The Neighbour Cannot Simply Be Ignored

Exodus 23:4 gave the same rule about “thine enemy’s ox”. Deuteronomy restates it with “thy brother’s”, and adds the verb that gives the law its bite: “hide thyself”, the Hebrew for averting the eyes or pretending not to have seen. “In any case” is the King James way of rendering a doubled verb, return it you shall return it.

The finder’s own house becomes the lost property office, the animal kept among his own stock with no date set for giving up. “Seek after” is darash, the verb used for enquiring of God; the owner does the searching, and the finder keeps the beast safe until the search reaches him.

The list climbs from the ass to the cloak to “all lost thing”, which leaves nothing out. The last clause in Hebrew is closer to “thou canst not hide thyself”: an impossibility rather than a mere prohibition. The Mishnah built most of a chapter of lost property law (Bava Metzia 2) on this single verse.

Exodus 23:5 pictured an enemy’s ass collapsed under its load. Here the owner is on the spot, and the verb makes it a joint effort: help him lift them up, with him. The traveller cannot stand by with folded arms while the owner struggles, and he cannot take over the load and claim it either.

The phrase behind “that which pertaineth unto a man” is keli geber, where keli means gear or equipment, often weapons, and geber is a word for a man in his strength. The Talmud (Nazir 59a) records a rabbi who read it as forbidding a woman to go out to war under arms. The second half uses the ordinary word for a woman’s cloak.

“Dam” was the regular English word for an animal’s mother in 1611. The nest must “chance to be before thee”, met by accident on the road or in a tree, so the law concerns the wild nest a traveller stumbles on, not birds kept at home. Mother and brood are not to be taken in one sweep.

The reward attached is the one promised in 5:16 for honouring father and mother: that it may be well with thee and thy days be long. The Jerusalem Talmud (Peah 1:1) noticed the pairing and drew the lesson that the lightest command and the weightiest carry the same promise, so none can be ranked as small.

“Battlement” is the Hebrew maaqeh, a low parapet, found only here in the Old Testament. Roofs were flat and used as rooms: Rahab dried flax on hers (Joshua 2:6) and Samuel talked with Saul on one (1 Samuel 9:25). A fall from such a roof leaves bloodguilt on the household, the same language the Book of Deuteronomy used for unsolved murder in 21:8.

The King James “defiled” translates tiqdash, literally “become holy”. A vineyard sown with a second crop is not made dirty; its whole produce is forfeited as consecrated, removed from the owner’s use. Leviticus 19:19 forbids mixed seed in a field; Deuteronomy carries the rule into the vineyard.

The shortest law in the chapter, eleven words in the King James and five in Hebrew. The ox was a clean animal and the ass an unclean one, and they differ in size, strength and stride, so a mixed team pulls crooked. Paul’s “unequally yoked” (2 Corinthians 6:14) borrows a Greek word the Septuagint uses for the mixed breeding of Leviticus 19:19.

“A garment of divers sorts” is shaatnez, an odd word that appears only here and in Leviticus 19:19 and has no settled etymology. The verse itself defines it as wool and linen together. The high priest’s sash, woven of fine linen with blue, purple and scarlet yarn (Exodus 39:29), mixed exactly those fibres, which the rabbis took as a privilege reserved for the sanctuary.

The word here is gedilim, twisted cords, not the tsitsit of Numbers 15:38. “Quarters” is kanaph, the corner or wing of a cloak, the word Ruth uses when she asks Boaz to spread his “skirt” over her (Ruth 3:9). The phrase “wherewith thou coverest thyself” shows the rule applies to the outer mantle, which also served as a blanket at night.

Three verbs move a marriage from beginning to collapse in one line: take, go in unto, hate. “Hate” is a technical term in the marriage laws for rejection, used again of a second husband in 24:3. The verse is only the opening clause of a long sentence, and the charge itself follows.

“Occasions of speech” is alilot devarim, a phrase for pretexts or trumped up charges, deeds made of words. The man’s claim is given in his own voice, “I took this woman”, which does not even call her his wife. “Evil name” is shem ra, and it returns in verse 19 as the reason for his punishment.

The mother is named beside the father, which is rare in the procedural laws, where the father usually acts alone. The gate is the city court, where the elders sat. The parents bring the evidence themselves; the burden lies with the family answering the charge in public.

Only the father speaks. His opening words, “I gave my daughter unto this man to wife”, restate the transaction he was party to, and so make him a witness to the marriage as well as its guarantor. He also names the motive before he names the charge: “he hateth her”.

“Lo” marks the turn from accusation to exhibit. The father quotes the husband’s words back to the elders, then points to the proof. “Cloth” is simlah, the ordinary word for a mantle or garment, here the wedding night sheet laid open before the court.

“Chastise” is yasar, the verb for disciplining a son in 21:18. Jewish interpretation commonly took it as a flogging, applying the forty stripes of 25:2–3. The punishment falls on the man in the same gate where he made his accusation.

“Amerce” is old legal English for fining someone at the court’s discretion, from the French a merci. The hundred shekels are twice the fifty of verse 29. The injury is described as against “a virgin of Israel”, so the slander is treated as an insult to the whole people, not only to one family.

The law does not assume the father is always telling the truth. “If this thing be true” allows that the husband’s charge might stand, and the verse sets that possibility out with the same care as the first.

The doorway of the father’s house is chosen deliberately: the offence is located “in her father’s house”, before the marriage. “Folly in Israel” is nebalah, the word used when Shechem took Dinah (Genesis 34:7) and when Tamar pleaded with Amnon (2 Samuel 13:12), a deed that outrages the community’s standards.

“Found” means caught in the act, and the verse insists twice that both die, repeating “both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman”. The formula at the end changes slightly from verse 21: evil is put away “from Israel” rather than “from among you”, widening the concern from one town to the nation.

A betrothed woman was legally bound already, and the next verse calls her “his neighbour’s wife” though the wedding has not taken place. Betrothal in Israel was sealed by the bride price and could only be ended by divorce, which is why Joseph planned to “put away” Mary privately (Matthew 1:19).

“Humbled” is innah, to afflict or abase, the verb used of Shechem with Dinah in Genesis 34:2. The execution takes place at the city gate, the court, rather than at a household door as in verse 21, because the offence is not located in a father’s house.

“Force” translates hechezik, to take hold with strength, from the root chazaq that Joshua 1 will use for “be strong”. The same strength that should defend a neighbour is here turned against a woman. The change of setting to “the field” reverses the outcome of verse 24.

The Hebrew says literally “there is not in the girl a sin of death”. The comparison to a man who rises against his neighbour and kills him places her with the murdered neighbour: she is the one struck, and no one blames the victim of a killing for the attack.

No witness is required to prove she cried out; the law presumes it. “None to save” uses moshia, a saviour or deliverer, the root of Joshua’s own name. In the empty field there was no rescuer, and the law will not add a judgment to her suffering.

Unlike the betrothed woman of verses 23–27, this woman is not yet bound to anyone, so the offence is not against another man’s marriage. “And they be found” makes the case turn on discovery: the provision applies once the act has come to light.

Fifty shekels was a large sum. David paid the same amount for Araunah’s threshing floor and oxen together (2 Samuel 24:24). Exodus 22:16–17 calls a similar payment “the dowry of virgins”, the mohar a groom gave the bride’s father. The ban on divorce withdraws the right Deuteronomy 24:1 otherwise allows a husband.

“Skirt” is kanaph again, the corner of the cloak from verse 12. Reuben lay with his father’s concubine Bilhah (Genesis 35:22) and lost the firstborn’s place for it (Genesis 49:4); Absalom took David’s concubines on the roof (2 Samuel 16:22). Hebrew Bibles count this verse as 23:1, opening the next chapter.