1. If while tunneling. This form of housebreaking by tunneling into the house is clearly imagined as a nocturnal operation (the tunneler would surely risk detection outside the house in daylight). If such a thief encountered a resident of the house in the dark, there would be considerable danger that the thief would try to kill him. Hence Rashi cites the rabbinic dictum “He who comes to kill you, kill him first” to explain “there is no bloodguilt for him.” But if this encounter takes place in daylight, it would be much more likely that the intruder would flee or surrender, depending on the balance of forces, and so the householder cannot kill him with impunity.

2. He shall surely pay. Abraham ibn Ezra makes the plausible suggestion that this and the following clauses refer not to the housebreaker but to the livestock thief of 21:37. If the stolen animal has already been sold, the thief must pay fourfold or fivefold. If he still has the animal to restore to its owner, he is nevertheless subject to a penalty of twofold payment for the theft. A thief without the means to pay the penalty must be sold as a slave in order to make good what he owes (in the Code of Hammurabi, a thief in such a case is to be executed).

4. Should a man let his beast graze. The arrangement of laws in this more or less miscellaneous list is largely determined either by thematic association or by recurring key words. In the latter instance, one detects a convention that is often used to link two adjacent units in biblical narrative: the same word is used twice in succession in two different meanings. Thus the verb hivʿir, “to cause to graze,” recurs in the next law in its other sense, “to set a fire.” As to thematic association, this law is connected, as Abraham ibn Ezra notes, with the cluster of laws at the end of chapter 21 that also deal with damages caused by one’s beast.

send his beast. The relatively rare Hebrew term for beast, beʿir, is a cognate accusative of the verb for grazing. In the opening clause of this verse, the word “beast” does not appear in the Hebrew but is implied by the verb hivʿir.

5. Should a fire go forth. There is a thematic link (again noted by ibn Ezra) as well as a verbal one with the preceding law because this is another instance in which a person’s negligence in supervising an activity in his own field—evidently, some sort of controlled burning—results in damage to someone else’s field.

the field. Rashi plausibly suggests that this third category of damage is scorching a plowed field, which would then have to be plowed out again.

7. shall approach the gods. Again, traditional commentators, and some modern ones as well, interpret ʾelohim as a reference to judges, though if this is the case, it would be a usage unique to the Book of the Covenant. This translation presumes that this is a vestige of premonotheistic verbal usage preserved in this relatively archaic legal code. Here it would refer not to household gods, as in 21:6, but would seem to be a loose indication of deities at a local sanctuary. It is noteworthy that when ʾelohim is the subject of a verb in the next verse, that verb is conjugated in the plural. One should not make too much of this usage theologically. Linguistic practice can often be more conservative than changing perceptions of reality, and it is quite conceivable that an older stratum of biblical language should have preserved the polytheistic idiom for divine presence at oracle or sanctuary without actually affirming a multiplicity of gods.

to swear. The verb is not stated in the Hebrew but implied by the oath-formula that follows.

effects. The Hebrew melaʾkhah (a collective noun) usually means “task” or “labor,” but in this legal context the clear meaning is the material possessions that are the product of labor.

9. maimed or carried off. The word for “maimed,” nishbar, usually means “broken” and hence is a little odd to apply to an animal. The choice of term is evidently dictated by the strong assonance with the next word, “carried off,” nishbah.

10. an oath by the LORD. Literally, “an oath of the LORD”—not an oath taken in the LORD’s presence but rather an oath that invokes the LORD’s name. At this point, the legislator reverts to solid monotheistic language, and from his point of view, there would have been no necessary contradiction with the preceding use of ʾelohim in the plural.

laid hands. The literal meaning is “sent out his hand.”

accept. Literally, “take.”

12. he shall bring it in evidence. There are other indications in the Bible that this was a common practice. A hired shepherd would bring some part of the torn carcass of the beast to prove to the owner that he had not stolen and sold the missing animal.

14. If he is hired. The term “hired” (sakhir) here has lent itself to different interpretations. The immediate context suggests that the most likely reference is to the person to whom the animal has been entrusted. If he has been hired to perform this task, and the loss of the beast occurs while its owner happens to be present to keep an eye on it, the person hired to do the safekeeping is still entitled to his fee.

15. he shall surely pay a bride-price for her as his wife. The seducer is obliged to make an honest woman of his victim, including the material benefit—the bride-price was a fund reserved for the use of the woman—accompanying marriage to a virgin. The penalty for raping rather than seducing an unbetrothed virgin is payment of a fine to the father and compulsory marriage without possibility of divorce (Deuteronomy 22:28–29).

17. No witch shall you let live. This verse marks the beginning of a second group of laws, no longer formulated casuistically but as absolute imperatives. The witch or sorceress is feminine because, as ibn Ezra and many others after him note, female practitioners predominated, though it may be inferred that male sorcerers are also implied. Ibn Ezra also proposes, somewhat fancifully, a thematic link with the previous law: a seducer might well resort to sorcery in order to have his way with a young woman. The practice of witchcraft had an understandable persistence in ancient Israel, as the tale of the necromancer of Endor (1 Samuel 28) illustrates. The monotheistic objection to the institution, whose efficacy was not necessarily denied, was to an occult technology that could manipulate the spirit realm which was reserved to God alone.

21. No widow nor orphan. Throughout biblical literature, and particularly in the Prophets, these are the paradigmatic cases of powerless members of society who are vulnerable to exploitation.

22. abuse . . . cry out . . . hear their outcry. The terms used here pointedly echo the language used at the beginning of Exodus to describe the oppression of Israel in Egypt and God’s response to that suffering. This law, then, like the previous one that explicitly invokes the Hebrews’ condition of sojourners in Egypt, touches on the experience of slavery as an enduring prod to social conscience.

24. you shall not impose interest. The obvious presupposition of this law is an agrarian economy with social groupings on the soil in extended families and clans. Ancient Near Eastern societies with large urban populations in fact have left records of sums regularly lent on interest at extortionate rates.

26. For it is his sole covering, it is his cloak for his skin. The anchorage of this regulation in social reality is vividly illustrated in a fragmentary Hebrew inscription from the seventh century B.C.E. uncovered at Yavneh-Yam. The person dictating the inscription, a formal complaint against his foreman, would appear to be a corvée laborer doing agricultural work. Here are the most relevant lines (my translation): “And Hoshiahu son of Shobi came and took your servant’s garment when I had finished my harvesting. A full day he has taken my garment, and all my brothers will answer for me, who harvest with me in the heat [of the sun], my brothers will answer for me amen. I am guiltless. . . .” One can make out in the highly fragmented two lines that follow a plea for the garment to be returned.

28. The first yield of your vats and the first yield of your grain. The meaning of the two Hebrew terms, meleiʾah and demaʿ, is not entirely certain, although most interpreters agree that they refer to two categories of agricultural produce from which the farmer must offer the first yield as a sacrifice. (A word that would make the idea of first yield explicit, such as reiʾshit or bikurey, does not appear in the text.) It has also been suggested that meleiʾah and demaʿ are a single agricultural concept, a hendiadys.

to give. The verb is merely implied in the Hebrew.

The firstborn of your sons you shall give to Me. This could not be a command to perform child sacrifice. In the archaic period of Hebrew culture, the firstborn officiated as priests. The standard practice then became to “redeem” the firstborn by paying a fixed amount to the priests (compare Exodus 13:15).

30. consecrated men. Literally, “men of holiness” (qodesh). The root q-d-sh is the same one used for the act of consecration just enjoined on the people before the giving of the Law on Sinai. To eat carrion is seen as an act of self-defilement.

flesh in the field torn by beasts. It is chiefly out in the field, as Rashi notes, not in pen or barn, that a cow, sheep, or goat would be attacked by ravening animals, though anthropologically inclined critics have also stressed the character of the field in the biblical imagination as a place beyond the pale of human habitation, where wild beasts and impure spirits dwell.

to the dog you shall fling it. The biblical contempt for canines is again detectable: the dog is an unseemly scavenger, an appropriately base receptacle for carrion.