The Wilderness Years

You are not to plow with an ox and a donkey together.

You are not to wear clothing woven with two kinds of thread, wool and linen together.

"You are to make for yourself twisted cords on the four corners of the garment you wrap around yourself.

"If a man marries a woman, has sexual relations with her and then, having come to dislike her,

brings false charges against her and defames her character by saying, 'I married this woman, but when I had intercourse with her I did not find evidence that she was a virgin';

then the girl's father and mother are to take the evidence of the girl's virginity to the leaders of the town at the gate.

The girl's father will say to the leaders, 'I let my daughter marry this man, but he hates her,

so he has brought false charges that he didn't find evidence of her virginity; yet here is the evidence of my daughter's virginity'-(

)and they will lay the cloth before the town leaders.

The leaders of that town are to take the man, punish him, and fine him two-and-a-half pounds of silver shekels, which they will give to the girl's father, because he has publicly defamed a virgin of Isra'el. She will remain his wife, and he is forbidden from divorcing her as long as he lives.

"But if the charge is substantiated that evidence for the girl's virginity could not be found;

then they are to lead the girl to the door of her father's house, and the men of her town will stone her to death, because she has committed in Isra'el the disgraceful act of being a prostitute while still in her father's house. In this way you will put an end to such wickedness among you.

"If a man is found sleeping with a woman who has a husband, both of them must die -the man who went to bed with the woman and the woman too. In this way you will expel such wickedness from Isra'el.

"If a girl who is a virgin is engaged to a man, and another man comes upon her in the town and has sexual relations with her;

you are to bring them both out to the gate of the city and stone them to death - the girl because she didn't cry out for help, there in the city, and the man because he has humiliated his neighbor's wife. In this way you will put an end to such wickedness among you.

"But if the man comes upon the engaged girl out in the countryside, and the man grabs her and has sexual relations with her, then only the man who had intercourse with her is to die.

You will do nothing to the girl, because she has done nothing deserving of death. The situation is like the case of the man who attacks his neighbor and kills him.

For he found her in the countryside, and the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her.

"If a man comes upon a girl who is a virgin but who is not engaged, and he grabs her and has sexual relations with her, and they are caught in the act,

then the man who had intercourse with her must give to the girl's father one-and-a-quarter pounds of silver shekels, and she will become his wife, because he humiliated her; he may not divorce her as long as he lives.

"A man is not to take his father's wife, thus violating his father's rights.

"A man with crushed or damaged private parts may not enter the assembly of ADONAI.

"A mamzer may not enter the assembly of ADONAI, nor may his descendants down to the tenth generation enter the assembly of ADONAI.

"No 'Amoni or Mo'avi may enter the assembly of ADONAI, nor may any of his descendants down to the tenth generation ever enter the assembly of ADONAI,

because they did not supply you with food and water when you were on the road after leaving Egypt, and because they hired Bil'am the son of B'or from P'tor in Aram-Naharayim to put a curse on you