Deuteronomy 22:13–29

Marriage Violations

¹³If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her^y, dislikes her ¹⁴and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” ¹⁵then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate^z proof that she was a virgin. ¹⁶Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. ¹⁷Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, ¹⁸and the elders^a shall take the man and punish him. ¹⁹They shall fine him a hundred shekels^b of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.

²⁰If, however, the charge is true^b and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, ²¹she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing^c in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.

²²If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept^d with her and the woman must die.^e You must purge the evil from Israel.

²³If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, ²⁴you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.^f

²⁵But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. ²⁶Do nothing to the woman; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor, ²⁷for the man found the young woman out in the country, and though the betrothed woman screamed,^g there was no one to rescue her.

²⁸If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered,^{h 29}he shall pay her father fifty shekels^c of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.