Beginning
Israelite teachers and scribes are fond of organizing material using mnemonic devices. If two writings share a key word, phrase, or idea, it is considered clever and attractive to put them next to one another. This principle is applied often as the first law in Deuteronomy 21:1 begins by using some Hebrew words similar to those at the end of the last law in the previous group. Even though the second law in 21:10 is really about marriage, it begins, “When you go to battle against your enemies,” transitioning from the warfare laws. The third law follows because it starts by talking about marriage, even though it’s really about the inheritance rights of sons. And the next law also talks about sons—except that they’re so disobedient, they need to be executed. So the final law in the group is about executions. These language techniques are intended to help the Israelites memorize the laws.
21 Moses: If a murder victim is found lying on the ground in the open field, anywhere in the territory the Eternal your God is giving you to live in, and no one knows who the killer was, then perform a special ceremony to remove the bloodguilt from your land. 5 Send for the priests, the descendants of Levi, the ones the Eternal your God chose to serve Him and to bless His name, because they’re the ones who settle disputes and handle cases of injury like this.[a] 2 Have your elders and judges measure the distance from the body to the nearby cities. 3 The elders of the city that’s closest to the body will have jurisdiction and offer a special sacrifice. Have them take a heifer that has never been put to work pulling a yoke, 4 bring it down by a flowing stream onto land where no crops have ever been planted or grown, and break its neck in that stream. 6 Then in the presence of the priests, have those city elders wash their hands over the heifer’s corpse and take an oath: 7 “Our hands didn’t shed this blood, and our eyes never saw who did. 8 Eternal, please cover the wickedness of Your people Israel, the ones You delivered from slavery. Please don’t consider your people Israel guilty of shedding innocent blood!” If this ceremony is performed, that city will be forgiven for the blood that was shed near it. 9 You will remove the bloodguilt from your nation because you’ve done what the Eternal considers right.
The Hebrew practice of kipper is when one party makes a gift to another in order to reestablish a good relationship between two parties and remove bloodguilt. The emphasis is not so much on the gift itself (although it should be a worthy one), but on the first party’s desire for reconciliation. When the kipper is a sacrificial animal resolving an offense that would otherwise be settled according to the principle of “a life for a life,” the death of the animal is a substitution for what should have been the death of the murderer. This situation helps Christians understand what the sacrificial system provides for Israel before the Lord and what Jesus does for us on the cross. His death is a substitutionary sacrifice, but it is also a kipper, a gift that reestablishes our relationship with God.
Moses: 10 When you go to battle against your enemies and the Eternal, your True God, enables you to defeat them and take them captive, 11 you may see a beautiful woman among the captives and be attracted to her and want to marry her. 12 Bring her back to your house, and then have her shave her head and cut her nails 13 and exchange her old clothes she was wearing when she was captured for new ones. Let her stay in your house and mourn for her father and mother for a month. Only after that may you, as her husband, have sexual relations with her. She will be your fully legal wife and you her husband. 14 If you are ever displeased with her and divorce her, you must give her freedom and send her anywhere she wants to go. You’re not allowed to sell her into slavery, and you can’t turn her into your own slave because you humiliated her.
15 Suppose a man has two wives, and he favors one over the other, loving one and not loving the other. If they’ve both borne him sons, but the firstborn doesn’t belong to his favorite wife, 16-17 he can’t designate the eldest son of his favorite wife as the firstborn instead. When he divides his property and gives his sons their inheritances, he must recognize his true firstborn, the eldest son of the other wife, and give him a double portion of all his property as is customary for all men. That son was the first one created by the man’s generative power, so the rights of the firstborn belong to him.
18 If anyone has a stubborn and rebellious son who refuses to obey his father and mother, who won’t even listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his parents may bring him to the city gate and formally accuse him in court, 20 telling the city elders what wicked things he has done. For example, “This is our son. He’s stubborn and rebellious! He won’t obey us. He’s a glutton and a drunk!” 21 Then all the people of the city will stone him to death. You must expel the wicked from your own community.[b] Everyone else in Israel will hear about it and fear the consequences of such rebellion.
22 If someone does something so wicked that it’s punishable by death, and if you execute that person and then hang the body on a pole, 23 don’t leave the body up there overnight. Bury it that same day because everyone who hangs is cursed by God.[c] Otherwise you will defile the ground the Eternal your God is giving you to live on.
The next group of laws deals generally with the theme of property: what to do with livestock (whether it’s yours or someone else’s), what kind of clothes to make and wear, how to build a house, how to grow crops. But this theme is defined so broadly to embrace all these laws that they are likely also gathered together by the same mnemonic principle as the previous group.
22 Moses: If you see your neighbor’s ox or sheep wandering away, don’t ignore it. Bring the animal back to its owner. 2 If the owner lives far from you, or if you don’t know whose animal it is, bring it back to your house and take care of it until the owner comes looking for it, and then return it to the Israelite. 3 Do the same thing with a donkey or a garment or anything else a neighbor might lose. If you find it, don’t ignore it; take care of it until the owner comes looking for it. 4 If you see your neighbor’s donkey or ox has fallen down in the roadway, don’t ignore it. Help that person get the animal back on its feet.
5 A woman must not wear men’s clothing, and men must not put on women’s garments. The Eternal your God is horrified when anyone does this.
6 If you come across a bird’s nest by the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and there are baby chicks or eggs in the nest and the mother bird is keeping them warm, don’t take the mother with them. 7 You must let the mother go, but you may take the chicks or eggs for yourself. If you do this, God will bless you; everything will go well with you, and you’ll live a long time.
8 When you build a new house, make sure you put a low wall around the edge of the roof so that no one will fall off and be killed. That way there will be no bloodguilt on your house as a result of your negligence.
Whether it be home construction, dietary practices and food preparation, or farming and livestock, Israelite customs should reflect the correct order and division of humans, animals, and plants. Further, all practice should encourage life, and not death.
Moses: 9 Don’t plant your vineyard with two kinds of seed. If you do, everything that grows there will not be pure, both what grows from the seeds and what grows on the vines. 10 Don’t plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together. 11 Don’t wear any material made of both wool and linen.
12 Make tassels for the four corners of the cloak you wear, as a reminder of God’s instructions.
The laws in the next group all address cases where sexual relations may have taken place outside of lawful marriage. This is considered not just immoral but also a threat to a foundational institution of Israelite society—the family. Sexual indiscretion is therefore punished with execution, in order to remove the threat from the midst of the community. In a context where a rival pagan value system exerts a constant push away from the pattern of life God outlined, such bold consequences are necessary to keep the nation on track while forming this new type of society.
Moses: 13 What if a man marries a woman and has sexual relations with her, but he ends up hating her, 14 falsely accuses her of shameful things, and slanders her publicly, saying, “I married this woman, but then I discovered she wasn’t a virgin”? 15 If this happens, the girl’s father and mother can clear her name by providing evidence of her virginity to the elders in a legal proceeding at the city gate. 16 The girl’s father may tell the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man as his wife. But now he dislikes her 17 and has falsely accused her, telling me, ‘I found out your daughter wasn’t a virgin!’ But here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” If the parents can provide the evidence by spreading out the cloth for the elders to see, 18 the city elders must punish the husband. He is to be beaten 19 and then fined two and a half pounds of silver, twice the amount of the bride price he paid before the marriage, which will be given to the girl’s father because this man publicly slandered one of Israel’s virgins. He can’t ever divorce her after this; he has to keep her as his wife. 20 But if the charge is true, and the girl wasn’t a virgin, 21 then bring her to the door of her father’s house. There the people of her city will stone her to death because she did something no Israelite should ever do: she was a fornicator while she was living in her father’s house! Expel the wicked from your own community.[d]
22 If it’s discovered that a man has been having sexual relations with a married woman, both the man and the woman must be put to death. Expel the wicked from Israel this way.
23 What if a man meets a girl who’s a virgin but who’s engaged to someone else, and he has sexual relations with her? If this happens in the city, 24 bring them both out to the gate of that city where the public will stone them to death: the girl, because she was in the city and could have cried for help but didn’t, meaning she consented; and the man, because he violated another man’s wife. Expel the wicked from your community this way. 25 But if this happens out in the country—if a man finds an engaged girl out there and overpowers and rapes her—then only the man must die. 26-27 But don’t do anything to the girl; she did nothing wrong and doesn’t deserve to die. When this man came after her, she cried for help, but no one was there to respond. She’s as innocent as the victim of a sudden murderous attack—there was nothing she could do.
28 If a man meets a girl who’s a virgin and who isn’t engaged to someone else, and he forces himself on her, when what he’s done is discovered, 29 he must pay 20 ounces of silver to her father as a bride price, and she will become his wife. He can’t ever divorce her after this because he’s dishonored her.
By marrying her, the rapist ensures she will be cared for during her lifetime because no other man would marry a woman who isn’t a virgin—even under such circumstances.
30 A man is not allowed to marry a woman who was once married to his father. He must respect the privacy and dignity of his father’s intimate relations with his wife.
The next group of laws describes certain people who may not come into the holy place to worship the Lord. This is the defining right of a member in good standing of the community, so the people described here are, in effect, being excluded from community membership itself. The reasons for exclusion reflect Deuteronomy’s ongoing concerns: rejecting pagan practices, upholding lawful marriage, maintaining wholeness and purity, and showing compassion to those in need.
23 Moses: No emasculated man, either by crushing or severing his male organs, may come and worship the Eternal. 2 No one born from an illegal or incestuous union may come and worship the Eternal. This prohibition stays in effect for 10 generations. 3 No Ammonite or Moabite may join the Israelite community and come and worship the Eternal. This prohibition stays in effect for 10 generations. 4 This is because they wouldn’t give you any food or water when you came out of Egypt and because they hired someone to curse you instead—Balaam (Beor’s son) from Pethor in northwest Mesopotamia.[e] 5 But the Eternal your God wouldn’t listen to Balaam, and He turned his curse into a blessing for you because the Eternal your God loves you. 6 Don’t ever make peace with them, and don’t align with them, for as long as you live.
These ordinances seem unduly harsh, but two ideas are at play. First, Lot’s sexual relations with his daughters bring forth the Ammonite and Moabite peoples, so this command is a commentary reflecting on that event. Second, these restrictions are only temporary. God requires a ritually pure and completely devoted people (both internal and external) in order to bring forth the “messianic seed of woman.” One day the physically maimed and social outcasts will be fully integrated into the people of God. Although Isaiah 56:3–5 models this expectation, Jesus makes it a reality.
Moses: 7 Don’t be hostile toward the Edomites because they’re related to you. And don’t be hostile toward the Egyptians because you were once foreign residents in their land. 8 The great-grandchildren of an Edomite or Egyptian may join the Israelite community and come and worship the Eternal.
9 When you go to fight your enemies, maintain strict standards of moral and ritual decency in your camp. 10 If a man becomes ritually impure because of a nocturnal emission, he can’t remain in the camp. He has to stay outside that day. 11 But when evening comes, once he’s washed himself in water, he may come back into the camp at sunset which begins the new day. 12 Designate an area outside the camp as a latrine. 13 When you go there to relieve yourself, bring the spade you carry with your equipment and turn the soil to cover your excrement. 14 Treat your camp as a sacred place because the Eternal your God will be walking around in it. He travels with your army to bring you victory and defeat your enemies. If He saw something indecent, He’d leave the camp.
15 Don’t send back any slaves who escape from their masters and come to you. 16 Let them live with you in any of your cities, anywhere they choose, wherever seems good to them. And don’t take advantage of them!
17 Neither the women nor the men of Israel shall become cult prostitutes. 18 The Eternal, your True God, will not accept income from male or female prostitution in payment of a vow in His house. Both kinds of cult prostitution are horrifying to Him! 19 You may not charge interest to a fellow Israelite who borrows money or food or anything else you could charge interest for. 20 You may charge foreigners interest, but you may not charge interest to your fellow Israelites. If you follow these instructions, the Eternal your God will bless you in everything you do in the land where you’re going to live when you cross the Jordan.
21 When you make a vow to the Eternal, your True God, pay it promptly. He will be looking for you to fulfill your promise; and if you don’t, it will be a sin. 22 It isn’t a sin to make a vow in the first place. 23 But whatever you do say, you must fulfill completely: you made a vow of your own free will to the Eternal your God, and you must keep your word.
The law in verses 9-14 is loosely connected with those in the preceding group by the theme of someone being excluded from a community that is defined by the Eternal One’s presence. In this case, however, both the exclusion and the community are temporary.
The concern for “decency” in this law doesn’t relate to moral or immoral acts, but rather to personal bodily functions that should be kept private and discrete. Otherwise, they expose too much of the person to community view. They’re described literally as a form of “nakedness.” In this context, being “unclean” means needing to deal with a private matter before being able to reengage the community.
An essential principle in the Old Testament is that what is unclean must never come into contact with what is holy. The Eternal One’s presence is supremely holy, thus the concern for decency in the camp where the Eternal One travels with the army.
24 When you’re passing through another Israelite’s vineyard, you may eat as many grapes as you want there, but don’t carry any away in a container. 25 When you’re passing through another Israelite’s field, you may pluck the grain with your hand and eat it, but you’re not allowed to bring a sickle to cut down the grain and carry it away.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.