1When a man takes a wife and beds her, it shall be, if she does not find favor in his eyes because he finds in her some shamefully exposed thing, and he writes her a document of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her away from his house, 2and she goes out from his house and goes and becomes another man’s, 3and the second man hates her and writes her a document of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her away from his house, or the second man, who took her to him as wife, dies, 4her first husband, who sent her away, shall not be able to come back and take her to be his wife after she has been defiled, for it is an abhorrence before the LORD, and you shall not lead the land to offend that the LORD your God is about to give you in estate. 5When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out in the army and shall not cross over on its account for any matter. He shall be exempt in his house for a year and gladden his wife whom he has taken. 6One may not take in pawn a hand mill or an upper millstone, for one would be taking in pawn a life. 7Should a man be found stealing a living person of his brothers, of the Israelites, and garner profit from him and sell him, that thief shall die, and you shall root out the evil from your midst. 8Watch yourself in regard to the plague of skin blanch to watch carefully and to do. According to all that the levitical priests will teach you as I have charged them you shall watch to do. 9Remember what the LORD your God did to Miriam on the way when you came out of Egypt. 10Should you make a loan of anything to your fellow man, you shall not come into his house to take his pledge. 11You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you have made the loan shall bring out the pledge to you outside. 12And if he is a poor man, you shall not lie down in his pledge. 13You shall surely give the pledge back to him as the sun sets, that he may lie down in his cloak and bless you and it be a merit for you before the LORD your God. 14You shall not oppress a poor and needy hired worker from your brothers or from your sojourners who are in your land within your gates. 15In his day you shall give his wages, and the sun shall not set on him—for he is poor and his heart counts on it—that he call not against you to the LORD and there be an offense in you. 16Fathers shall not be put to death over sons, and sons shall not be put to death over fathers. Each man shall be put to death for his own offense. 17You shall not skew the case of a sojourner or an orphan, and you shall not take as pawn a widow’s garment. 18And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the LORD your God ransomed you from there. Therefore do I charge you to do this thing. 19When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to take it. For the sojourner and for the orphan and for the widow it shall be, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. 20When you beat your olive trees, you shall not strip the branches of what is left behind you. For the sojourner, for the orphan, and for the widow it shall be. 21When you glean your vineyard, you shall not pluck the young grapes left behind you. For the sojourner, for the orphan, and for the widow it shall be. 22And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. Therefore do I charge you to do this thing.
CHAPTER 24 NOTES
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1–4. These verses are all one long run-on sentence, describing in quasinarrative terms a special case of divorce, remarriage, and divorce rather than addressing the general predicament of divorce.
1. he finds in her some shamefully exposed thing. This is the same idiom for something disgraceful that appears in 23:15 (see the comment there). The vagueness of the expression leaves open the possibility that the husband has discovered something morally reprehensible in his wife or that what has repelled him is a physical defect, perhaps something about her that displeases him sexually
a document of divorce. The use of a written document for divorce (the actual divorce procedure is not spelled out in biblical law) is registered only in Deuteronomy and later texts. The reasonable inference is that in earlier periods divorce was effected by the act of banishing the woman from the house and/or by an oral declaration on the part of the husband. The literal meaning of the phrase used here, sefer keritut, is “document [or scroll] of cutting-off.” Since keritut is not one of the usual biblical terms for divorce, scholars have conjectured that it refers to a ceremony in which the husband cut off a corner of the wife’s garment as a sign that he was severing relations with her. In 1 Samuel 15, when Saul inadvertently tears the hem of Samuel’s garment, the prophet immediately seizes on the act as a symbol that God is about to tear away the kingship from Saul.
5. When a man takes a new wife. The thematic connection with the previous law is the issue of sexual consummation in marriage.
shall not cross over on its account for any matter. The “it” may refer to the army—i.e., the man shall stay put and not go off anywhere for military purposes—but the Hebrew is rather cryptic, as this literal translation indicates, and no one has provided an entirely satisfactory interpretation.
gladden his wife. The verb here could refer specifically to giving her sexual pleasure, though it does not exclude the more general pleasure of conjugal sociability. This law differs from the parallel law of exemption from military service for the newlywed in chapter 20 in introducing a humane concern for the bride.
6. a hand mill or an upper millstone. Although the Hebrew reiḥayim is the general term for mill, the large agricultural mill, several feet in diameter, would be too massive to move, so the reference must be to a hand mill. Even in that case, the heavy netherstone (shekhev) would have been hard to carry off, but it would have sufficed to seize the much lighter upper millstone (rekhev) in order to disable the mill.
for one would be taking in pawn a life. A household typically ground its own grain for bread, and hand mills were thus a necessary tool in even the poor home, as the great number of them uncovered by archaeologists confirms.
7. a living person. The term used here, nefesh, is the same one used for “life” in the previous verse concerning the poor man and his hand mill and thus provides a link between the two laws. A human life is not to be disregarded for the purpose of profit.
9. Remember what the LORD your God did to Miriam. The story in Numbers 12:10–15, in which Miriam is stricken with this disfiguring skin disease for maligning Moses, is invoked because it provides an especially horrific representation of the disease, as Aaron’s words to Moses make clear: “Let her not be, pray, like one dead who when he comes out of his mother’s womb, half his flesh is eaten away.”
11. outside. The seemingly redundant term of location at the very end of the sentence—already clearly indicated in the verb “bring out”—serves to emphasize that the creditor must remain beyond the perimeters of the debtor’s home and not violate his private space.
12. you shall not lie down in his pledge. This is a kind of pun: you shall not go to sleep, retaining his pledge, and you shall not sleep in it, as the poor man himself would sleep in his cloak, his sole bedding.
14. sojourners. The Hebrew uses a singular form.
15. his heart counts on it. More literally: “his life [or his very self] lifts toward it.”
16. Fathers . . . sons. Collective punishment, or measure-for-measure punishment (you killed my son, your son shall be killed), was common in ancient Near Eastern legal codes, and this law is a protest against it.
17. you shall not take as pawn a widow’s garment. This appears to be a greater restriction than the one for the poor man, in whose case the garment may be held by the creditor during the day but must be returned to the owner at sunset. Perhaps the law regarded it as a form of shameful exposure (ʿerwat davar) to deprive the widow of her (outer?) garment at any time, thus leaving her to go about insufficiently covered.
20. beat your olive trees. This was the general practice for harvesting ripe olives.
you shall not strip the branches of what is left behind you. The relatively rare verb peʾer is derived from poʾrah, “branch.” It might have involved plucking the less ripe olives not shaken loose by beating. “What is left” is added in the translation to clarify the compact Hebrew.
21. you shall not pluck the young grapes left behind you. Another unusual verb, ʿolel, is derived from ʿolelot, “small grapes.”