Deuteronomy 22:22

If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

22:13-30 These and the like regulations might be needful then, and yet it is not necessary that we should curiously examine respecting them. The laws relate to the seventh commandment, laying a restraint upon fleshly lusts which war against the soul.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The fine was to be paid to the father, because the slander was against him principally as the head of the wife's family. If the damsel were an orphan the fine reverted to herself. The fact that the penalties attached to bearing false witness against a wife are fixed and comparatively light indicates the low estimation and position of the woman at that time.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

13-30. If a man take a wife, &c.—The regulations that follow might be imperatively needful in the then situation of the Israelites; and yet, it is not necessary that we should curiously and impertinently inquire into them. So far was it from being unworthy of God to leave such things upon record, that the enactments must heighten our admiration of His wisdom and goodness in the management of a people so perverse and so given to irregular passions. Nor is it a better argument that the Scriptures were not written by inspiration of God to object that this passage, and others of a like nature, tend to corrupt the imagination and will be abused by evil-disposed readers, than it is to say that the sun was not created by God, because its light may be abused by wicked men as an assistant in committing crimes which they have meditated [Horne].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

If a man be found; if he be convicted of this fault, though not taken in the very act.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband,..... This law respects adultery, and is the same with that in Leviticus 20:10.

then they shall both of them die; with the strangling of a napkin, as the Targum of Jonathan, which is the death such persons were put to; and is always meant when death is simply spoken of, and it is not specified what death; See Gill on Leviticus 20:10,

both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman; they were both to die, and to die the same death:

so shalt thou put away evil from Israel; such that do it, as the above Targum; See Gill on Deuteronomy 22:21.

Geneva Study Bible

If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

22. Of Adultery. Both guilty parties shall die; so H, Leviticus 20:10. By inference from Deuteronomy 22:21; Deuteronomy 22:24 the death was by stoning; so Ezekiel 16:38-40, John 8:5.

So in Arabia to this day; Burton, Pilgr. to Mecca, ii. 19, Musil, Ethn. Ber. 210; among the Arabs of Sinai the man alone is killed, the woman may be divorced and pays the bride-price. (Jennings-Bramley, PEFQ, 1905, 214, 216). By § 129 of Ḫammurabi both parties were strangled and cast into the water, but the wife’s husband might save her and the king his servant (?); by § 131 a wife accused by her husband but not caught in a guilty act might swear her innocence and return to her house; but by § 132 if suspicion was raised against her, though not caught in the act, she should plunge into the sacred river (ordeal by water). Other cases deal with the wife’s resorting to another husband in consequence of her husband’s captivity, §§ 133–135. In Israel, as at the present day in Syria, cases of adultery were often due to the absence of husbands on a journey, Proverbs 7:19. The whole subject is discussed in several artt. in Hastings’ Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, Vol. 1.

married to an husband] Heb. be‘ulath-ba‘al, only here, Deuteronomy 21:13, and Genesis 20:3. But cp. Hosea 2:16.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 22-29. - Four cases are here distinguished.

1. That of a married woman who has been unfaithful; in this case both the woman and her paramour are, when detected, to be put to death (ver. 22).

2. That of a virgin betrothed who is assailed in a town, where she might have cried for protection, but did not; in this case also both were to be punished with death as adulterers (vers. 23, 24).

3. That of a virgin betrothed who has been forcibly violated in the field, where, if she cried for help, her cry was in vain; in this case only the man should be liable to be put to death, whilst the woman was to be held innocent (vers. 25-27).

4. That of a virgin not betrothed with whom a man has had carnal intercourse; in this case the man should be required to pay a fine of fifty shekels of silver to the damsel's father, and to take her to be his wife, from whom he could not be separated during life (vers. 28, 29). Deuteronomy 22:22

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

If any one lay with a married woman, they were both of them to be put to death as adulterers (cf. Leviticus 20:10).