Deuteronomy 22:16

And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders,.... Not her mother; hence we learn, says Jarchi, that a woman has not power (or is not allowed) to speak before men; that is, in public see 1 Corinthians 14:34 and it was most proper for a father to appear in court for her, and defend her; and if she had no parents living then, those that brought her up, her guardians, that had the education of her, and placing her out in marriage, were to undertake her cause; or, as Josephus (r) says, those that were next akin to her; or, as, Aben Ezra, one appointed by the court: I gave my daughter unto this man to wife; and, by the Jewish canons (s), a man might give his daughter in marriage, but a woman might not: and he hateth her; has taken a dislike to her, and wants to be rid of her, and therefore has brought this infamous action against her. (r) Antiqu. l. 4. c. 8. sect. 23. (s) Misn. Sotah, c. 3. sect. 8.

13-30. If a man take a wife, &c.—The regulations that follow might be imperatively needful in the then situation of the Israelites; and yet, it is not necessary that we should curiously and impertinently inquire into them. So far was it from being unworthy of God to leave such things upon record, that the enactments must heighten our admiration of His wisdom and goodness in the management of a people so perverse and so given to irregular passions. Nor is it a better argument that the Scriptures were not written by inspiration of God to object that this passage, and others of a like nature, tend to corrupt the imagination and will be abused by evil-disposed readers, than it is to say that the sun was not created by God, because its light may be abused by wicked men as an assistant in committing crimes which they have meditated [Horne].

In such a case the parents of the young woman (הנּער for הנּערה, as in Genesis 24:14 , Genesis 24:28 , according to the earliest usage of the books of Moses, a virgin, then also a young woman, e.g., Ruth 2:6 ; Ruth 4:12 ) were to bring the matter before the elders of the town into the gate (the judicial forum; see Deuteronomy 21:19 ), and establish the chastity and innocence of their daughter by spreading the bed-clothes before them. It was not necessary to this end that the parents should have taken possession of the spotted bed-clothes directly after the marriage night, as in customarily done by the Bedouins and the lower classes of the Moslem in Egypt and Syria (cf. Niebuhr, Beschr. v. Arab. pp. 35ff.; Arvieux, merkw. Nachr. iii. p. 258; Burckhardt, Beduinen, p. 214, etc.). It was sufficient that the cloth should be kept, in case such a proof might be required.

The duty of integrity in trade is once more enforced in Deuteronomy 25:13-16 (as in Leviticus 19:35-36 ). "Stone and stone," i.e., two kinds of stones for weighing (cf. Psalm 12:3 ), viz., large ones for buying and small ones for selling. On the promise in Deuteronomy 25:15 , see Deuteronomy 4:26 ; Deuteronomy 5:16 ; Deuteronomy 25:16 , as in Deuteronomy 22:5 ; Deuteronomy 18:12 , etc. In the concluding words, Deuteronomy 25:16 , "all that do unrighteously," Moses sums up all breaches of the law.