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Deuteronomy 22: What the Passage Says

73 claims across 30 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Deuteronomy 22 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter collects laws for everyday life in Israel. The first part covers returning a neighbor's stray animals and lost property, clothing that belongs to the other sex, sparing a mother bird, a railing on a new roof, keeping seed, plow animals and cloth unmixed, and tassels on the cloak. The rest sets out marriage and sexual cases: a husband who publicly charges his bride with not having been a virgin, adultery, sex with an engaged woman in town or in open country, and a man who takes a woman who is not engaged. The penalties named include punishment and a fine for the husband, a marriage that cannot be ended by divorce, and death by stoning.

Claim by Claim

  1. 22:1
    • You must not see your brother's ox or his sheep straying and ignore it.
    • You must certainly bring the straying animal back to your brother.
  2. 22:2
    • If your brother does not live near you, or if you do not know who he is, you are to bring the animal to your own house.
    • The animal is to stay with you until your brother comes looking for it.
    • You are then to return it to him.
  3. 22:3
    • You are to do the same with your brother's donkey.
    • You are to do the same with his garment.
    • You are to do the same with any lost thing of your brother's that he has lost and you have found.
    • You are not permitted to ignore it.
  4. 22:4
    • You must not see your brother's donkey or his ox fallen down on the road and ignore it.
    • You must surely help him lift the animal up.
  5. 22:5
    • A woman must not wear what belongs to a man.
    • A man must not put on a woman's garment.
    • Everyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD your God.
  6. 22:6
    • If you happen upon a bird's nest along the road, in a tree or on the ground, with chicks or eggs in it, and the mother is sitting on the chicks or on the eggs,
    • You must not take the mother together with the young.
  7. 22:7
    • You must certainly let the mother go.
    • You may take the young for yourself.
    • Letting the mother go is so that it may go well with you.
    • Letting the mother go is so that you may prolong your days.
  8. 22:8
    • When you build a new house, you are to make a parapet for your roof.
    • The parapet is so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone falls from the roof.
  9. 22:9
    • You must not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed.
    • Otherwise the whole yield becomes forfeit: both the crop of the seed you sowed and the produce of the vineyard.
  10. 22:10
    • You must not plow with an ox and a donkey together.
  11. 22:11
    • You must not wear cloth of mixed material, wool and linen together.
  12. 22:12
    • You are to make twisted tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself.
  13. 22:13
    • If a man takes a wife and has relations with her and then comes to hate her,
  14. 22:14
    • And he charges her with shameful conduct and gives her a bad name,
    • And he says, I took this woman, and when I came near her I did not find evidence of her virginity.
  15. 22:15
    • Then the young woman's father and her mother are to take the evidence of her virginity and bring it out.
    • They are to bring it to the elders of the city at the gate.
  16. 22:16
    • The young woman's father is to say to the elders, I gave my daughter to this man as a wife.
    • The father is to say, And he hates her.
  17. 22:17
    • The father is to say, He has charged her with shameful conduct, saying, I did not find evidence of your daughter's virginity.
    • The father is to say, Yet this is the evidence of my daughter's virginity.
    • They are to spread the cloth before the elders of the city.
  18. 22:18
    • The elders of that city are to take that man.
    • The elders are to punish him.
  19. 22:19
    • They are to fine him a hundred shekels of silver.
    • They are to give the silver to the young woman's father.
    • The fine is because he gave a bad name to a virgin of Israel.
    • She is to remain his wife.
    • He may not divorce her as long as he lives.
  20. 22:20
    • But if the accusation is true, and evidence of the young woman's virginity is not found,
  21. 22:21
    • They are to bring the young woman out to the door of her father's house.
    • The men of her city are to stone her with stones until she dies.
    • The reason is that she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by acting as a prostitute in her father's house.
    • So you are to purge the evil from among you.
  22. 22:22
    • If a man is found lying with a woman who is married to a husband, both of them are to die.
    • Both the man who lay with the woman and the woman are to die.
    • So you are to purge the evil from Israel.
  23. 22:23
    • If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a man, and another man finds her in the city and lies with her,
  24. 22:24
    • You are to bring both of them out to the gate of that city.
    • You are to stone them with stones until they die.
    • The young woman is stoned because she did not cry out, being in the city.
    • The man is stoned because he violated his neighbor's wife.
    • So you are to purge the evil from among you.
  25. 22:25
    • But if a man finds a betrothed young woman in the open country, and the man overpowers her and lies with her,
    • Then only the man who lay with her is to die.
  26. 22:26
    • You are to do nothing to the young woman.
    • There is in the young woman no sin worthy of death.
    • This case is like a man rising against his neighbor and murdering him.
  27. 22:27
    • He found her in the open country.
    • The betrothed young woman cried out.
    • There was no one to save her.
  28. 22:28
    • If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin and is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered,
  29. 22:29
    • Then the man who lay with her is to give the young woman's father fifty shekels of silver.
    • She is to become his wife.
    • The reason is that he violated her.
    • He may not divorce her as long as he lives.
  30. 22:30
    • A man must not take his father's wife.
    • A man must not uncover his father's skirt.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

22:1
"Brother" here means any fellow Israelite, not a blood relative. These laws assume small farming villages where people recognized their neighbors' animals on sight, and where a lost ox or sheep was a serious loss of wealth.
22:3
"Raiment" means clothing. The cloak was the most valuable thing most people owned: a large rectangle of woven cloth worn by day and used as a blanket at night, so finding someone's lost cloak mattered far more than finding a coat does now.
22:5
The Hebrew word behind "what belongs to a man" is broader than clothing: it covers gear, equipment and articles of any kind, and can include weapons, so the law may reach beyond dress. "Detestable" translates to'evah, a term used for things regarded as offensive and unfit to bring near God, the same word applied elsewhere to the ritual practices of Israel's neighbors.
22:6
"Dam" is an old English word for the mother of an animal, still used of horses and cattle. It has nothing to do with a dam across a river.
22:7
"Live a long time" is a fixed legal formula in Deuteronomy promising long life in the land; it is attached to only a few commands, among them honoring one's father and mother.
22:8
Roofs in this period were flat and were used as living space (for sleeping, drying grain and entertaining), so falls were a real risk. "The guilt of spilled blood" (bloodguilt) is a legal state: a household on whose property someone died bore liability for that death until it was dealt with.
22:9
The verb translated "defiled" literally means "become holy" or "set apart", the crop passes out of the owner's use, forfeited rather than made dirty. Verses 9-11 form a set of laws against mixing categories that were understood to belong apart: seeds, work animals, fibers.
22:10
An ox and a donkey differ greatly in size, strength and pace, so a shared yoke works badly for both. The law also belongs to the group in verses 9-11 forbidding the mixing of unlike kinds.
22:11
The Hebrew has a single technical term, sha'atnez, for cloth woven of two fibers. Wool-and-linen fabric was not simply strange: it was the material of the priests' garments and the tabernacle hangings, reserved for sacred use.
22:12
The tassels (Hebrew tzitzit) were twisted cords fastened to the corners of the outer cloak, a large rectangular wrap that also served as a blanket at night. Numbers 15:38-39 describes them as including a blue cord and serving as a visible reminder of God's commands.
22:13
"Comes to hate her" is partly a legal expression: in marriage law of this period "hate" describes a husband repudiating his wife and moving to be rid of her, not merely a change of feeling.
22:14
A wife who was not a virgin at marriage was held to have defrauded her husband and her father, who had received a payment for her. The accusation is therefore a public legal charge with property and life at stake, not gossip.
22:15
The town gate was the open space just inside the wall where legal cases were heard and business witnessed, the community's courtroom. The "proof" refers to a cloth or garment from the wedding night, kept afterwards by the bride's family; its bloodstains were treated as evidence of her virginity.
22:17
The cloth is the bedding or garment from the wedding night, produced by the bride's parents. The physical evidence itself was understood to be imperfect, but the law makes the parents' possession of it decisive against the husband's word.
22:18
The Hebrew verb for "punish" here most likely means flogging, the standard corporal penalty (see Deuteronomy 25:1-3), though the text does not spell out the form or the number of strokes.
22:19
A shekel was a weight of silver, roughly eleven or twelve grams; coins did not yet exist, so silver was weighed out. A hundred shekels is twice the fifty-shekel payment named in verse 29 and represents several years' wages for a laborer. The ban on divorce is part of the penalty: the man loses a right every other husband held, and the woman keeps the support of a household.
22:21
"A disgraceful thing in Israel" translates nebalah, a strong term for an outrage that tears the fabric of the community, not merely shameful behavior. Stoning was carried out by the townsmen together, so that no single executioner bore the death; the location at her father's door marks the household where the offense is held to have occurred.
22:22
In Israelite law adultery was defined by the woman's marital status: a married woman's relations with any man broke a legally binding claim, while a married man's relations with an unmarried woman fell under other laws, such as verses 28-29.
22:23
Betrothal was not a modern engagement. It was a legally binding contract, usually sealed by a payment to the woman's family, after which she was already called the man's wife; only death or a formal divorce could end it, though she still lived in her father's house until the marriage was completed.
22:24
"Violated" here renders a Hebrew verb meaning to humble or bring low, used of forced or illicit sexual relations. The reasoning turns on the setting: within a walled town, houses stood close enough that a cry for help would be heard, so silence is read by the law as consent, a presumption the next verses set aside for the open country.
22:25
Out in the open country there were no neighbors close enough to hear her call for help. The law therefore assumes she fought back and cried out.
22:26
Comparing the case to murder is the law's way of classifying it: the woman is the victim of a violent attack, and carries no guilt of any kind.
22:28
The Hebrew verb translated "grabs" here (tafas, to seize or take hold of) is not the stronger word used in verse 25 (hazaq, to overpower). Interpreters disagree over whether this case describes rape or a seduction the community discovers, and the wording leaves both readings open.
22:29
Fifty shekels of silver matches the standard payment a groom's family made to a bride's father; the man must pay it whether or not the marriage was wanted. A parallel law in Exodus 22:16-17 allows the father to refuse the marriage and keep the payment; this passage does not mention that option.
22:30
"His father's wife" means a stepmother, not the man's own mother, who is covered separately (Leviticus 18:7). The King James phrase "uncover his father's skirt" is a Hebrew idiom: to lift the corner or hem of a man's garment over a woman was to claim her, so the expression stands for taking over a father's marriage bed and, with it, his position in the household. In Hebrew Bibles this verse is numbered as the first verse of chapter 23.

Read Deuteronomy 22