A unique law in its ancient Near Eastern context, commentators such as ibn Ezra, Maimonides, and Calvin, living in a world of normative slavery, debated its reason, and whether it was theological or ethical.

A woman raped in the field is not punished for adultery, seemingly because rape is like murder (Deuteronomy 22:26). This odd analogy is the result of a misunderstanding of the verse’s use of a rhetorical device, parallelism with alternation.

Deuteronomy’s law of the beautiful captive woman protects the non-Israelite woman taken in war from rape and from being re-enslaved after marriage. At the same time, it discourages the man from marrying her, in order to preserve the interests of the Israelite family.

Upon a childless husband’s death, Deuteronomy states “his wife shall not marry a strange man outside.” This phrase originated as a contract clause, and the case was a practice exercise for scribes who were learning contract clauses.

A wife who intervenes in a fight to save her husband by grabbing his opponent’s testicles is punished by having her hand cut off (Deut 25:11–12). What is the nature of her offense? Why isn’t her intent to save her husband a mitigating factor? What is the relationship between the punishment and the crime?

If an Israelite wishes to marry a woman taken captive in war, she becomes part of the Israelite community and is protected from future re-enslavement. Uncomfortable with the Torah’s permission of this marriage, the rabbis declare it to be a concession to man’s “evil impulse,” an idea reminiscent of Jesus’ assertion that the Torah allows divorce as a concession to humanity’s “hard heart.”

The body of an executed criminal is hanged but must be buried on the same day, כִּי קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים תָּלוּי, “because a hanged body is a cursing of God” (Deuteronomy 21:23). What does this phrase mean?

Was Israel ever a tribal society? Although some scholars accept the Bible’s depiction of Israel’s pre-monarchic society as a confederation of tribes, others have dismissed this as ahistorical. Can a study of biblical law help us resolve this question?

Why can’t a man remarry his wife once she has been married to someone else?

Deuteronomy’s law of the rebellious son (Deuteronomy 21:18–21) poses numerous problems. Like the rabbis, Josephus interprets the law, but his conclusions are quite different.

Deuteronomy requires Israelite soldiers to carry a shovel with them for covering their feces, outside the war camp, because God is in the camp. The Qumranites and Karaites assume that feces must be impure, while the rabbis extend the law to include times of prayer and Torah study, and maintaining human decency at all times.

An investigation of the ideology behind Deuteronomy 22:12-29.

Ben Sorer u-Moreh as a Test Case

Using the martial idiom “taking a mother on her young,” Deuteronomy forbids taking eggs and chicks without first shooing the mother bird. Is the concern cruelty to animals?

The Torah prohibits lending to poor people with interest. Why did Jewish law include business loans and how did this effect the law’s original purpose?

Deuteronomy gives broad permission to eat your fill from a neighbor’s vineyard and grain field, so long as you don’t gather in a vessel or cut with an implement. Famously, the disciples of Jesus gather grain on the Sabbath, earning the Pharisees’ wrath not for theft but for violating Shabbat. Commentators debate the reason for this law and whether it has any limits.

The agricultural allocations for the poor outlined in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are a series of negative commandments, in which God forbids Israelite householders from gathering some of their produce and requires them to leave it for the poor. The rabbis took these laws a step further, granting the poor property rights over the allocations even before they are gathered.

A Comparative Analysis

Deuteronomy commands a man to marry the childless widow of his brother (yibbum). And yet, a close look at the Priestly text of the Torah shows that it did not have the option of yibbum.

Deuteronomy 21:15-17 requires a man with two wives to recognize the birthright of his firstborn son, even if his mother is the less favored wife. This law is intertextually linked to Jacob’s giving Reuben’s firstborn rights to Joseph in Genesis, but it can also be read as a response to Abraham’s disinheriting Ishmael in favor of his younger son, Isaac.

Deuteronomy 22:5 prohibits men and women from wearing each other’s clothes. What is the motivation behind this law, and why is this behavior “abhorrent to YHWH”?

Deuteronomy prohibits certain groups from “enter[ing] the assembly of YHWH,” לא יבואו בקהל י־הוה, which likely reflects a ban on citizenship. Nevertheless, the oldest and most commonly known explanation for the term is as a prohibition against marriage, an interpretation already found in Kings and Ezra-Nehemiah.

Deuteronomy (23:18) states “Let there be no kadesh among the sons of Israel,” referring to ritualized male prostitution. What does this imply about regular male prostitution?

Deuteronomy’s description of the circumstances of divorce is ambiguous. Thus, the Mishnah (m. Gittin 9:10) records three different opinions on when a man is allowed to divorce his wife. What can we infer from the biblical text?

Are the Torah’s laws perfect or do they reflect biblical times and can adapt as society develops? The punishment of a rapist is a good test case for thinking about morally problematic biblical laws.