Various Regulations

(Deuteronomy 21:22 - 22:12)
“If a man has committed a capital offense, is executed, and his body exposed on a stake, his body should not remain there over night.  He should be buried that day, for a hanged man is under a divine curse and you should not thus desecrate the land Jehovah your god has given you as an inheritance.

“If you see your neighbor’s cattle or sheep wandering away, do not evade your responsibility.  Return it to its owner.  If the owner does not live nearby or if you don’t know who the owner is, you should bring it to your home and keep it there until the owner comes looking for it.  You will then return it to him.  This applies as well to your neighbor’s donkey, an article of clothing, or anything else your neighbor has lost.  Don’t evade your responsibility!  And if you see that your neighbor’s donkey or ox has collapsed on the road, don’t look the other way.  Help your neighbor to get it back on its feet.

“A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor should a man wear women’s clothing.  Anyone who does so is an abomination to Jehovah your god.

“If you happen to find a bird’s nest in a tree or on the ground and there are eggs or chicks and the mother is sitting on the nest, do not take the mother along with the chicks.  You may take the chicks, but be sure to let the mother go, so that you may prosper and live long.

“When you build a new house, you should make a barrier around the perimeter of the roof so that you will not incur blood guilt if someone should fall from it to their death.

“You must not plant in your vineyard a second crop.  If you do so, both the grapes from the vineyard and the other crop will be considered impure. You must not yoke to your plow an ox and a donkey together.  Nor should you wear clothing made of wool and linen woven together.

“You should attach tassels to the four corners of the hem of the cloak you wear.”

Notes
1. The provision concerning the exposure of the executed man is ambiguous and has been translated variously.  The Israelites probably did not use hanging as a form of execution.  Those already executed, by stoning or otherwise, may have been displayed by being hung from a tree or gibbet, but, more likely, impaled on a stake. (Impaling itself was a not uncommon form of execution in ancient and medieval times, but it was probably not practiced by the Israelites.)  Until very recent times executed criminals were publicly exposed as a warning to potential lawbreakers and a deterrent to crime.  Hanged men might dangle on the gibbet or hanging tree until their corpses rotted.  Jehovah, though, apparently did not think much of the practice, more concerned about defiling the land with the presence and perhaps stench of those executed.

2. Jehovah encourages a good neighbor policy with his exhortations for his people to take care of lost livestock and property, in contrast to a “finders keepers, losers weepers” policy.  This seems consistent with the Christian concept of the “Good Samaritan.”  Helping a neighbor whose ox or donkey has collapsed on the road suggests a modern parallel, “If a neighbor’s car is stalled on the road, do not drive on, but stop and lend him assistance.”

3. Having a railing, a wall, a fence, a parapet, whatever, atop the flat roofs of their homes seems a sensible idea if it was a practice, and apparently it was, for Israelites to stroll on their roofs.  This suggests that the common house would be a more than one story, since someone is unlikely to kill themselves falling off the roof of a single story dwelling.  This section also affirms that causing death through negligence is tantamount to murder under Jehovan law.

4. The prohibition against wearing clothes of the other sex is not surprising.  The practice has pretty much always been frowned upon, if not condemned.  Although in contemporary society no one would look too askance at a woman wearing clothes that are pretty much what a man would wear, male transvestites are still not viewed with acceptance in most quarters.  In regard to ancient society, one might ask, however, looking at the clothing the ancient Hebrew men and women wore, how could one tell the difference.

5. Taking a bird’s eggs or chicks is acceptable, but one must not take the mother bird as well, presumably for conservation reasons.  This makes sense.  The mother can have more chicks; if the mothers are taken as well it might wipe out the species.

6. This phobia of Jehovah’s for mixing things of different types, plant species, yarns, animals, seems an extension of his xenophobia and his desire for his Chosen People to remain uncontaminated by external influences.  One wouldn’t think that the fiber composition of an article of clothing or the manner in which a plow is yoked would be subject to divine law, but we have seen that there no limit to Jehovah’s pettiness or to his obsessive efforts to micromanage Hebrew society.  It should be mentioned, though, there is more to the proscriptions that it might seem.  The ox-donkey combination is significant because Jehovah has already decreed that cattle are ritually pure and donkeys are ritually impure.  The linen-wool combination (linsey-woolsey, or shatnez) also has import.  Priests wore linen undergarments and wool overgarments: for lay persons to do the same would be to presume their sacred prerogative.  (The tassels, or tzitzit, which are prepared in a special way described in Numbers, were exempt from the shatnez prohibition.)  The linen-wool mixture may also be symbolic.  Linen represents Egypt, an agrarian society, wool, Israel, a society of herders; the customs of the two societies must not be mixed.