Ki Teitzei

The densest run of commandments in the Torah — the tradition counts over seventy here — beginning with wartime and the household: the captive woman who mourns a month before marriage and may never be sold; the firstborn's double portion secured even when his mother is the unloved wife; the stubborn and rebellious son brought by his parents to the elders; the executed body not left overnight on the tree, "for a hanged man is a curse of God" — buried the same day.

Then the fabric of ordinary life, law after law: the brother's straying ox or lost garment returned, not ignored; the fallen donkey raised; men's and women's dress not exchanged; the mother bird sent away before the young are taken; the parapet built on the new roof so no blood falls from it; the vineyard, the ox and donkey, and wool and linen kept unmixed; the tassels on the four corners. Marriage and its wrongs are judged — the slandered bride, adultery, the betrothed woman in the city and in the field, the seized virgin — and the assembly's membership defined: no Ammonite or Moabite, "because they did not meet you with bread and water... and hired Balaam," though the Edomite and the Egyptian enter in the third generation. The camp at war is kept holy. The escaped slave is not returned to his master — "he shall dwell with you, in the place he chooses." No interest is taken from a brother; vows are paid without delay; a passerby may eat grapes in a neighbor's vineyard but carry none away.

The chapters run on through divorce and its writ, the bridegroom's year free at home, the millstone never taken in pledge, the kidnapper, the care in tzaraat ("remember Miriam"), the pledge not seized from inside the house and the poor man's cloak returned by sunset, the hired hand paid before the sun goes down, fathers not dying for sons or sons for fathers, and justice for the stranger and orphan — with the forgotten sheaf, the beaten olive tree, and the vineyard's gleanings left for them, "and you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt." Forty lashes and no more, "lest your brother be degraded in your eyes"; the ox not muzzled as it treads; the levirate duty to a dead brother's name and the sandal-ceremony of refusal; honest weights and a full and just measure. And at the close: "Remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you came out of Egypt... you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget."