Text -- Deuteronomy 22:16-30 (NET)

22:16 The young woman’s father must say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man and he has rejected her. 22:17 Moreover, he has raised accusations of impropriety by saying, ‘I discovered your daughter was not a virgin,’ but this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity!” The cloth must then be spread out before the city’s elders. 22:18 The elders of that city must then seize the man and punish him. 22:19 They will fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, for the man who made the accusation ruined the reputation of an Israelite virgin. She will then become his wife and he may never divorce her as long as he lives. 22:20 But if the accusation is true and the young woman was not a virgin, 22:21 the men of her city must bring the young woman to the door of her father’s house and stone her to death, for she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by behaving like a prostitute while living in her father’s house. In this way you will purge evil from among you. 22:22 If a man is caught having sexual relations with a married woman both the man who had relations with the woman and the woman herself must die; in this way you will purge evil from Israel. 22:23 If a virgin is engaged to a man and another man meets her in the city and has sexual relations with her, 22:24 you must bring the two of them to the gate of that city and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry out though in the city and the man because he violated his neighbor’s fiancée; in this way you will purge evil from among you. 22:25 But if the man came across the engaged woman in the field and overpowered her and raped her, then only the rapist must die. 22:26 You must not do anything to the young woman– she has done nothing deserving of death. This case is the same as when someone attacks another person and murders him, 22:27 for the man met her in the field and the engaged woman cried out, but there was no one to rescue her. 22:28 Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes her and they are discovered. 22:29 The man who has raped her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife because he has violated her; he may never divorce her as long as he lives. 22:30 A man may not marry his father’s former wife and in this way dishonor his father.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Deu 22:16

¹ tn Heb “hated.” See note on the word “other” in Deut 21:15.

NET Notes: Deu 22:17

¹ tn Heb “they will spread the garment.”

NET Notes: Deu 22:18

¹ tn Heb “discipline.”

NET Notes: Deu 22:19

¹ tn Heb “for he”; the referent (the man who made the accusation) has been specified in the translation to avoid confusion with the young woman’s father, the last-mentioned male.

² tn Heb “brought forth a bad name.”

NET Notes: Deu 22:21

¹ tn The Hebrew term נְבָלָה (nÿvalah) means more than just something stupid. It refers to a moral lapse so serious as to jeopardize the whole covenant community (cf. Gen 34:7; Judg 19:23; 20:6, 10; Jer 29:23). See C. Pan, NIDOTTE 3:11-13. Cf. NAB “she committed a crime against Israel.”

² tn Heb “burn.” See note on Deut 21:21.

NET Notes: Deu 22:22

¹ tn Heb “lying with” (so KJV, NASB), a Hebrew idiom for sexual relations.

² tn Heb “a woman married to a husband.”

³ tn Heb “burn.” See note on the phrase “purge out” in Deut 21:21.

NET Notes: Deu 22:23

¹ tn Heb “finds.”

² tn Heb “lies with.”

NET Notes: Deu 22:24

¹ tn Heb “humbled.”

² tn Heb “wife.”

³ tn Heb “burn.” See note on the phrase “purge out” in Deut 21:21.

NET Notes: Deu 22:25

¹ tn Heb “found,” also in vv. 27, 28.

² tn Heb “lay with” here refers to a forced sexual relationship, as the accompanying verb “seized” (חָזַק, khazaq) makes clear.

³ tn Heb “the man who lay with her, only him.”

NET Notes: Deu 22:26

¹ tn Heb “his neighbor.”

NET Notes: Deu 22:27

¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the man who attacked the woman) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

NET Notes: Deu 22:28

¹ tn Heb “lies with.”

NET Notes: Deu 22:30

¹ sn Beginning with 22:30, the verse numbers through 23:25 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 22:30 ET = 23:1 HT, 23:1 ET = 23:2 HT, 23:2 ET = 23:3 HT, etc., through 23:25 ET = 23:26 HT. With 24:1 the verse numbers in the ET and HT are again the same.

² tn Heb “take.” In context this refers to marriage, as in the older English expression “take a wife.”

³ sn This presupposes either the death of the father or their divorce since it would be impossible for one to marry his stepmother while his father was still married to her.

⁴ tn Heb “uncover his father’s skirt” (so ASV, NASB). This appears to be a circumlocution for describing the dishonor that would come to a father by having his own son share his wife’s sexuality (cf. NAB, NIV “dishonor his father’s bed”).