וכן תעשה לשמלתו, even though such a find is far less likely to occur, so that you might consider it as having been abandoned on purpose.

למען ייטב לך והארכת ימים, in the matter of dispatching the mother bird before taking her chicks, we find some display of protective concern by the Torah for the preservation of the species, an effort not to destroy the seed of the birds of the field although they are הפקר, unclaimed property. In the example of the dispatch of the mother bird the Torah appears to teach us that even the display by us of concern for such totally unclaimed eggs or chicks is rewarded by the Creator with the party showing this empathy receiving dividends in this life and the principal (reward) in the world to come.

ולא תשים דמים בביתך כי יפול הנופל, if it were to happen that someone falls off that roof you could not have been the indirect cause, seeing you had put up a protective railing. Had you not done so, your family might bear part of the guilt for such a mishap.

כי יקח איש אשה, after the Torah has dealt with matters concerning the settling of the people in the Land of Israel, it turns to instructions designed to ensure that the Shechinah, benevolent Divine presence, will maintain its beneficial presence there. One of the most important elements in ensuring this is the avoidance of forbidden mating and the offspring of such couplings. The Torah therefore addresses both forbidden incestuous relations amongst Jewish partners, and intermarriage or living together of Jews and Non-Jews without the benefit of “marriage,” something which is anyway legally impossible. All of this belongs to the headingוהיה מחניך קדוש ולא יראה בך ערות דבר ושב מאחריך, “your encampment shall be holy. Let nothing unseemly be found among you so that He would turn away from you.” (23,15)

אשר ענה את אשת רעהו, he violated her and made her unfit to continue being the wife of her betrothed. We find a similar expression in Michah 2,9 נשי עמי תגרשון מבית תענוגיה, “you drive the women of My people away from their pleasure homes.” [compare Nachmanides who explains that the woman is not considered as an unwilling helpless victim in the scenario described by the Torah here. Hence the comparison with the chapter in Michah by our author is not so baffling. Ed.]

אין לנערה חטא מות, even though in the end she stopped resisting, i.e. she became a willing partner; seeing that initially she had been forced she is exonerated by judicial prosecution. Our sages go so far as to state “even if she said that had she not been forced she would have hired the man in question to sleep with her,” (Ketuvot 51) [the rapist kindled her libido so that she lost control over her emotions. Ed.]

'כי כאשר יקום איש על רעהו וגו, this situation is not comparable to someone having sexual intercourse with a beast when the Torah condemns the “innocent” beast to share the death penalty with the human being. (Leviticus 20,15). The difference is that the animal in question did not offer any resistance at all, whereas the woman in question in our verse initially did offer resistance. What happened to her is comparable to a murdered person who had been forced to commit a sin and who was murdered for having refused to do so.

צעקת הנערה, we give her the benefit of the doubt, assuming she had cried for help.