1. he finds in her some shamefully exposed thing. This is the same idiom for something disgraceful that appears in 23:15 (see the comment there). The vagueness of the expression leaves open the possibility that the husband has discovered something morally reprehensible in his wife or that what has repelled him is a physical defect, perhaps something about her that displeases him sexually

a document of divorce. The use of a written document for divorce (the actual divorce procedure is not spelled out in biblical law) is registered only in Deuteronomy and later texts. The reasonable inference is that in earlier periods divorce was effected by the act of banishing the woman from the house and/or by an oral declaration on the part of the husband. The literal meaning of the phrase used here, sefer keritut, is “document [or scroll] of cutting-off.” Since keritut is not one of the usual biblical terms for divorce, scholars have conjectured that it refers to a ceremony in which the husband cut off a corner of the wife’s garment as a sign that he was severing relations with her. In 1 Samuel 15, when Saul inadvertently tears the hem of Samuel’s garment, the prophet immediately seizes on the act as a symbol that God is about to tear away the kingship from Saul.

5. When a man takes a new wife. The thematic connection with the previous law is the issue of sexual consummation in marriage.

shall not cross over on its account for any matter. The “it” may refer to the army—i.e., the man shall stay put and not go off anywhere for military purposes—but the Hebrew is rather cryptic, as this literal translation indicates, and no one has provided an entirely satisfactory interpretation.

gladden his wife. The verb here could refer specifically to giving her sexual pleasure, though it does not exclude the more general pleasure of conjugal sociability. This law differs from the parallel law of exemption from military service for the newlywed in chapter 20 in introducing a humane concern for the bride.

6. a hand mill or an upper millstone. Although the Hebrew reiḥayim is the general term for mill, the large agricultural mill, several feet in diameter, would be too massive to move, so the reference must be to a hand mill. Even in that case, the heavy netherstone (shekhev) would have been hard to carry off, but it would have sufficed to seize the much lighter upper millstone (rekhev) in order to disable the mill.

for one would be taking in pawn a life. A household typically ground its own grain for bread, and hand mills were thus a necessary tool in even the poor home, as the great number of them uncovered by archaeologists confirms.

7. a living person. The term used here, nefesh, is the same one used for “life” in the previous verse concerning the poor man and his hand mill and thus provides a link between the two laws. A human life is not to be disregarded for the purpose of profit.

9. Remember what the LORD your God did to Miriam. The story in Numbers 12:10–15, in which Miriam is stricken with this disfiguring skin disease for maligning Moses, is invoked because it provides an especially horrific representation of the disease, as Aaron’s words to Moses make clear: “Let her not be, pray, like one dead who when he comes out of his mother’s womb, half his flesh is eaten away.”

11. outside. The seemingly redundant term of location at the very end of the sentence—already clearly indicated in the verb “bring out”—serves to emphasize that the creditor must remain beyond the perimeters of the debtor’s home and not violate his private space.

12. you shall not lie down in his pledge. This is a kind of pun: you shall not go to sleep, retaining his pledge, and you shall not sleep in it, as the poor man himself would sleep in his cloak, his sole bedding.

14. sojourners. The Hebrew uses a singular form.

15. his heart counts on it. More literally: “his life [or his very self] lifts toward it.”

16. Fathers . . . sons. Collective punishment, or measure-for-measure punishment (you killed my son, your son shall be killed), was common in ancient Near Eastern legal codes, and this law is a protest against it.

17. you shall not take as pawn a widow’s garment. This appears to be a greater restriction than the one for the poor man, in whose case the garment may be held by the creditor during the day but must be returned to the owner at sunset. Perhaps the law regarded it as a form of shameful exposure (ʿerwat davar) to deprive the widow of her (outer?) garment at any time, thus leaving her to go about insufficiently covered.

20. beat your olive trees. This was the general practice for harvesting ripe olives.

you shall not strip the branches of what is left behind you. The relatively rare verb peʾer is derived from poʾrah, “branch.” It might have involved plucking the less ripe olives not shaken loose by beating. “What is left” is added in the translation to clarify the compact Hebrew.

21. you shall not pluck the young grapes left behind you. Another unusual verb, ʿolel, is derived from ʿolelot, “small grapes.”