Study Desk

'What man has planted a vineyard and has not put it to use [harvesting its fruit]? Let him go and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would begin to use its fruit.

'And who is the man who is engaged (legally promised) to a woman and has not married her? Let him go and return to his house, otherwise he might die in the battle and another man would marry her.'

"Then the officers shall speak further to the soldiers and say, 'Who is the man who is afraid and lacks courage? Let him go and return to his house, so that he does not cause his brothers' courage to fail like his own.'

then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons, he cannot treat the son of his loved wife as firstborn in place of the son of the unloved wife—the [actual] firstborn.

"Instead he shall acknowledge the son of the unloved as the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he was the beginning of his strength (generative power); to him belongs the right of the firstborn.

"If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or of his mother, and when they reprimand and discipline him, he will not listen to them,

then his father and mother shall take hold of him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown.

"They shall say to the elders of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.'

"Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from among you, and all Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

his body shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall most certainly bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is cursed by God), so that you do not defile your land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance.

"You shall not see your countryman's ox or his sheep straying away or being stolen, and ignore [your duty to help] them; you shall certainly take them back to him.

"You shall do this with his donkey or with his garment or with anything that your countryman has lost and you have found. You are not allowed to ignore [your duty to help] them.

"You shall not see your countryman's donkey or his ox fall down along the road, and ignore [your duty to help] them; you shall certainly help him lift it up.

and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give it to the father of the young woman, because he publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. And she shall remain his wife; he is not allowed to divorce her as long as he lives.

then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and stone them to death—the young woman because she did not cry out for help [though she was] in the city, and the man because he has violated his neighbor's [promised] wife. So you shall remove the evil from among you.

"But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no sin worthy of death, for this is the same as when a man attacks his neighbor and murders him.

then the man who was intimate with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the girl's father, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he can never divorce her.

"A man shall not take his father's [former] wife, so that he will not expose his father's wife.

"He who has been castrated by having his testicles crushed or his male organ cut off shall not enter the congregation of the LORD.

"A person of illegitimate birth shall not enter the assembly of the LORD; none of his descendants, even to the tenth generation.