Deuteronomy 24 - Introduction

Of Re-marriage after Divorce

If a man, for some fault, divorce his wife, and she marry another, who in turn divorces her or dies (Deuteronomy 24:1-3), her former husband may not take her back, this would be an abomination, etc. (4). EVV. do not render the Heb. constr. The law is one conditional sentence, of which the apodosis begins with Deuteronomy 24:4. It is not a law instituting divorce or prescribing the procedure though it states this as part of the special case which it puts (and here may be quoting from an earlier code). It is a law for a particular purpose, the prohibition of a man's re-marriage to a wife whom he has divorced and who, meantime, has been another's. It is not in the direct form of address, nor marked by D's phrases till its close; and therefore, like others similarly constructed (e.g. Deuteronomy 22:13-21), which it further resembles in its opening, and in the phrases hate her, he may not, and putor send her away, it may all be an older law, except for D's closing formula. The quotation of the law in Jeremiah 3:1 does not prove that the prophet had also the closing formula before him, for the term landwhich the Heb. text has there, instead of wife, may be, as the LXX shows, the mistake of a copying scribe.

Among the Semites a man paid a price for his bride, Heb. môhar, who thus was his property and he alone had the right of divorce. There were exceptions. Among the Babylonians sometimes no môharwas paid, and the wife for special reasons could divorce her husband (Johns, op. cit.142 f.); among the later Jews the wife might divorce if the husband was a leper, or on similar grounds (Mishna, -Kethuboth," Deuteronomy 7:10); and an Arab husband frequently divorced his wife on her own importunity (cp. the case cited in Ar. Des.i. 232) or under pressure from her relatives, who returned the môhar. But the payment of the môharand the husband's sole right to divorce were the general rule. Semitic lawgivers accept the latter as an existing institution and regulate it, usually in the wife's interest. By Ḫammurabi the divorced concubine has her dowry returned with maintenance for her children (§ 137). A wife may be divorced for barrenness but takes the môharand her marriage portion, or, if there is no môhar, a sum according to her husband's rank (138 140). An evil wife may be divorced without compensation, or remain a slave in her husband's house while he marries another (141). Disease is not sufficient ground for divorce; the husband may take a second wife but must either maintain the first in his own house or, if she will, send her to her father's with her marriage portion (148 f.). And we have already seen (on Deuteronomy 22:22) that remarriage was regulated in case of the man's desertion. Among the ancient Arabs divorce was allowed and the divorced couple could re-marry, but this the Ḳoran regulates by forbidding re-marriage till the wife has first married another and been divorced by him the opposite of D's law but apparently with the same intention of making divorce a more serious and difficult affair than it was popularly conceived to be. Among the Arabs of to-day a woman is lightly passed to another husband, Doughty, Ar. Des.i. 237, 465, etc., etc.; Jennings-Bramley, PEFQ, 1905, 137, 213 ff.: -I do not remember having met a man who had not divorced several wives." He states this facility of divorce as one reason for the absence of intrigues among them, cp. 218. If a wife for good cause run to her relatives, her father returns the môhar, 1907, 25. Arabs E. of the Dead Sea permit a divorced couple to re-marry without requiring the wife to be meantime married and divorced by another man, if a victim is first sacrificed (Janssen, Rev. Bib.1906, January).

Similarly in Israel. No O.T. oracle or law institutes divorce. But the husband's right of divorce is accepted or permitted cp. our Lord's teaching, Matthew 19:8 and is put under regulations of which those in D are in the interest of the wife and either punish the husband for his evil behaviour to her by withdrawing the right to divorce, Deuteronomy 22:19; Deuteronomy 22:29, or ensure deliberation on the husband's part before he completes the act, by subjecting it to the condition of a good reason and of legal procedure, yet without lessening his responsibility, Deuteronomy 24:1 ff. The other codes have nothing similar in temper to this. H forbids a priest to marry a divorcée and allows the divorced daughter of a priest to return to her father's house, Leviticus 21:7; Leviticus 21:14; Leviticus 22:13; P prescribes that the vow of a divorcée shall stand, Numbers 30:9 (10). The second marriage of a divorcée is nowhere sanctioned, not even in Deuteronomy 24:2, where (as the Heb. syntax makes plain) it is merely a fact in the case legislated for. But this shows that the practice was usual just as among the Arabs, and in the earlier history there is an instance of the remarriage of a divorced couple David and Michal after her marriage to another man (1 Samuel 18:27; 1 Samuel 25:44; 2 Samuel 3:14 ff.) [147]. Steuernagel thinks that, as among the Arabs under the Ḳoran, so in Israel the marriage of a divorced wife to another man and her divorce from him had been regarded as the necessary condition of her re-marriage to her former husband, and that D's law means that even ifshe has meantime been married to another, the former husband must not take her back. But for the existence of such a condition in Israelite practice there is no evidence. We must be satisfied with this that D's law tends to make divorce a much more serious affair than it was usually conceived to be in Israel, and so to check the too-frequent practice of it by diminishing the possibilities of re-marriage which tempted men to divorce their wives with a light heart. D would forbid that easy passage of a woman between one man and another, which seems to have often happened in Israel, and which meant the degradation or defilement of the woman herself. If such be the motive of the law it is in harmony with D's other measures for the elevation of woman, Deuteronomy 5:21, etc.

[147] No legal divorce is mentioned in this case. And there was none in the case of Hosea (1 3) which on other grounds is of too special a nature to be relevant here.