The Bible shows a keen awareness of human psychology. It is always very easy for us to look the other way, but God here tells them that if they see a sheep or ox wandering around they are to take care of it, not just ignore it. And the same applied to other lost objects as well.
Next we have prohibition of transvestitism. The Biblical teaching is that men and women are both made in the image of God, but are distinct and compliment each other. This is why the Bible consistently teaches against homosexuality.
We then get concern for birds, and health and safety regulations. The rules on not using an ox and donkey, or mixing wool and linen, may be about not mixing things that should not be mixed.
The rest of the chapter deals with protecting a woman's integrity. A man could not falsely accuse his new wife of not being a virgin as an excuse to get rid of her. The opening paragraph closes with the instruction that the man must not divorce the woman. Now in our Western way of thinking we might think this odd, considering that the woman would be far better of without him! There may be something to be said for this, but society was different in those days, and it was important for a woman to be married. Despite the obvious changes in society, there is still something we can learn from this. Today we are far too ready to give up, far too ready to find an excuse for divorce. We could benefit a lot from focusing more on ways to make things work, ways to overcome difficulties.
There then various other laws on sexual sins. It is significant that in most cases both the man and the woman were held responsible. This seems obvious to us now, but looked at in the context of the times is an important and quite amazing advance.
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