When Marriage is Messy - Deut. 21-24
Teaching Text: Selected Readings from Deuteronomy 21-24
10 When you go out to do battle with your enemies and the Lord your God allows you to prevail and you take prisoners, 11 if you should see among them an attractive woman whom you wish to take as a wife, 12 you may bring her back to your house. She must shave her head, trim her nails, 13 discard the clothing she was wearing when captured, and stay in your house, lamenting for her father and mother for a full month. After that you may sleep with her and become her husband and she your wife. 14 If you are not pleased with her, then you must let her go where she pleases. You cannot in any case sell her; you must not take advantage of her, since you have already humiliated her.
13 Suppose a man marries a woman, sleeps with her, and then rejects her, 14 accusing her of impropriety and defaming her reputation by saying, “I married this woman but when I approached her for marital relations I discovered she was not a virgin!” 15 Then the father and mother of the young woman must produce the evidence of virginity for the elders of the city at the gate. 16 The young woman’s father must say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man and he has rejected her. 17 Moreover, he has raised accusations of impropriety by saying, ‘I discovered your daughter was not a virgin,’ but this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity!” The cloth must then be spread out before the city’s elders. 18 The elders of that city must then seize the man and punish him. 19 They will fine him 100 shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, for the man who made the accusation ruined the reputation of an Israelite virgin. She will then become his wife, and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.
22 If a man is discovered in bed with a married woman, both the man lying in bed with the woman and the woman herself must die; in this way you will purge the evil from Israel.
28 Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and takes hold of her and sleeps with her and they are discovered. 29 The man who has slept with her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife. Because he has humiliated her, he may never divorce her as long as he lives.
24 If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something indecent in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house. 2 When she has left him she may go and become someone else’s wife. 3 If the second husband rejects her and then divorces her, gives her the papers, and evicts her from his house, or if the second husband who married her dies, 4 her first husband who divorced her is not permitted to remarry her after she has become ritually impure, for that is offensive to the Lord. You must not bring guilt on the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.
5 When a man is newly married, he need not go into the army nor be obligated in any way; he must be free to stay at home for a full year and bring joy to the wife he has married.