The father then quotes the very words the young man used, I did not find in your daughter the tokens of virginity. This can be stated in an indirect way, “… saying that he did not find in my daughter the tokens of virginity” or “… saying that he discovered that my daughter was not a virgin.”

Yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity: or “this bloodstained bed cloth [or, sheet] proves that my daughter was a virgin,” or “Look at the bloodstains on the wedding sheet” (Good News Translation).

They shall spread the garment: it is better to say “cloth” or “bed sheet,” and in some way the reader must be told that that bed sheet is stained with the young woman’s blood. Good News Translation expresses this much more clearly.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .