22:13-30 These and the like regulations might be needful then, and yet it is not necessary that we should curiously examine respecting them. The laws relate to the seventh commandment, laying a restraint upon fleshly lusts which war against the soul.Compare Numbers 15:38 and its note. 13-30. If a man take a wife, &c.—The regulations that follow might be imperatively needful in the then situation of the Israelites; and yet, it is not necessary that we should curiously and impertinently inquire into them. So far was it from being unworthy of God to leave such things upon record, that the enactments must heighten our admiration of His wisdom and goodness in the management of a people so perverse and so given to irregular passions. Nor is it a better argument that the Scriptures were not written by inspiration of God to object that this passage, and others of a like nature, tend to corrupt the imagination and will be abused by evil-disposed readers, than it is to say that the sun was not created by God, because its light may be abused by wicked men as an assistant in committing crimes which they have meditated [Horne]. Either,

1. By the following mulct. Or,

2. By severe reproofs, which that word oft signifies. Or,

3. By stripes, as is expressed, Deu 25:2,3. Which is not strange, considering how precious a thing one’s good name is, of which he endeavoured to deprive his wife.

And the elders of that city shall take the man, and chastise him. Not with words, but blows. Jarchi interprets it of beating, and so does the Talmud (x); and both the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan render it,"shall beat him;''

that is, with the beating or scourging of forty stripes, save one.

(x) T. Bab. Cetubot, fol. 46. 1.

And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him;