Deuteronomy 22
This contains lot of various rules that we scratch our heads at today. But in a middle-eastern society 3000 years ago, they probably made more sense.
A couple of the weirder ones:
Men cannot wear womens' clothing and vice versa. Now, before you change your costume plans for Halloween, look at all the crazy stuff around it.
You cannot plant other crops between vineyard rows.
If a man has sex with an engaged woman in a field, it is assumed to be rape and he is to be killed. But if it happens in town, then they are both stoned because here consent is assumed since she did not cry for help.
If she is not engaged, then he has to pay her father money and they must marry.
If a man accuses his new wife of not being a virgin, her parents have the right to show the bloody bedsheets before the town. If it is not true, the new husband must pay his father in law money. If it is true, she is stoned to death.
The are a few things that make sense to us, like building a railing on rooftops. Otherwise, this chapter is filled with things that make little sense to our modern Western society.
Chapter 23
The weirdness continues.
Illegitimacy of birth (for 10 generations) or having your testicles crushed would bar you from the assembly of God. Same with Moabites and Ammonites (for 3 generations).
Interestingly, they were not supposed to return runaway slaves to their masters. Did the antebellum US South know about this?
No interest on loans between fellow Israelites.
If you enter another's field of grain or vineyard, you can pick stuff off by hand, but cannot harvest with a sickle or collect in a basket.
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