Commentaria in Deuteronomium
6. Make two trumpets of beaten silver, with which thou mayest call the people together when the camp is to be moved, Numb. x.
7. If you go out to war, you shall sound the trumpets with a clang, and God will remember you, and give you victory, ibid. vers. 9.
8. Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalec from under heaven, Deut. xxv, 19.
9. Thou shalt destroy all the Chanaanites, Exod. xxii.
III. Judicial law of marriage and divorce.
1. No one shall contract marriage within the degrees of consanguinity and affinity that are forbidden, Levit. xviii. I have set them out there, and in the sixth precept of the Decalogue.
2. Thou shalt not approach to a woman who suffereth her monthly courses, Levit. xviii, 19.
3. If a brother die without children, his brother shall take his wife, and raise up seed to his brother, and shall call the firstborn by his name, Deut. xxv, 5.
4. But if he will not, the wife of his brother shall take off the shoe from his foot before the ancients, and spit in his face, and his house shall be called the house of the unshod, Ibid.
5. If the wife find not favour in the eyes of her husband, for some uncomeliness, he shall write a bill of divorce, and give it in her hand, and send her away, Deut. xxiv, 1.
6. If a wife who has been put away marry a second husband, and he also send her away, she may not return to her former husband, Ibid. vers. 3.
7. If any man take to wife a foreign woman captured in war, whom he has fallen in love with for her beauty, he shall bring her into his house, and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails, and change her raiment, and bewail her father and mother for a month, after which he shall take her to wife; if afterwards she please him not, he shall not sell her, but shall let her go free, Deut. chap. xxi, vers. 11.
8. If a man have two wives, one beloved, the other hated, and the firstborn son be of the hated one, he shall give him the rights of the firstborn, and shall not prefer the son of the beloved, Ibid. vers. 15.
9. Maidens who, for want of male issue, are the heirs of their father, shall marry in their own tribe, not in another, Num. xxxvi, 6.
IV. Judicial law concerning homicides.
1. He that striketh and killeth a man shall be put to death, Levit. xxiv, 17.
2. Thou shalt not take a price of him that is guilty of blood, but shalt put him to death without mercy, Num. xxxv, 31.
3. He that hath inflicted a blemish, as he hath done, so shall it be done to him: he shall restore eye for eye, tooth for tooth, Levit. xxiv, 19.
4. He that by chance, or in ignorance, killeth a man shall flee to the cities of refuge, and shall abide there until the death of the high priest, Num. xxxv, 25.
5. If he be found outside the cities of refuge, the kinsman of the slain shall kill him, Ibid. vers. 27.
6. He that striketh a man with a stone, if the man rise again and walk abroad, the striker shall make good his labours and the expenses on physicians, Exod. xxi, 19.
7. He that striketh his manservant or maidservant with a rod, and they die under his hands, shall be guilty of the crime, Ibid.
8. But if they survive a day or two, he shall not be subject to the penalty, because the servant was bought with money, Ibid.
9. If men quarrel, and one strike a woman with child, and she miscarry, but live herself, the striker shall be answerable for as much as the arbiters shall award, Ibid.
10. But if her death follow, he shall render life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, Ibid.
11. If any man strike the eye of his manservant or maidservant, and make them blind, he shall let them go free for the eye which he put out; in like manner if he strike out their tooth, Ibid.
12. He that killeth a thief by day shall be put to death, Exod. chap. xxii, vers. 3.
13. Thou shalt make a battlement to thy roof round about, lest any man fall from it, and thou be guilty of blood, Deut. xxii, 8.
14. The body of one hanged shall not remain upon the tree, but shall be buried the same day: for he is accursed of God that hangeth on a tree, Deut. xxi, 22.
15. If the judges think the offender worthy of stripes, the number of stripes shall be according to the measure of the sin, but shall not exceed forty, Deut. xxv, 3.
16. If two men quarrel, and the wife of the one take the other by the secrets, thou shalt cut off her hand, Deut. xxv, 11.
V. Judicial law concerning the killing of animals.
1. He that striketh a beast shall make it good with another, Levit. chap. xxiv, vers. 18.
2. If an ox gore a man or a woman, and they die, he shall be stoned, Ibid.
3. If the ox was wont to push with his horn, and they warned his owner, and he did not shut him up, and he kill a man, the ox shall be stoned, and his owner shall be put to death, Ibid.
4. If he assault a manservant or maidservant, he shall give thirty sicles of silver to their master, and the ox shall be stoned, Ibid.
5. If a man open a pit, and an ox or an ass fall into it, the owner of the pit shall pay the price of the beasts; and that which is dead shall be his, Ibid.
6. If another man’s ox wound the ox of another, and it die, they shall sell the live ox and divide the price, and the carcass of the dead one they shall also divide between them, Ibid.
7. But if he knew that the ox was wont to push with his horn, and his owner did not keep him in, he shall pay ox for ox, and shall take the whole carcass, Ibid.
VI. Judicial law concerning witnesses.
1. One witness shall not rise up against any man; but in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand,
2. A false witness shall suffer the penalty of retaliation, and shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, etc., Ibid.
3. The hands of the witnesses shall first stone him that worshippeth strange gods, and afterwards the hands of the rest of the people, Deuter. chap. xvii, vers. 7.
4. A witness, if he declare not what he hath seen or knoweth, shall bear his iniquity, Levit. v, 1.
VII. Judicial law of the manservant and maidservant, that is, the bondwoman.
1. Thou shalt not deliver a servant to his master, who is fled to thee, Deut. xxiii, 15.
2. If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve thee, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing, Exod. xxi, 2. Thou shalt not let him go empty, but shalt give him provision for the way, Deuter. xv, 13.
3. With what raiment he came in, with the like let him go out; if he have a wife, his wife shall go out with him, Exod. xxi, 3.
4. But if his master gave him a wife, and she have borne sons and daughters, the woman and her children shall be her master’s; but he himself shall go out with his raiment, Ibid.
5. If the servant say: I love my master and my wife and children, and will not go out free, his master shall bring him to the judges, and shall bore his ear through with an awl against the post, and he shall be his master’s servant for ever, that is, until the jubilee, Ibid. vers. 5.
6. A Hebrew woman cannot be bought as a bondwoman, unless the master promise to take her to wife for himself or for his son; and if she afterwards displease him, he shall not sell her, but shall let her go free, Ibid. vers. 7.
7. If he give her to his son to wife, and bring in another over her, he shall provide that the conjugal right of the former, that is, the bondwoman, be secured, with convenient raiment and the price of her chastity, that is, the maintenance due to a wife; if he do not these three things, the bondwoman shall go out free for nothing, and shall become free, ibid.
8. If thy brother, constrained by poverty, sell himself to thee, thou shalt not oppress him, but he shall work with thee as a hired servant, until the jubilee, and then he shall go out free with his children, Levit.
9. Let your bondmen and bondwomen be of the nations that are round about you, and of strangers, Ibid.
10. If any Hebrew sell himself to a stranger, one of his kinsmen shall redeem him with a price, reckoned according to the years that remain until the jubilee; but if the redeemed can repay it, he shall go out free; if not, he shall serve as a hired servant the kinsman who redeems him, until the jubilee, Ibid.
VIII. Judicial law concerning mercy toward beasts.
1. In a nest thou shalt not take the dam with the young, Deut. xxii, 6.
2. If thou see the ass of thy friend or of thy enemy lie down under his burden, thou shalt lift him up, Deuter.
3. Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together, Deut. xxii, 10.
4. Thou shalt not boil a kid in the milk of his dam, Exod. chap. xxiii, vers. 19.
5. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, Deut. xxv, 4.
6. If thou see the ox, the ass, or the sheep, etc., of thy brother go astray, thou shalt bring them back to thy brother, even though he be thy enemy, Deut. xxii, 1.
7. Let the firstborn of an ox be seven days with his dam; on the eighth day thou shalt offer him to the Lord, Exod. chap. xxii, vers. 30.