22:6 If you happen to notice a bird’s nest along the road, whether in a tree or on the ground, and there are chicks or eggs with the mother bird sitting on them, 15 you must not take the mother from the young. 16
24:1 If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something offensive 20 in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house.
25:5 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband’s brother must go to her, marry her, 28 and perform the duty of a brother-in-law. 29
1 tn Or “selected”; Heb “took.”
2 sn Argob. This is a subdistrict of Bashan, perhaps north of the Yarmuk River. See Y. Aharoni, Land of the Bible, 314.
3 sn Geshurites. Geshur was a city and its surrounding area somewhere northeast of Bashan (cf. Josh 12:5 ; 13:11, 13). One of David’s wives was Maacah, the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur and mother of Absalom (cf. 2 Sam 13:37; 15:8; 1 Chr 3:2).
4 sn Maacathites. These were the people of a territory southwest of Mount Hermon on the Jordan River. The name probably has nothing to do with David’s wife from Geshur (see note on “Geshurites” earlier in this verse).
5 sn Havvoth-Jair. The Hebrew name means “villages of Jair,” the latter being named after a son (i.e., descendant) of Manasseh who took the area by conquest.
4 tn The translation assumes the reference is to Israel’s God in which case the point is this: God’s intervention in Israel’s experience is unique in the sense that he has never intervened in such power for any other people on earth. The focus is on the uniqueness of Israel’s experience. Some understand the divine name here in a generic sense, “a god,” or “any god.” In this case God’s incomparability is the focus (cf. v. 35, where this theme is expressed).
5 tn Heb “tried to go to take for himself.”
6 tn Heb “by testings.” The reference here is the judgments upon Pharaoh in the form of plagues. See Deut 7:19 (cf. v. 18) and 29:3 (cf. v. 2).
7 tn Heb “by strong hand and by outstretched arm.”
5 tn The Hebrew word תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, “abhorrent; detestable”) describes anything detestable to the
6 tn Heb “in the mountain.” The demonstrative pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons.
7 tn Heb “your sin.” This is a metonymy in which the effect (sin) stands for the cause (the metal calf).
8 tn Heb “burned it with fire.”
8 tn Heb “slain [one].”
9 tn Heb “and the mother sitting upon the chicks or the eggs.”
10 tn Heb “sons,” used here in a generic sense for offspring.
10 tn Heb “deeds of things”; NRSV “makes up charges against her”; NIV “slanders her.”
11 tn Heb “brings against her a bad name”; NIV “gives her a bad name.”
12 tn Heb “drew near to her.” This is another Hebrew euphemism for having sexual relations.
11 tn Heb “nakedness of a thing.” The Hebrew phrase עֶרְוַת דָּבָר (’ervat davar) refers here to some gross sexual impropriety (see note on “indecent” in Deut 23:14). Though the term usually has to do only with indecent exposure of the genitals, it can also include such behavior as adultery (cf. Lev 18:6-18; 20:11, 17, 20-21; Ezek 22:10; 23:29; Hos 2:10).
12 tn Heb “hates.” See note on the word “other” in Deut 21:15.
13 tn Heb “writes her a document of divorce.”
13 tn Heb “to return to take her to be his wife.”
14 sn The issue here is not divorce and its grounds per se but prohibition of remarriage to a mate whom one has previously divorced.
15 tn Heb “cause the land to sin” (so KJV, ASV).
14 tn Heb “in the field.”
15 tn Heb “of your hands.” This law was later applied in the story of Ruth who, as a poor widow, was allowed by generous Boaz to glean in his fields (Ruth 2:1-13).
15 tn Heb “take her as wife”; NRSV “taking her in marriage.”
16 sn This is the so-called “levirate” custom (from the Latin term levir, “brother-in-law”), an ancient provision whereby a man who died without male descendants to carry on his name could have a son by proxy, that is, through a surviving brother who would marry his widow and whose first son would then be attributed to the brother who had died. This is the only reference to this practice in an OT legal text but it is illustrated in the story of Judah and his sons (Gen 38) and possibly in the account of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 2:8; 3:12; 4:6).
16 tn Heb “want to take his sister-in-law, then his sister in law.” In the second instance the pronoun (“she”) has been used in the translation to avoid redundancy.
17 tn Heb “the
18 sn The place where he chooses to locate his name. This is a circumlocution for the central sanctuary, first the tabernacle and later the Jerusalem temple. See Deut 12:1-14 and especially the note on the word “you” in v. 14.