Caring for Your Brother’s Property

1“If you see your brother’s ox or sheep straying, you must not ignore it; make sure you return it to your brother. 2If your brother does not live near you or you don’t know him, you are to bring the animal to your home to remain with you until your brother comes looking for it; then you can return it to him. 3Do the same for his donkey, his garment, or anything your brother has lost and you have found. You must not ignore it.a 4If you see your brother’s donkey or ox fallen down on the road, you must not ignore it; you must help him lift it up.

Preserving Natural Distinctions

5“A woman is not to wear male clothing, and a man is not to put on a woman’s garment, for everyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD your God.

6“If you come across a bird’s nest with chicks or eggs, either in a tree or on the ground along the road, and the mother is sitting on the chicks or eggs, you must not take the mother along with the young. 7You may take the young for yourself, but be sure to let the mother go free, so that you may prosper and live long. 8If you build a new house, make a railing around your roof, so that you don’t bring bloodguilt on your house if someone falls from it. 9Do not plant your vineyard with two types of seed; otherwise, the entire harvest, both the crop you plant and the produce of the vineyard, will be defiled. 10Do not plow with an ox and a donkey together. 11Do not wear clothes made of both wool and linen.b 12Make tassels on the four corners of the outer garment you wear.c

Violations of Proper Sexual Conduct

13“If a man marries a woman, has sexual relations with her, and comes to hate her, 14and accuses her of shameful conduct, and gives her a bad name, saying, ‘I married this woman and was intimate with her, but I didn’t find any evidence of her virginity,’ 15the young woman’s father and mother will take the evidence of her virginity and bring it to the city elders at the •gate.d 16The young woman’s father will say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man as a wife, but he hates her. 17He has accused her of shameful conduct, saying: “I didn’t find any evidence of your daughter’s virginity,” but here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ They will spread out the cloth before the city elders. 18Then the elders of that city will take the man and punish him.e 19They will also fine him 100 silver shekels and give them to the young woman’s father, because that man gave an Israelite virgin a bad name. She will remain his wife; he cannot divorce her as long as he lives. 20But if this accusation is true and no evidence of the young woman’s virginity is found, 21they will bring the woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city will stone her to death. For she has committed an outrage in Israel by being promiscuous in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from you.

22“If a man is discovered having sexual relations with another man’s wife, both the man who had sex with the woman and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel. 23If there is a young woman who is a virgin •engaged to a man, and another man encounters her in the city and has sex with her, 24you must take the two of them out to the gate of that city and stone them to death — the young woman because she did not cry out in the city and the man because he has violated his neighbor’s fiancée. You must purge the evil from you. 25But if the man encounters an engaged woman in the open country, and he seizes and rapes her, only the man who raped her must die. 26Do nothing to the young woman, because she is not •guilty of an offense deserving death. This case is just like one in which a man attacks his neighbor and murders him. 27When he found her in the field, the engaged woman cried out, but there was no one to rescue her. 28If a man encounters a young woman, a virgin who is not engaged, takes hold of her and rapes her, and they are discovered, 29the man who raped her must give the young woman’s father 50 silver shekels, and she must become his wife because he violated her.f He cannot divorce her as long as he lives.

30“A man is not to marry his father’s wife; he must not violate his father’s marriage bed.g, h, i