1 If you see someone's cow or sheep wandering around, don't just ignore it. Make sure you take it back to its owner. 2 If its owner doesn't live near you, or if you don't know who it is, take the animal home with you and keep it until the owner comes looking, then you can return it. 3 Do the same for whatever else you find that someone has lost—a donkey, a cloak, anything. Don't just ignore it. 4 If you see someone's donkey or cow that has fallen down on the road, don't just ignore it. Help lift it up. 5 A woman must not wear men's clothing, and a man must not wear women's clothing. Anyone who does this offends the Lord your God. 6 If you happen to find a bird's nest with chicks or eggs, whether it's in a tree or on the ground beside the road, and the mother is sitting on the chicks or eggs, don't take the mother with the young. 7 You may take the young, but make sure you let the mother go, so that you will do well and have a good long life. 8 When you build a new house, be sure to install a railing around your roof, so that you won't be held guilty if someone dies falling from it. 9 Don't plant your vineyard with another kind of crop. Otherwise everything you produce—the crop you planted and the fruit of your vineyard—must be dedicated to the Lord. 10 Don't harness an ox and a donkey together when you plow. 11 Don't wear clothes made of wool and linen woven together. 12 Put tassels on the hem of the cloak you use to cover yourself. 13 It may happen that a man marries a woman and sleeps with her, but ends up hating her, 14 and accuses her of being immoral, giving her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman and slept with her, but I found out she wasn't a virgin.” 15 The woman's parents are to bring the proof of her virginity to the elders at the town gate, 16 and the father will explain to them, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he has ended up hating her. 17 Now he has accused her of being immoral, saying, ‘I found out that your daughter wasn't a virgin.’ But here's the proof of her virginity.” The parents shall spread out the sheet in front of the town elders. 18 Then the elders of that city shall take the man and punish him. 19 They shall also fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give the money to the young woman's father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She is to remain his wife; he is not allowed to divorce her as long as he lives. 20 But if the accusation is true, and there's no proof of the woman's virginity, 21 she is to be taken to the door of her father's house, and there the men of her town are to stone her to death. She has done something disgraceful in Israel by acting immorally in her father's house. You must eliminate the evil from among you. 22 If a man is found sleeping with someone else's wife, both the man and the woman must die. You must eliminate the evil from Israel. 23 If a man meets a girl, a virgin engaged to another man, and sleeps with her there in the town, 24 then you must take both of them to the town gate and stone them to death. The young woman is guilty because she did not cry out for help in the town, and the man is guilty because he has brought shame on someone else's fiancée. You must eliminate the evil from among you. 25 However, if the man happens to meet a woman who is engaged out in the countryside, and he attacks her and rapes her, only the man has to die. 26 Don't do anything to the woman, because she has not committed a sin punishable by death. (This is the same kind of situation as when a man attacks someone else and murders them.) 27 When the man raped the woman who was engaged out in the countryside, she shouted out, but there wasn't anyone there to rescue her. 28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not engaged, and he grabs her and rapes her, and someone sees them, 29 the man must pay the woman's father fifty shekels of silver, and he must marry her because he has brought shame on her. He is not allowed to divorce her as long as he lives. 30 A man must not marry his father's wife, so that he won't bring shame on his father.
Deuteronomy · Free Bible Version
Deuteronomy 22 Free Bible Version
Audio: World English Bible (WEB), read by Winfred W. Henson · About the recordings
Cross references (25)
Related passages for each verse, from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge as collected and ranked by readers at OpenBible.info.
- 1 Exodus 23:4–5; Isaiah 58:7; Proverbs 24:11; Deuteronomy 22:3–4; Ezekiel 34:16
- 2 1 Thessalonians 4:6; Matthew 7:12
- 4 Romans 15:1; Luke 10:29–37; Exodus 23:4–5; 1 Thessalonians 5:14; 2 Corinthians 12:15
- 5 1 Corinthians 11:4–15; Deuteronomy 18:12
- 6 Leviticus 22:28; Proverbs 12:10; Genesis 8:17; Luke 12:6; Hosea 10:14
- 7 Deuteronomy 4:40; Proverbs 22:4
- 8 Mark 2:4; Jeremiah 19:13; 2 Samuel 11:2; Isaiah 22:1; Exodus 21:28–36
- 9 Leviticus 19:19; 2 Corinthians 11:3; Matthew 9:16; James 1:6–8; James 3:10
- 10 2 Corinthians 6:14–16
- 11 Leviticus 19:19
- 12 Matthew 23:5; Numbers 15:37–41
- 13 Genesis 29:21; Ephesians 5:28–29; Genesis 29:23; Genesis 29:31; Deuteronomy 24:1
- 14 Exodus 23:1; Exodus 20:16; Proverbs 18:8; 1 Timothy 5:14; Deuteronomy 22:19
- 18 Exodus 18:21
- 19 Deuteronomy 22:29; Matthew 19:8–9; Deuteronomy 24:1–4
- 21 Genesis 34:7; Deuteronomy 13:5; Judges 20:6; 2 Samuel 13:12–13; Judges 20:10
- 22 Leviticus 20:10; Ezekiel 23:45–47; Hebrews 13:4; John 8:4–5; Ezekiel 16:38
- 23 Matthew 1:18–19; Deuteronomy 20:7
- 24 Deuteronomy 22:21–22; 1 Corinthians 5:13; Deuteronomy 21:14; 1 Corinthians 5:2; Genesis 29:21
- 25 2 Samuel 13:14
- 26 Deuteronomy 21:22
- 27 1 Corinthians 13:7
- 28 Exodus 22:16–17
- 29 Deuteronomy 22:19; Deuteronomy 22:24; Deuteronomy 21:14
- 30 Deuteronomy 27:20; Leviticus 18:8; 1 Corinthians 5:1; Leviticus 20:11; Ezekiel 16:8
Cross references: OpenBible.info (CC BY), drawn mainly from the public-domain Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. · Sources & licences
What the Fathers said
Passages from the Church Fathers that expound or quote this chapter, verbatim from the public-domain Schaff edition (19th-century English translations).
How these were chosen
“Commentary” is the opening of a homily or exposition on this chapter (John Chrysostom’s homilies, Augustine’s tractates, sermons and expositions of the Psalms). “Quotes” are sentences where the edition’s own footnotes identify a quotation of a verse here, kept only when the wording matches the verse. Only works whose authorship is not in doubt are used. Psalms follow the Hebrew/English numbering (Augustine numbers them as the Septuagint does: his Psalm 50 is Psalm 51 here).
Hear what precept Christ gave to the Jews, creeping as they did upon the earth: "If thou see," saith He, "thine enemy's beast of burden falling down, do not hasten by, but raise it." And thou must see that to separate and reconcile men that are fighting is a much lighter thing than to lift up the fallen beast.
Read in context · Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 1, vol. 10 (1888)
If, therefore, the Scripture elsewhere says, The betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her, doth it not speak of a virgin?
Read in context · Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 7 (1894)
… Old Testament respecting care for brutes, in its principal meaning bears on the instruction of human beings: as in fact do all the rest: the precepts, for example, concerning various garments; and those concerning vineyards and seeds and not making the ground bear divers crops, and those concerning leprosy; and, in a word, all the rest: for they being of …
Read in context · Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 1, vol. 12 (1889)