if the charge proves true, the young woman was found not to have been a virgin, then the young woman shall be brought out to the entrance of her father’s house, and the people of her town^bthe people of her town See note at 21.21. shall stone her to death; for she did a shameful thing in Israel, committing fornication while under her father’s authority. Thus you will sweep away evil from your midst. If a man is found lying with another man’s wife, both of them—the man and the woman with whom he lay—shall die. Thus you will sweep away evil from Israel. In the case of a virgin who is engaged to someone^cwho is engaged to someone I.e., for whom a bride-price has been paid; see 20.7.—if another man comes upon her in town and lies with her, you shall take the two of them out to the gate of that town and stone them to death: the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. Thus you will sweep away evil from your midst. But if the man comes upon the engaged woman in the open country, and he lies with her by force, only the man who lay with her shall die, but you shall do nothing to the young woman. The young woman did not incur the death penalty, for this case is like that of one party attacking and murdering another. He came upon her in the open; though the engaged woman cried for help, there was no one to save her. If a man comes upon a virgin who is not engaged and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered, the man who lay with her shall pay the young woman’s father fifty [shekels of] silver, and she shall be his wife. Because he has violated her, he can never have the right to divorce her.