Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Deuteronomy 24:1
When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give [it] in her hand, and send her out of his house.
When a man taketh a wife ] Deu 22:13.
then it shall be that he shall write her, etc.] Rather, and it come to pass that he write her, etc. The apodosis does not commence here but in Deu 24:4.
some unseemly thing ] As in Deu 23:14 (15), the nakedness of a thing, something indecent or repulsive, LXX . The expression is so indefinite that it gave rise to controversy in the Rabbinic schools; that of Shammai understanding by it unchastity, that of Hillel any physical blemish or other, even the most trivial, cause of dislike. It cannot be adultery for this was punished by death. The words suggest some immodest exposure or failure in proper womanly reserve.
bill of divorcement ] Lit. of separation. Bill, Heb. sepher, used of any missive (e.g. 2Sa 11:14 f.) or legal deed (Jer 32:11), as well as book, LXX . Something in legal form, and possibly procurable only from some public authority. Yet, notice, there is no mention of elders here as in the procedure in Deu 22:13-21. The later Jews called such a document ge, and the procedure in connection with it is prescribed in the Mishna, ‘Giin.’
and give it her and send her ] Two further formal steps of personal service of the deed, and the husband’s own solemn dismissal. So his responsibility in the matter is not weakened.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
In this and the next chapter certain particular rights and duties, domestic, social, and civil, are treated. The cases brought forward have often no definite connection, and seem selected in order to illustrate the application of the great principles of the Law in certain important events and circumstances.
These four verses contain only one sentence, and should be rendered thus: If a man hath taken a wife, etc., and given her a bill of divorcement and Deu 24:2 if she has departed out of his house and become another mans wife; and Deu 24:3 if the latter husband hates her, then Deu 24:4 her former husband, etc.
Moses neither institutes nor enjoins divorce. The exact spirit of the passage is given in our Lords words to the Jews, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives Mat 19:8. Not only does the original institution of marriage as recorded by Moses Gen 2:24 set forth the perpetuity of the bond, but the verses before us plainly intimate that divorce, while tolerated for the time, contravenes the order of nature and of God. The divorced woman who marries again is defiled Deu 24:4, and is grouped in this particular with the adulteress (compare Lev 18:20). Our Lord then was speaking according to the spirit of the law of Moses when he declared, Whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery Mat 19:9. He was speaking too not less according to the mind of the prophets (compare Mal 2:14-16). But Moses could not absolutely put an end to a practice which was traditional, and common to the Jews with other Oriental nations. His aim is therefore to regulate and thus to mitigate an evil which he could not extirpate.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XXIV
The case of a divorced wife, 1-4.
No man shall be obliged to undertake any public service for the
first year of his marriage, 5.
The mill-stones shall not be taken as a pledge, 6.
The man-stealer shall be put to death, 7.
Concerning cases of leprosy, 8, 9.
Of receiving pledges, and returning those of the poor before
bed-time, 10-13.
Of servants and their hire, 14,15.
Parents and children shall not be put to death for each other,
16.
Of humanity to the stranger, fatherless, widow, and bondman,
17,18.
Gleanings of the harvest, c., to be left for the poor,
stranger, widow, fatherless, c., 19-22.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXIV
Verse 1. Some uncleanness] Any cause of dislike, for this great latitude of meaning the fact itself authorizes us to adopt, for it is certain that a Jew might put away his wife for any cause that seemed good to himself and so hard were their hearts, that Moses suffered this and we find they continued this practice even to the time of our Lord, who strongly reprehended them on the account, and showed that such license was wholly inconsistent with the original design of marriage; see Mt 5:31, c. Mt 19:3, &c., and the notes there.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
That she find no favour in his eyes, i.e. he dislike and loathe her. It is a figure called meiosis, whereby more is understood than is expressed, as Pro 10:2; 17:21; 24:23.
Uncleanness; Heb. nakedness, or shamefulness, or filthiness of a thing, i.e. some filthy or hateful thing, some loathsome distemper of body or quality of mind, not observed before marriage; or some light and unchaste carriage, as this or the like phrase commonly signifies, but not amounting to adultery, which was not punished with divorce, but with death.
Send her out of his house; which is not a command to divorce them, as some of the Jews understood it, nor an allowance and approbation, as plainly appears, not only from the New Testament, Mat 5:31,32; 19:8,9, but also from the Old Testament, Gen 2:24; Mal 2:16; but merely a permission or toleration of that practice for prevention of greater mischiefs and cruelties of that hard-hearted people towards their wives, and this only for a season, even until the time of reformation, as it is called Heb 9:10, i.e. till the coming of the Messias, when things were to return to their first institution and purest condition. The husband is not here commanded to put her away, but if he do put her away, he is commanded
to write and give her a bill of divorcement, before he send her out of his house. And though it be true, as our Saviour observes, that Moses did suffer these divorces, to wit, without punishing them, which also is here implied, yet it must be acknowledged, that if we consult the Hebrew words, those three first verses may seem to be only a supposition, and the words rendered, then let him write her, in the Hebrew run thus, and hath written her, and so it follows, Deu 24:2. And she be departed out of his house, and be gone and become another mans wife; then follows Deu 24:3, which even according to our translation carries on the supposition, And if the latter husband hate her, & c. Then follows the position or prohibition, Deu 24:4.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1-4. When a man hath taken a wife,and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in hiseyesIt appears that the practice of divorces was at this earlyperiod very prevalent amongst the Israelites, who had in allprobability become familiar with it in Egypt [LANE].The usage, being too deep-rooted to be soon or easily abolished, wastolerated by Moses (Mt 19:8).But it was accompanied under the law with two conditions, which werecalculated greatly to prevent the evils incident to the permittedsystem; namely: (1) The act of divorcement was to be certified on awritten document, the preparation of which, with legal formality,would afford time for reflection and repentance; and (2) In the eventof the divorced wife being married to another husband, she could not,on the termination of that second marriage, be restored to her firsthusband, however desirous he might be to receive her.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
When a man hath taken a wife and married her,…. That is, when a man has made choice of a woman for his wife, and has obtained her consent, and the consent of her parents; and has not only betrothed her, but taken her home, and consummated the marriage:
and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes; is not agreeable to him, he takes no delight in her person, nor pleasure in her company and conversation; but, on the contrary, his affections are alienated from her, and he cannot bear the sight of her;
because he hath found some uncleanness in her; something that he disliked, and was disagreeable to him, and which made their continuance together in the marriage state very uncomfortable; which led him on to be very ill-natured, severe, and cruel to her; so that her life was exposed to danger, or at least become very uneasy; in which case a divorce was permitted, both for the badness of the man’s heart, and in favour of the woman, that she might be freed from such rigorous usage. This word “uncleanness” does not signify adultery, or any of the uncleannesses forbidden in Le 18:6; because that was punishable with death, when it could be proved; and where there was only a suspicion of it, the husband might make use of the bitter water: though the house of Shammai seem to take it in this sense; for they say a man might not divorce his wife unless he found her in some unclean thing, something dishonest and wicked, and which they ground upon these words; but the house of Hillell say, if she burnt his food, or spoiled it by over salting, or over roasting it; and Akiba says, even if he found another woman more beautiful than her or more agreeable to him. But neither his sense, nor that of the house of Shammai, are approved of by the Jews in general, but that of the house of Hillell m; and they suppose a man might divorce his wife for any ill qualities of mind in her, or for any ill or impudent behaviour of hers; as if her husband saw her go abroad with her head uncovered, and spinning in the streets, and so showing her naked arms to men; or having her garments slit on both sides; or washing in a bath with men, or where men use to wash, and talking with every man, and joking with young men; or her voice is sonorous and noisy; or any disease of body, as the leprosy, and the like; or any blemishes, as warts, are upon her; or any disagreeable smell that might arise from any parts of the body, from sweat, or a stinking breath n:
then let him write her a bill of divorcement; Jarchi says, this is a command upon him to divorce her, because she finds not favour in his eyes; and so the Jews o generally understand it, and so they did in the time of Christ, Mt 19:7; whereas it was no more than a permission, for reasons before given. A man might not dismiss his wife by word of mouth, which might be done hastily, in a passion, of which he might soon repent; but by writing, which was to be drawn up in form; and, as the Targum of Jonathan, before the sanhedrim, in a court of judicature, which required time, during which he might think more of it, and either recede from his purpose before the case was finished, or do it upon mature deliberation; and a firm resolution. The Jews say p many things of the witnesses before whom it was to be written and sealed, and at what time, and upon what, and with what it was to be written, and who were proper persons to write it or not, in a treatise of theirs, called Gittin, or divorces. In the Hebrew text this bill is called “a bill of cutting off” q; because the marriage was rescinded, and man and wife were cut off and separated from one another for ever; of the form of such a bill, [See comments on Mt 5:31];
and give [it] in her hand; which was to be done before witnesses, and which is one of the ten things requisite to a divorce r; though it made no difference whether it was delivered by himself, or by a messenger; or whether to her, or to her deputy, appointed by her before witnesses; or whether it was put into her hand, or in her bosom, so be it that she was but possessed of it; with which agrees the Jewish canon,
“if he casts a bill to his wife, and she is within the house, or within the court, she is divorced; if he casts it into her bosom, or into her work basket, she is divorced s:”
and send her out of his house; which was a visible token and public declaration of her divorce; besides, were she to be continued in his house afterwards, it would give suspicion of cohabitation, which after a divorce was not lawful.
m Misn. Gittin, c. 9. sect. 10. Maimon. Bartenora in ib. n T. Bab. Gittin, fol. 90. 1. 2. Misn. Cetubot, c. 7. sect. 6, 7. & Maimon. & Bartenora in ib. o T. Bab. Gittin, ut supra. (n) p Misn. Gittin, c. 2. sect. 2, 3, 4, 5. q “libellum excidii”, Montanus, Fagius “succisionis”, Munster “abscissionis”, Tigurine version. r See Ainsworth in loc. s Misn. Gittin, c. 8. sect. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Deu 24:1-5 contain two laws concerning the relation of a man to his wife. The first (Deu 24:1-4) has reference to divorce. In these verses, however, divorce is not established as a right; all that is done is, that in case of a divorce a reunion with the divorced wife is forbidden, if in the meantime she had married another man, even though the second husband had also put her away, or had died. The four verses form a period, in which Deu 24:1-3 are the clauses of the protasis, which describe the matter treated about; and Deu 24:4 contains the apodosis, with the law concerning the point in question. If a man married a wife, and he put her away with a letter of divorce, because she did not please him any longer, and the divorced woman married another man, and he either put her away in the same manner or died, the first husband could not take her as his wife again. The putting away (divorce) of a wife with a letter of divorce, which the husband gave to the wife whom he put away, is assumed as a custom founded upon tradition. This tradition left the question of divorce entirely at the will of the husband: “ if the wife does not find favour in his eyes (i.e., does not please him), because he has found in her something shameful ” (Deu 23:15). , nakedness, shame, disgrace (Isa 20:4; 1Sa 20:30); in connection with , the shame of a thing, i.e., a shameful thing (lxx ; Vulg. aliquam faetiditatem ). The meaning of this expression as a ground of divorce was disputed even among the Rabbins. Hillel’s school interpret it in the widest and most lax manner possible, according to the explanation of the Pharisees in Mat 19:3, “for every cause.” They no doubt followed the rendering of Onkelos, , the transgression of a thing; but this is contrary to the use of the word , to which the interpretation given by Shammai adhered more strictly. His explanation of is “ rem impudicam, libidinem, lasciviam, impudicitiam .” Adultery, to which some of the Rabbins would restrict the expression, is certainly not to be thought of, because this was to be punished with death.
(Note: For the different views of the Rabbins upon this subject, see Mishnah tract. Gittin ix. 10; Buxtorf, de sponsal. et divort. pp. 88ff.; Selden, uxor ebr. l. iii. c. 18 and 20; and Lightfoot, horae ebr. et talm. ad Matth. v. 31f.)
, , a letter of divorce; , hewing off, cutting off, sc., from the man, with whom the wife was to be one flesh (Gen 2:24). The custom of giving letters of divorce was probably adopted by the Israelites in Egypt, where the practice of writing had already found its way into all the relations of life.
(Note: The rabbinical rules on the grounds of divorce and the letter of divorce, according to Maimonides, have been collected by Surenhusius, ad Mishn. tr. Gittin, c. 1 (T. iii. pp. 322f. of the Mishnah of Sur.), where different specimens of letters of divorce are given; the latter also in Lightfoot, l.c.)
The law that the first husband could not take his divorced wife back again, if she had married another husband in the meantime, even supposing that the second husband was dead, would necessarily put a check upon frivolous divorces. Moses could not entirely abolish the traditional custom, if only “because of the hardness of the people’s hearts” ( Mat 19:8). The thought, therefore, of the impossibility of reunion with the first husband, after the wife had contracted a second marriage, would put some restraint upon a frivolous rupture of the marriage tie: it would have this effect, that whilst, on the one hand, the man would reflect when inducements to divorce his wife presented themselves, and would recall a rash act if it had been performed, before the wife he had put away had married another husband; on the other hand, the wife would yield more readily to the will of her husband, and seek to avoid furnishing him with an inducement for divorce. But this effect would be still more readily produced by the reason assigned by Moses, namely, that the divorced woman was defiled ( , Hothpael, as in Num 1:47) by her marriage with a second husband. The second marriage of a woman who had been divorced is designated by Moses a defilement of the woman, primarily no doubt with reference to the fact that the emissio seminis in sexual intercourse rendered unclean, though not merely in the sense of such a defilement as was removed in the evening by simple washing, but as a moral defilement, i.e., blemishing, desecration of the sexual communion with was sanctified by marriage, in the same sense in which adultery is called a defilement in Lev 18:20 and Num 5:13-14. Thus the second marriage of a divorced woman was placed implicite upon a par with adultery, and some approach made towards the teaching of Christ concerning marriage: “Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery” (Mat 5:32). – But if the second marriage of a divorced woman was a moral defilement, of course the wife could not marry the first again even after the death of her second husband, not only because such a reunion would lower the dignity of the woman, and the woman would appear too much like property, which could be disposed of at one time and reclaimed at another ( Schultz), but because the defilement of the wife would be thereby repeated, and even increased, as the moral defilement which the divorced wife acquired through the second marriage was not removed by a divorce from the second husband, nor yet by his death. Such defilement was an abomination before Jehovah, by which they would cause the land to sin, i.e., stain it with sin, as much as by the sins of incest and unnatural licentiousness (Lev 18:25).
Attached to this law, which is intended to prevent a frivolous severance of the marriage tie, there is another in Deu 24:5, which was of a more positive character, and adapted to fortify the marriage bond. The newly married man was not required to perform military service for a whole year; “ and there shall not come (anything) upon him with regard to any matter.” The meaning of this last clause is to be found in what follows: “ Free shall he be for his house for a year,” i.e., they shall put no public burdens upon him, that he may devote himself entirely to his newly established domestic relations, and be able to gladden his wife (compare Deu 20:7).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Law Concerning Divorce. | B. C. 1451. |
1 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. 2 And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. 3 And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife; 4 Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
This is that permission which the Pharisees erroneously referred to as a precept, Matt. xix. 7, Moses commanded to give a writing of divorcement. It was not so; our Saviour told them that he only suffered it because of the hardness of their hearts, lest, if they had not had liberty to divorce their wives, they should have ruled them with rigour, and it may be, have been the death of them. It is probable that divorces were in use before (they are taken for granted, Lev. xxi. 14), and Moses thought it needful here to give some rules concerning them. 1. That a man might not divorce his wife unless he found some uncleanness in her, v. 1. It was not sufficient to say that he did not like her, or that he liked another better, but he must show cause for his dislike; something that made her disagreeable and unpleasant to him, though it might not make her so to another. This uncleanness must mean something less than adultery; for, for that, she was to die; and less than the suspicion of it, for in that case he might give her the waters of jealousy; but it means either a light carriage, or a cross froward disposition, or some loathsome sore or disease; nay, some of the Jewish writers suppose that an offensive breath might be a just ground for divorce. Whatever is meant by it, doubtless it was something considerable; so that their modern doctors erred who allowed divorce for every cause, though ever so trivial, Matt. xix. 3. 2. That it must be done, not by word of mouth, for that might be spoken hastily, but by writing, and that put in due form, and solemnly declared, before witnesses, to be his own act and deed, which was a work of time, and left room for consideration, that it might not be done rashly. 3. That the husband must give it into the hand of his wife, and send her away, which some think obliged him to endow her and make provision for her, according to her quality and such as might help to marry her again; and good reason he should do this, since the cause of quarrel was not her fault, but her infelicity. 4. That being divorced it was lawful for her to marry another husband, v. 2. The divorce had dissolved the bond of marriage as effectually as death could dissolve it; so that she was as free to marry again as if her first husband had been naturally dead. 5. That if her second husband died, or divorced her, then still she might marry a third, but her first husband should never take her again (Deu 24:3; Deu 24:4), which he might have done if she had not married another; for by that act of her own she had perfectly renounced him for ever, and, as to him was looked upon as defiled, though not as to another person. The Jewish writers say that this was to prevent a most vile and wicked practice which the Egyptians had of changing wives; or perhaps it was intended to prevent men’s rashness in putting away their wives; for the wife that was divorced would be apt, in revenge, to marry another immediately, and perhaps the husband that divorced her, how much soever he though to better himself by another choice, would find the next worse, and something in her more disagreeable, so that he would wish for his first wife again. “No” (says this law) “you shall not have her, you should have kept her when you had her.” Note, It is best to be content with such things as we have, since changes made by discontent often prove for the worse. The uneasiness we know is commonly better, though we are apt to think it worse, than that which we do not know. By the strictness of this law God illustrates the riches of his grace in his willingness to be reconciled to his people that had gone a whoring from him. Jer. iii. 1, Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers, yet return again to me. For his thoughts and ways are above ours.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
DEUTERONOMY – CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Verses 1:4:
This statute does not sanction nor condone divorce. It regulates it, and prescribes means for the protection of those involved, particularly the divorced wife.
In later years, Jewish thought was divided on the matter of divorce into two general interpretations:
(1) That of the rabbi Hillel, which held that a man could divorce his wife for any unbecoming reason, or for any cause, as in the Pharisees’ conversation with Jesus, Mat 19:3.
(2) That of the rabbi Shammai, which held that only for a disgraceful thing, such as adultery, could a man divorce his wife, cf. Mat 5:31. This was a much more strict interpretation.
The matter of divorce because of adultery was not under consideration in this text, because adultery was punishable by death, and not by divorce.
“Uncleanness,” ervah, “a thing offensive,” also translated “nakedness, disgracefulness.” This could include a variety of serious offenses, but it does not include trivial matters.
“Bill of divorcement,” sepher kerithuth, “book or writing of a cutting off.” This was a legal document, which must be couched in explicit terms, and ratified in the presence of at least two witnesses.
The text makes no provision for a wife seeking a divorce from her husband. However, Jewish legal procedure allowed a wife to seek a divorce if her husband were a leper, or diseased with polypus, or engaged in a disagreeable trade, such as a tanner.
Divorce was obligatory if one of the parties renounced Judaism.
A divorced woman was free to marry another. If she be divorced by the second husband, or if the second husband died, she was forbidden to marry her first husband again. To do so would be an abomination before the Lord, and a defilement of the land.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
Although what relates to divorce was granted in indulgence to the Jews, yet Christ pronounces that it was never in accordance with the Law, because it is directly repugnant to the first institution of God, from whence a perpetual and inviolable rule is to be sought. It is proverbially said that the laws of nature are indissoluble; and God has declared once for all, that the bond of union between husband and wife is closer than that of parent and child; wherefore, if a son cannot shake off the paternal yoke, no cause can permit the dissolution of the connection which a man has with his wife. Hence it appears how great was the perverseness of that nation, which could not be restrained from dissolving a most sacred and inviolable tie. Meanwhile the Jews improperly concluded from their impunity that that was lawful, which God did not punish because of the hardness of their hearts; whereas they ought rather to have considered, agreeably to the answer of Christ, that man is not at liberty to separate those whom God hath joined together. (Mat 19:6.) Still, God chose to make a provision for women who were cruelly oppressed, and for whom it was better that they should at once be set free, than that they should groan beneath a cruel tyranny during their whole lives. Thus, in Malachi, divorce is preferred to polygamy, since it would be a more tolerable condition to be divorced than to bear with a harlot and a rival. (Mal 2:14.) And undoubtedly the bill or scroll of divorce, whilst it cleared the woman from all disgrace, cast some reproach on the husband; for he who confesses that he puts away his wife, because she does not please him, brings himself under the accusation both of moroseness and inconstancy. For what gross levity and disgraceful inconstancy it shows, that a husband should be so offended with some imperfection or disease in his wife, as to east away from him half of himself! We see, then, that husbands were indirectly condemned by the writing of divorce, since they thus committed an injury against their wives who were chaste, and in other respects what they should be. On these grounds, God in Isaiah, in order that He might take away from the Jews all subject of complaint, bids them produce the bill of divorce, if He had given any to their mother, (Isa 1:1😉 as much as to say, that His cause for rejecting them was just, because they had treacherously revolted to ungodliness.
Some interpreters do not read these three verses continuously, but suppose the sense to be complete at the end of the first, wherein the husband testifies that he divorces his wife for no offense, but because her beauty does not satisfy his lust. If, however, we give more close attention, we shall see that it is only one provision of the Law, viz., that when a man has divorced his wife, it is not lawful for him to marry her again if she have married another. The reason of the law is, that, by prostituting his wife, he would be, as far as in him lay, acting like a procurer. In this view, it is said that she was defiled, because he had contaminated her body, for the liberty which he gave her could not abolish the first institution of God, but rather, as Christ teaches, gave cause for adultery. (Mat 5:31, and 19:9.) Thus, the Israelites were reminded that, although they divorced their wives with impunity, still this license was by no means excused before God.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
THE RECAPITULATION OF THE LAW
Deu 5:1 to Deu 26:19 record for us a recapitulation of the Law. The study of this section sets out clearly certain fundamental truths.
The Decalog is repeated with significant variations. Chapter 5, fundamental to all the laws of God is the Decalog. In Exodus, Moses delivered the same as he brought it from the tip of the fingers Divine. In Deuteronomy, the Law is given again. From the first to the tenth commandment, the very language of Exodus is employed, save in the instance of the fourth. Here, the reason assigned to the Jew for keeping the Sabbath, is strangely and significantly changed, namely, from because the Lord in six days made heaven and earth and rested on the seventh day, to Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm; therefore, the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day (Deu 5:15).
This change is so strange and so unexpected that it arrests immediate attention and demands adequate explanation. Why did God shift the reason for keeping the Sabbath from the finished creation to a completed redemption? The answer is not difficult. In the Divine plan, redemption is a far greater event than creation; the soul of man exceeds the weight of the world; for that matter, of all worlds. The Law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ. The Law was given for Jews; the Gentiles were never in bondage to it, and above all, believing Gentiles are not bound by it. To them, the Law is not a great external or outside force created for practices of restraint. Its spirit is transcribed to their souls rather; they walk at liberty while seeking Divine precepts. This is not to inveigh against the Law. The Law is just, and true and good, but by Law no man has ever been redeemed. It is to exalt Grace, which God hath revealed through Jesus Christ, in whom men have redemption from sin. If I only love my father and mother because the Law commands it, I do not love them at all; if I refrain from making images and bowing down before them because this is the demand of the Law, my heart may yet be as full of idolatry as a heathen temple. Redemption is not by the Law; it is by Grace in Jesus Christ!
The early Church was shortly called upon to settle this question of salvation by Law or Grace, and in the Jerusalem Conference Peter rose up and said unto them,
Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the Word of the Gospel, and believe.
And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did unto us;
And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.
Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? (Act 15:7-10).
Later he said, We believe that through the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (not by Law) we shall be saved, even as they (Act 15:7-11). Mark you, in that very sentence, Peter, the Apostle, proves his realization of the fact that the Law had failed as a savior and the very Jew himself had hope alone in grace. How strange, then, for men of the Twentieth Century to turn back to Law and proclaim the Law as though it were a redeemer, and protest that men who ignore the Jewish Saturday as the Sabbath will plunge themselves into the pit thereby, when the Law never saved! The keeping of the Sabbath was the one Law that contained in itself no ethical demand. The Law to worship, the Law to honor father and mother, the Law against killing, stealing and covetousnessthese are all questions of right and wrong; but to tithe time by the keeping of the Sabbath was a command solely in the interest of mans physical life. When, therefore, by the pen of inspiration the reason for it was shifted from a finished creation to a finished redemption, the act was lifted at once to a high spiritual level and became a symbol of the day when Christ, risen from the grave, should have completed redemptions plan. That great fortune to mankind fell out on the first day of the week, creating not so much a Christian Sabbath as making forever a memorial day for redemption itself, for the eighth day, or the first day of the week, clearly indicated the new order of things, or the new creation through Christ.
We have no sympathy whatever with secularizing each one of the seven days; but we would have the first day of the week kept in the spirit of rejoicing as redemptions memorial. On that day our Lord rose from the dead; on that day He met his disciples again and again; on that day the brethren at Troas assembled with the Apostles and broke bread; on that day the Christians laid aside their offerings; on that day they met for prayer and breaking of breadthe fellowship of the saints; on that day John was caught up in the spirit and witnessed the marvels recorded in his apocalyptic vision. Oh, what a day! No legal bondage, for what have we to do with holy days, sabbaths and new moons; but salvations memorial, a day of special service to the Son of God, our Saviour, a day for the souls rejoicing in Jesus. Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
But as we pass on in the study of this section of Scripture, we find Moses defends the Decalog in character and consequence. He reminds them of the glory out of which the voice spake (Deu 5:24). He reminds them of the obligation in the words themselves (Deu 5:32). He reminds them of the relationship of the possession of the land to obedience of the precepts. He pleads with them as a father, Hear, therefore, O Israel (Deu 6:4). He anticipates the day of prophecy and begs that these words have place in their hearts (Deu 6:6), to be diligently taught to their children (Deu 6:7); bound for a sign upon their hands and frontlets between their eyes, lest they be forgotten (Deu 6:8); written upon the posts of the house and on the gates, where they could not be unobserved (Deu 6:9). Moses knew the relationship of law-keeping to national living. It is doubtful if modernists now have or will ever again entertain the same sacred reverence for Law that characterized the ancients, even the heathen of far-off days.
We cannot forget how Socrates, when he was sentenced to death and, after an imprisonment of thirty days, was to drink the juice of the hemlock, spent his time preparing for the end; friends conceived and executed plans for his escape and earnestly endeavored to prevail upon him to avail himself of the opportunity, but he answered, That would be a crime to violate the law even when the sentence is unjust. I would rather die than do evil. If a heathen philosopher could treat unjust laws with such reverence, Moses was justified in pleading with his people to regard the laws that were true and just and good, and such were the mandates of Deuteronomy.
It is easy enough for one to pick out some one of these precepts and, by detaching it from its context, create the impression that it was foolish or superficial or even utterly unjust; but when one reads the whole Book, he sees the effectual relationship of laws, general and particular, to the life Israel was leading, and for that matter, catches the supreme spiritual significance of the same as they interpret themselves in the light of New Testament teaching. There is not a warning that was not needed, nor an exhortation which, if heeded, would have failed to profit the people. It all came to one conclusion for Israel.
What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul (Deu 10:12)?
And as there was not a law in the Old Testament but was fitted for the profit of Israel, so there is not a command in the New Testament but looks to the conquest of the Christian soul.
Among these enactments were personal and significant suggestions. They gave dietary and sanitary suggestions (Deuteronomy 14); they established the Sabbatic year (Deuteronomy 13); they fixed the time of the Passover (Deuteronomy 16); they set forth the character of the offerings (Deuteronomy 17); they determined the duties of the Levites (Deuteronomy 18); they gave direction concerning the cities of refuge (Deuteronomy 19); they determined the way of righteous warfare (chap. 20); they established a court of inquest (Deuteronomy 21); they announced the law of brotherhood (Deuteronomy 22); they descended to the minute instances of social life and regulations of the same (Deuteronomy 23); they dealt with the great and difficult question of divorce (Deuteronomy 24); they ended (Deuteronomy 23) in an almost unlimited series of regulations concerning the social life of the people knowing a wilderness experience, including the law of the first fruits (Deuteronomy 26).
It is interesting to study not alone the laws enacted here, but the penalties declared, including the blessings and curses from Ebal to Gerizim. There is about them all an innate righteousness that has been unknown to those purely human codes for which God never assumed responsibility. From the curse against bribery to the curse against brutal murder to this day the sentences are justified in the judgment of the worlds most thoughtful men.
In all they contrast the injustice and inordinately severe punishments often afflicted by godless governments. Plutarch, in writing about Solon, tells us that he repealed the laws of Draco except those concerning murder. Such was the severity of their punishments in proportion to the offense that we are amazed as we read them. If one was convicted of idleness, death was the penalty. If one stole a few apples or potherbs, he must surely die, and by as ignominious a method as did the murderer. And out of that grew the saying of Demades that Draco wrote his laws, not with ink but with blood. And when Draco was asked why such severe penalties, he answered, Small ones deserve it, and I can find no greater for the most heinous. Such were human laws in contrast to these laws Divine.
But a further study of these laws involves a third lesson.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL Notes.In this chapter certain duties social and domestic are chosen to illustrate the general application of the law.
Deu. 24:1-5. Relation of man and wife. Divorce. The verses are hypothetical and should form one sentence, the first three being protasis and Deu. 24:4 the apodosis. Moses neither institutes nor commands divorce, but permits, puts under careful regulations which was too prevalent, too deeply rooted to abolish. The passage harmonises with Mat. 5:31-32; Mat. 19:3-9. Favour. Dues not please him. Unclean. Nakedness, disgrace or shame (1Sa. 20:30; Isa. 20:4). Bill, i.e., writing of cuttings, a certificate of separation, from the man with whom the wife was one flesh (Gen. 2:24). The first husband could not take his divorced wife back again; she was defiled (Deu. 24:4) by marriage with a second husband. This moral defilement not removed by divorce from the second husband even after his death; but abomination a stain upon the land, as much as incest and licentiousness (Lev. 18:25).
A precept, similar to that in Exo. 22:25-26.
Deu. 24:6-9. Various prohibitions. Upper stone is concave and covers the nether like a lid-law, prohibited either from being taken; for then the hand-mill would be injured and life endangered.
Deu. 24:7. Repetition of law against man-stealing (Exo. 21:16).
Deu. 24:8-9. Plague (Lev. 13:14). Leprosy was the symbol of sin, most often the theocratic punishment, the penalty for sins committed against the theocracy, as in the cases of Miriam. Gehazi and Uzziah.. (Abp. Trench.)
Deu. 24:10-13. Warnings against oppression. In loans they must not compel the borrower to give a pledge that was really necessary for him. If a poor man pledged his cloak it was restored before night. In East, poor generally have only their daily garments to cover them at night, (cf. Exo. 22:25-26).
Deu. 24:16-18. Warning against injustice. Hired servants, paid at close of day; to withhold wages for a night would entail suffering and be sin, injustice.
Deu. 24:15. Of. Lev. 14:13, and Jas. 5:4.
Deu. 24:16. Caution addressed to earthly judges. God, as Sovereign Judge of all nations might visit the sins of parents upon children (Exo. 20:5). In heathen nations whole families were involved in the penalty of the parent and were put to death together; in Israel it must not be thus (cf. 2Ki. 14:6; Jer. 31:29-30).
Deu. 24:17. Pervert. Law against perverting right of strangers, widows and orphans repeated from (Exo. 22:20-21; Exo. 23:9); with addition not to take a widows pledge, for they were once strangers and bondmen in Egypt (Lev. 19:33).
Deu. 24:19-22. Portion of the friendless. No injustice done to the poor, but they must be helped out of abundance; by a forgotten sheaf in the harvest field (Deu. 24:19); by the fruit of the olive tree (Deu. 24:20); and by gleanings from the vintage (Deu. 24:21). In Deu. 24:22 the reason is given, as in Deu. 24:18 and Deu. 15:16.
THE SANCTITY OF THE MARRIAGE BOND.Deu. 24:1-5
The relation between man and wife here set forth is one that is sacred and binding.
I. One which must not be broken by frivolous pretexts. The original institution sets forth the perpetuity of the bond (Gen. 2:24). Divorce for a time may be tolerated, but it contravenes the order of nature and of God. No whims, no words, no slander (Deu. 22:13-19), no seduction before marriage (Deu. 22:28-29), must lead to separation. What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.
II. One which must be strengthened by every possible method. Instead of frivolous rupture there should be constant endearment. The claims of married life rise above the exigencies of military service, and can only be severed by death. He shall not go out to war (Deu. 24:5). Domestic duties must not be sacrificed to public engagements. Neither shall he be charged with any business. Home must be guarded and the wife loved. Be free at home and cheer up his wife.
THE LAW OF DIVORCE.Deu. 24:1-4
This permissive law of divorce was one of those statutes given to the Israelites that were not good (Eze. 20:25)i.e., not absolutely, but only relatively good; not the universal and perpetual law, but a provisional enactment suited to the demoralized state and peculiar circumstances of the Hebrew people (Rom. 5:20; Gal. 3:19). They were allowed to divorce their wives without the assignation of any cause; but it was accompanied under the law with three conditions which were calculated greatly to prevent the evils incident to the permitted system, viz.1st. That the act of divorcement was to be certified on a written document, the preparation of which with legal formality, probably by a Levite, who might admonish and counsel the parties, would afford time for reflection and repentance, as well as impart a solemn and deliberate character to the transaction. 2nd. That it was given in (into) her hand, either privately or publicly. When delivered privately, it was stamped with the husbands seal, and handed to the repudiated wife in presence of her witnesses; but when done publicly it was accompanied with increased formalities, and frequently taken to the Sanhedrim, to be there deposited in their archives for preservation. 3rd. That in the event of the divorced wife being married to another husband, she could not on the termination of the second marriage be restored to her first husband, however desirous he might be to receive her. In the circumstances of the Israelitish people this law of divorce was of great use in preserving public morals, and promoting the comfort and permanence of married life.Jamiesons Com.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Deu. 24:1-4. Christs toleration of divorce. Viewing these words in relation to Mat. 19:1-12, we learn
1. That this was concessive legislation; a deviation from the eternal standard of right, not a change of lawmoral, like natural law, is unchangeable. Moses suffered them, but from the beginning it was not so.
2. That it was conceded on account of their hardness of heart. They had fallen into that condition in which obedience to the higher law was impossible. The least of two evils was chosen. But for divorce the woman might have been the victim of tyranny, rigour and death. But while permitting divorce, Moses restricts it.
Checks upon divorce. He enacts
(1) that divorce must not take place as hithertofore at the arbitrary will and pleasure of the husband, and by mere word of mouth, but by reason given, and by means of a written and formal document. This legal document would require time and the intervention of public authority to attest sufficiency and due execution. This delay would give opportunity for reconsideration, interposition of magistrates to admonish and prevent frivolous complaints.
(2) That the divorced wife who had married a second time shall never return to her first husband. This would admonish the parties that divorce once consummated would be irreparable and ought not therefore to be brought about rashly and lightly.(Speak. Com.)
Deu. 24:1-5. The rights of woman.
1. To legal divorce when justified.
2. To be treated with due respect at home. Other systems degrade, but this exalts woman.
THE SACREDNESS of HUMAN LIFE.Deu. 24:6-7; Deu. 24:10-12
In these prohibitions we see the sacredness of life in its various conditions and changes.
I. The implements by which life is sustained must not be taken. The millstone was the only means of grinding corn for daily sustenance. To take any part would hinder work, prevent the payment of debt, and injure a mans life. Tools are needful to trade; beds, clothing, and cooking utensils to the comforts of life. We must work with our hands the tiling that is good that we may have to give to him that needeth (Eph. 4:28).
II. The freedom by which life is enjoyed must be respected. To steal or sell a man was a capital offence, That thief shall die. Kidnapping deprives of liberty that gives life its chief value. Many would prefer death to slavery. To be made a slave would be a calamity most terrible, and when this results from kidnapping it is the most crushing of all misfortunes. Joseph was sold. Egyptian and classic history, American slavery, and African serfdom tell of bloody scenes enacted for purposes of man stealing. The law of Moses and the Gospel of Christ were greatly needed to check the atrocious crime. He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death (Exo. 21:16)
III. The House in which life in spent must not be invaded. The pledge must not be fetched out of the house. The owner must bring it to the door. An Englishmans house is his castle. The home of the poor must be as safe as the mansion of the rich; the hut of the serf as sacred as the palace of the prince. Thank God for the security and sanctity of home!
What can be sweeter than our native home!
Thither for ease and soft repose He come;
Home is the sacred refuge of our life.Dryden.
REMEMBRANCE OF THE PAST.Deu. 24:8-9
No house was to be visited by a lender, but in case of leprosy the priest might enter and examine it. Home was to be inviolable except when public security demanded exposure. Hence special warning is given to avoid any sin which might bring the plague. Miriams case is prominently set forth. Learn
I. The past history records interventions of God. God is in our own historyin the history of all nations, but especially in Jewish history. Under the Theocracy are remarkable instances of sins and punishments.
II. These interventions of God should be remembered by us. Israel were to remember what the Lord God did in Egypt and by the way to Canaan. Memory is the conservative faculty, says Sir W. Hamilton. It preserves from oblivion events of importance, and puts them again before our eyes. Remember Lots wife. Remember what the Lord thy God did unto Miriam.
III. Obedience to this rule will convert past history into help for the future. The future lies before us; the past is the period of facts, pleasing or painful. It is the storehouse of instruction and encouragement. Things which are written in Scripture and in history are written for our learning. Sin brings punishment, and obedience Gods favour. Let us avoid the one and secure the other. All these things happened unto them for ensamples (types, figures), and they are written for our admonition (warning) (1Co. 10:11).
PROTECTION FOR THE UNFORTUNATE.Deu. 24:10-17
In these words we have warnings against injustice and oppression of the poor
I. The poor must not be compelled to lend unlawful pledges. The borrower is servant to the lender, and may be forced to servile bondage. Man thus becomes an alien to his brother, and often the victim of gratificationnot the object of sympathy. The widows raiment was not to be taken (Deu. 24:17). The borrower was not to be compelled to give up any pledge needful for life and comfort. This would check strife, save from mendicancy, and urge generosity.
II. The condition of the poor must not be needlessly exposed. The lender was not to go into the house of the borrower (Deu. 24:10). He must spare his neighbour feelings, and not require exposure of his home or declaration of insolvency. The creditor must not be insolent, but mitigate severity and preserve good feeling. Blessed is he that considereth the poor.
III. The wages of the poor must not be withheld. Thou shalt give him his hire (Deu. 24:16). He sets his heart, has special desire for it, and his distress should urge its due payment. To withhold it for a night would be injustice, and inflict great suffering. This humane law was highly esteemed in after times. He who treats a hireling with harshness sins as grievously as if he had taken away life, and transgresses five precepts. It is robbery and a special sin against God. Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning (Lev. 19:13).
IV. The poor must not be deprived of justice (Deu. 24:17). The repetition of this law indicates the strong tendency of the Jewish people to oppress and illume strangers and the desire of the Moses to check it. They must not upbraid the stranger for his nationality nor remind him of his former idolatry. Their own bitter experience should remind them of this inhumanity. Thou wast a bondman in Egypt. Our own humiliation should soften our hearts towards others and teach as that the security of society depends upon the equal rights of all its ranks.
IMPORTANT RECOLLECTION.Deu. 24:18
The admonition may seem needless, but we are prone to forget Gods works and wonders. We have need to be stirred up to remembrance for four purposes. First, for the purpose of humility. We think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. With the lowly is wisdom. If wise, we were once foolish; if justified, we were once condemned; if sons of God, we were once servants of sin. Look to the rock from whence hewn. Second, for the purpose of gratitude. If affected by kindness from our fellow creatures, should we overlook our infinite Benefactor. We have no claims upon Him and should be thankful for all His benefits. But herein is love. Blessed be the God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed His people. Thirdly, for the purpose of confidence. David argued from the past to the future. Because thou hast been my help, therefore under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. Here we have peculiar reason for encouragement. What were we when He first took knowledge of us? Was the want of worthiness a bar to His goodness then? Will it be so, now? Is there variableness or shadow of turning with Him? Is there not the same power in His arm and the same love in His heart? Did He pardon me when a rebel, and will He cast me off now that He has made me a friend? He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, etc. Fourthly, for the purpose of pity and zeal. How many round about you in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity ready to perish? You know the state they are in, and the blessedness of deliverance from it. You are witnesses what God is able and willing to do. Invite the prisoners of hope to turn to Himyou can speak from experience.Jay.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Deu. 24:8-9. The Plague of Leprosy.
1. Miriams sin.
2. Miriams punishment
3. Miriam a warning to others. Take heed.
Deu. 24:10-15. Social Laws. Law is the bond of social morality.
1. Laws of lending and borrowing.
2. Laws of social intercourse. Regard the circumstances and the homes of the poor.
3. Laws of labour. Hiringprompt and frequent payment of labourers wage.
Deu. 24:15. Setteth his heart. How exceedingly natural is this! The poor servant who seldom sees money, yet finds from his masters affluence that it procures all the conveniences and comforts of life, longs for the time when he shall receive his wages. Should his pay be delayed after the time is expired, he may naturally be expected to cry unto God against him who withholds it.A. Clarke.
Lest he cry. A crying sin (cf. Jas. 5:3), condemned by the very light of nature. Plato would have him double paid that is not paid in due time.Trapp.
Deu. 24:17-18. Three classes mentioned as liable to oppression.
1. The stranger; seldom protected by any legislation, unless they had become permanent residents.
2. The fatherless.
3. The widow. The right of widows and orphans were protected generally by civilised communities. But protection is often insufficient, therefore the command of God and the legal penalty certain to fall on those who offend. Oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, not the poor, etc. (Zec. 7:9).
Deu. 24:18. Remember. Most people who have affluence, rose from comparative penury; for those who are born to estates frequently squander them away; such therefore should remember what their feelings, their fears, and anxieties were when they were poor and abject. A want of attention to this most wholesome precept, is the reason why pride and arrogance are the general characteristics of those who have risen in the world from poverty to affluence, and it is the conduct of those men which gave rise to the rugged proverb, Set a beggar on horseback, and hell ride to the devil.A. Clarke.
HARVEST LAWS.Deu. 24:19-21
In these words we have the earliest poor law that we read of in the code of any people, uniting the obligation of public duty with private benevolence.
I. God has special regard for the poor. The stranger, the fatherless, and the widow were defended by special providence. The Lords poor are the Lords care. The Mosaic law is full of tender provisions for them. To neglect, despise or reproach them is to mock God himself. Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker (Pro. 17:5).
II. God demands that our charity should be constantly exercised towards the poor. The poor ye have always with you to remind us of dependence upon God; to beget kindly feeling and cultivate constant charity.
1. He gives substance for charity. The harvest, the olive tree, and the vine, the fruits of the farm, and the results of labour and skill are His gifts. What comes from Gods bounty should be laid out to Gods glory. Honour the Lord with thy substance, etc. (Pro. 3:9).
2. He gives seasons for charityseed time and autumnseasons of trial and want. Our bounties are never amissnever out of season. To everything there is a season and a time (Ecc. 3:1).
III. The motive which should prompt this charity is Gods goodness to us. Remember thou wast a bondman in Egypt. How often does God appeal to us on this ground? Facts in our experience and history enjoin warmest and purest benevolence to the wretched and defencelessfacts which many would turn to the cherishing of rancour, malevolence, and misanthropic feeling. God regardeth not persons; He knoweth no ritualistic and national differences. He it is that executeth the judgment of the fatherless and the widow, and Who loveth the stranger to give unto Him food and raiment. Wherefore thou also must love the stranger, for ye yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt.
GLEANING A DIVINE ORDINANCE
I. The privilege of gleaning as accorded to the jew: freely they have received of God, and freely they were to give.
II. The far higher grounds of this privilege as existing among us. Let it be recollected from what misery we have been redeemed, and can we find a stronger argument than this for liberality to the poor. Learn
1. As gleaners, avail yourselves of your privilege.
2. As proprietors, perform the duties that are here enjoined you.C. Simeon, M. A.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 24
Deu. 24:1-4. Divorcement. An idea may be formed of the social state of Palestine at the beginning of the Christian era from the existing condition of the Jews in that country. Wherever the teaching of the oral law prevails unchecked, as in the holy cities of the East, the concocting of divorces forms a chief branch of the business of a Rabbihe is occupied incessantly in putting asunder what God hath joinedand as a consequence those cities are full of poor, unhappy divorced women and girls, with all the intrigues inseparable from a state of things which saps the very foundations of society.Jewish Intelligence, September, 1863.
Deu. 24:5. Taken a wife. After the battle of Granicus, previously to going into winter quarters, Alexander the Great proclaimed to all of his soldiers who had married that year, that liberty was granted them to return home to Macedonia and pass the winter in the society of their wives; appointing the officers to conduct this howeward bound party and to bring them back to the army when their furlough was expired.cf. Jam. Com.
Deu. 24:8. Leprosy. By others faults wise men correct their own. Therefore, says Bp. Hall, God strikes some that he may warn all.
Deu. 24:10-15. Poor. It was the advice of a bishop to a candidate for ordination, Take care of the poor, and the Lord will take care of you. The history of that clergyman (who is still living) has most remarkably justified the wisdom of the counsel and verified the truth of the prediction.G. S. Bowes.
Deu. 24:19-21. Harvest field.
Ye who have sown,
And reap so plenteously, and find the grange
Too narrow to contain the harvest given,
Be not severe, nor grudge the needy poor
So small a portion. For He who gave
Will bounteously reward the purposed wrong
Done to yourselves; nay, more, will twice repay
The generous neglect.
Hurdis.
Deu. 24:22. Stranger.
Loves special care
Are strangers poor and friendless.
Odyss.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(6) DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE (Deu. 24:1-4)
When a man taketh a wife, and marrieth her, then it shall be, if she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. 2 And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another mans wife. 3 And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, who took her to be his wife; 4 her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before Jehovah: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
THOUGHT QUESTIONS 24:14
405.
Since this text has been variously used and abused, it should merit our most careful reading and thought.
406.
Read through the fourth verse for the complete thought, What is it?
407.
In this passage, as in many others, certain wrong practices of the people are assumed. Moses (and God) deal with life as is. What is assumed in this passage?
408.
Read Mat. 19:3-9. Does our Lord approve of the prevalence and purposes for divorce as given in Deuternonmy? Cf. Mat. 5:31-32.
409.
How would the violations of the regulations specified here cause the land to sin? Cf. Deu. 24:4.
AMPLIFIED TRANSLATION 24:14
When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house,
2 And when she departs out of his house, she goes and marries another man,
3 And if the latter husband dislikes her and writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house; or if the last husband dies, who took her as his wife,
4 Then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she is defiled; for that is an abomination before the Lord; and you shall not bring guilt upon the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.
COMMENT 24:14
See also Deu. 22:13-21, Deu. 21:10-14, Mat. 5:31-32; Mat. 19:3-9. The law of Jealousy (Num. ch. 5) should also be kept in mind.
A great deal of discussion she been occasioned by the phrase some unseemly thing in her (Deu. 24:1). Some critics insist that the phrase has a moral connotation: Some indecency in her (R.S.V., Amplified O.T., Smith.) . . . he has found her immodest in some way (Moffatt). But although the phrase is literally rendered a thing or matter of nakedness, the reference is more general. i.e. some shameful thing, something disgraceful (Pulpit). Indeed, we have already seen that adultery was punishable by death under the Mosaic law (Deu. 22:22, Lev. 20:10). The Pharisees substituted the phrase for every cause (Mat. 19:3) in their questioning of Jesus. And it does appear that this law, given by Moses because of the hardness of their hearts, enabled a man to divorce his wife on sometimes very flimsy grounds. But, as the Pulpit Commentary remarks, This is not a law sanctioning or regulating divorce; that is simply assumed as what might occur and what is here regulated is the treatment by the first husband of a woman who has been divorced a second time.
Edwin C. Bissell, in Bible-Work, states, This regulation is remarkable alike for its concessive and its restrictive character, It assumes the prevalence of divorcea fact also recognized in a number of other laws of this and the Levitical code (Lev. 21:7 [13, 14] Deu. 22:19; Deu. 22:29). It assumes that it was carried on with some degree of formality. And such a custom, with the form it took of giving a bill of divorcement, this law does not forbid; neither does it command it, Herein our Lord corrected the Pharisees false quotation of the Pentateuch, changing their Why did Moses command? into Moses suffered. In its restrictions, on the other hand, the law assumes the sacredness of the marital tie and provides against an obvious tendency to break and renew it at will. Its sole prohibition, however, is of the remarriage of divorced persons after a second marriage had been entered upon by the former wife.
Behrends continues in the same book, The Mosaic legislation permitted a certain liberty of divorce; but our Lord only brought into clear relief, and made emphatic for all time, its determining ethical principle, when he declared that the Mosaic permission was an unwilling concession to the hardness of the peoples heart; that from the beginning marriage was not so contemplated and constituted, that man may not put asunder what God hath joined together; that divorce is permissible only for the cause of fornication; that [permanent or prolonged] separation for any other cause is an incentive to adultery, and that whoever contracts marriage with the guilty party commits adultery.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XXIV.
Deu. 24:1-4. DIVORCE.
Some uncleanness.Evidently mere caprice and dislike are not intended here. There must be some real ground of complaint. (See Margin.)
Let him write her a bill of divorcement.Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives, is the Divine comment upon this. It is a distinct concession to the weakness of Israelnot the ideal standard of the Law, but the highest which it was found practicable to enforce. (See Mat. 19:2 seq.) There are many other particular enactments in the Law of Moses of which the same thing may be said. The ideal standard of morality has never varied. There is no higher ideal than that of the Pentateuch. But the Law which was actually enforced, in many particulars fell short of that ideal.
(2) If the latter husband hate her.Rashi says here that the Scripture intimates that the end of such a marriage will be that he will hate her. He makes a similar remark on the marriage with the captive in Deuteronomy 21. The result of the marriage will be a hated wife, and a firstborn son of her, who will be a glutton and a drunkard.
(4) Her former husband . . . may not take her again . . . and thou shalt not cause the land to sin.The comment upon this, supplied by Jer. 3:1, is singularly beautiful. They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another mans, shall he return unto her again? Shall not that land be greatly polluted? But thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
DIRECTIONS IN REFERENCE TO THE MATTER OF DIVORCE, Deu 24:1-4.
Moses does not here give the husband the right to put away his wife. The privilege of divorce is assumed as a custom already in vogue. The provision here made is, “If a man married a wife, and he put her away with a letter of divorce because she did not please him any longer, and the divorced woman married another man, and he either put her away in the same manner or died, the first husband could not take her as his wife again.” Keil. The letter of divorce was her proof that the marriage had been legally dissolved, and that she was at liberty to marry again. No doubt, there had been instances where parties who had been thus separated wished to be again united in marriage, even after the divorced wife had been married to another husband. But if it were enacted, as it here is, that the wife who had been put aside could never again be married to the same husband, he would consider the matter carefully before he demanded a separation.
The whole passage may be translated as follows: “If a man hath taken a wife, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes because he has found some blemish in her, and given her a bill of divorcement and given it into her hand and sent her forth from his house, and if she has departed out of his house and become another man’s wife, and if the latter husband hate her and give her a bill of divorcement and give it into her hand and send her forth from his house, or if the latter husband who took her as his wife die, the former husband who sent her away cannot take her again as a wife.”
1. Some uncleanness in her The meaning of the expression , which our translators have rendered some uncleanness, as an occasion for divorce, was disputed among the Jewish rabbins. One school, that of Hillel, explained it in the spirit of the question addressed to the Saviour by the Pharisees (Mat 19:3) for every cause, and held that a man could divorce his wife for any disgust that he felt toward her, or even if he saw another woman that pleased him more. But the school of Schammai held it to mean that divorce could take place only in cases of unchastity. Divorce is still very common among the Jews in the East. In a single year there were sixteen cases of divorce in the small Jewish population of Jerusalem. A Jew may divorce his wife for any cause, he himself being the sole judge. But to prevent divorces in a sudden fit of spleen, the bill of divorce must have the concurrence of three rabbins and be written on ruled vellum containing neither more nor less that twelve lines; and it must be given in the presence of ten witnesses. See FARRAR’S Life of Christ, vol. ii, p. 153.
5. When a man hath taken, etc. We read in chap. Deu 20:7, that the man betrothed was to be exempt from serving in the army when a battle was impending. Here provision is made that the newly married man not only be exempt from military service, but from any business. No public burdens were to be placed upon him. In the Mosaic legislation marriage was honourable and desirable.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Chapter 24 Regulation On The Result of Divorce and On Fair Dealing and Consideration For Others.
Regulation On Divorce and Remarriage With The Same Woman ( Deu 24:1-4 ).
This regulation caused much dissension between the Rabbis. The question for them was as to what ‘because he has found some unseemly thing (literally ‘some nakedness of a thing’, compare Deu 23:14) in her’ meant. Shammai said that it signified fornication and unclean behaviour. Hillel argued that it simply meant anything that displeased the husband. Jesus came down on the side of Shammai, but limited it to adultery.
The argument that it could not refer to adultery, because the punishment for adultery was death, overlooks the fact that such a sentence would only be passed where the husband had lodged his case and called in witnesses. If the husband did not wish to pursue the death penalty, and no one else took up the case, it would not necessarily be exacted, unless the woman was discovered by others in open breach. (Compare how in the Mat 1:19, in what appeared to be a similar case, ‘Joseph being a righteous man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly’).
But this was not actually a law laying down a case for divorce. The Law in fact never lays down a case for divorce. It was disapproved of by God. This was about one particular point as to what was to happen when a man following custom had divorced a wife who then remarried, and was later divorced by the second husband, or whose second husband died. The point being made was that the first husband could not remarry her. That was seen as a step too far.
Such a position would in practise be very important. Otherwise there would always be the danger that the longstanding relationship of the first marriage might act as a constant magnet to draw the woman out of a second marriage to remarry her first husband. It might produce instability in the second marriage. It might even cause some women to poison their second husbands so as to be able to return to the first.
It also prevented reckless divorces gone through on the basis that if they wished they could always come together again. The introduction of this regulation here might suggest that Moses was very much aware of recent cases where these things had occurred.
This chapter again has ‘thou, thee’ all the way through apart from Deu 24:7 and Deu 24:8 where the change simply stresses that everyone is involved.
Analysis using the words of Moses.
When a man takes a wife, and marries her, then it shall be, if she find no favour in his eyes because he has found some unseemly thing (literally ‘nakedness of a word/thing’) in her, that he shall write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house (Deu 24:1).
And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife (Deu 24:2).
And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house, or if the latter husband die, who took her to be his wife (Deu 24:3).
Her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she is shown as (declared to be) defiled, for that is abomination before Yahweh, and you shall not cause the land to sin, which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance (Deu 24:4).
Note that in ‘a’ the husband divorces his wife, and in the parallel may not take her again once she has remarried, even if her husband dies. In ‘b’ she marries another man, and in the parallel it is posited that she is divorced by him, or that he dies.
Deu 24:1
‘ When a man takes a wife, and marries her, then it shall be, if she find no favour in his eyes because he has found some unseemly thing (literally ‘nakedness of a word/thing’) in her, that he shall write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.’
Moses was really here only explaining that a divorce had taken place for some particular reason, without going into detail, although he undoubtedly did see it as a valid reason. He was not, however, intending it to be analysed, either by the Rabbis, or by would be divorce seekers of the present day. He expected his listeners to know the customary conditions for divorce, so he did not explain them here. His reference was not specific. But what did ‘nakedness of a word/thing’ convey. It would certainly seem to suggest some sexual transgression or something unpleasantly unclean. We can compare Deu 23:14 where the same phrase is used and translated as ‘unclean’ and signifies a man’s waste products.
The word for ‘nakedness’ is regularly used of the shame of a person’s nakedness being revealed. It is not the word for ritually unclean nor for things which were just generally unseemly. So ‘nakedness’ usually connects with something to do with sex or the sexual organs. An act of adultery or near adultery for which he did not wish to press charges would fit the bill exactly, possibly a case where she had been discovered before the actual adultery took place, or of actual adultery where there were no witnesses, and his reticence on the matter is then explained by the fact that he divorced her rather than openly accusing her and that he was represented as loving her enough to be willing to take her back after the second divorce.
But while he did not press charges it had been sufficient of a blow to his family honour and his own sense of pride for him to give her a divorce contract in writing and send her away. Possibly out of shame she had even demanded it. It would seem, also, that she left without any rights, which would indicate that she had sinned grievously. That divorce was possible is made clear by Deu 22:19; Deu 22:29, but not on what conditions. Those verses were simply saying that never again could those particular men bring an action for divorce against that woman for any reason. (Others could accuse her but not them. They had forfeited their right by their behaviour. They were not considered trustworthy). So the grounds for divorce here seems to be restricted to sexual misconduct.
Deu 24:2
‘ And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife.’
Once the woman was dismissed from his household she may take the step of going and becoming another man’s wife. (This was not giving permission for this, only stating that it may happen. Unless she returned home it was almost her only option). She had her written contract declaring her to be free. We note here that it was seemingly seen as perfectly acceptable by custom for her to remarry, but never stated in God’s Law. It was this remarriage that Jesus called adultery, and said that it was only allowed by God, although never authorised by Him, for the hardness of their hearts. The point was not that He had condoned it, but that He did not interfere with the general custom and actually forbid it.
Deu 24:3-4
‘ And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house, or if the latter husband die, who took her to be his wife, her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she is shown as (declared to be) defiled, for that is abomination before Yahweh, and you shall not cause the land to sin, which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance.’
But the second husband might hate her and also give her a bill of divorcement, and send her from his household. Here the condition for the divorce is the husband’s ‘hate’. It is the same word as that which caused a false accusation of adultery in Deu 22:13-14. It is thus in the wider context connected with a man who accused his wife of sexual misbehaviour. (The fact that the one who made the false charge of adultery in Deu 22:13-14 found it necessary to do so demonstrates that divorce was not easy). But no detail of why this second husband hated her is given. There is nothing to say what it was. For that is not what Moses was seeking to demonstrate here. It is probably suggesting in summary form the fact that she had done exactly the same as she did to her first husband.
Alternately the second husband might die. By adding the clause ‘if the second husband dies’ Moses has put us on the spot. We must immediately ask in passing why Moses complicated things and even mentioned the possibility of a divorce in the second case. It is clearly irrelevant to the case, for if it had not happened it would have made no difference to the argument. The second husband’s death would produce the same situation. Why then did he not just use the illustration that her second husband died? The answer can only be because he wanted to bring out what the woman was like, that all the fault lay with the woman. She was the kind of woman, said Moses, who might easily have had a second divorce. She was a disaster waiting to happen.
But the vital point was now reached. She was again free. However, we now learn that even under the old law the first husband cannot now remarry her. He knows that she was ‘shown as defiled’. But why was she ‘shown as defiled’? We may basically ignore the actions of the second husband, because the same would apply even if he had done nothing and had simply died. Thus we must concentrate on the first husband. And here we must ignore the effect of the theoretical remarriage to the first husband because she was ‘shown to be defiled’ before that had happened.
How had she been shown to be defiled? It may be by her behaviour which had caused the first divorce, of which possibly only he knew, or it may be by her, to his knowledge, having married a second time, or both. To him she had twice revealed herself as an adulteress. There was, however, no suggestion about whether she was or was not permitted to marry again. It was simply stated as something that did happen. No comment is made on it, although as we have seen Moses does make clear what he thought of her.
This is very important to note. Had God approved of divorce it would have been so important a factor that surely it would have been legislated for. Yet it was never legislated for. The only concession that God made was not to interfere with the custom because of the hardness of their hearts. He did not step in to interfere with the custom. But divorce nowhere has God’s blessing.
Thus the ‘showing of defilement’ only seems to apply to the first husband. He not only knew about the divorce certificate, but he also knew the facts behind the case. For him therefore to take her now would be for him to take a woman he knew to be permanently defiled, and defiled in such a way that the defilement could not be removed. For she had committed adultery by going with her second husband. And that could surely only indicate a continuingly adulterous woman. To marry her would result in his own permanent defilement and would defile the land (compare Jer 3:1).
Another alternative explanation is that he was the only one who knew about the two (or one) divorce contracts. Others would have only known about one, or none at all. So he knew that she had been married twice while her first husband was still alive and was thereby an adulteress against him. Thus to marry her as an adulteress against him would be to confirm her adultery and be equally defiling, and would defile the land. She could no longer come to him as unsullied to become one with him. It would in Yahweh’s eyes be obscene. It would be making a mockery of all that marriage stood for. It would be so obscene that it would cause the land which had been given to them as an inheritance from Yahweh to sin. For the sins done in the land were the sins of the land.
Whichever way it was, (and in some ways they were saying the same thing), it was her continuing adulterous state that banned the marriage. And yet as the banning is only in relation to marriage with him it must connect with his personal knowledge of her. He would know that she had not just made one slip up, but was an adulteress through and through. Anyone else who married her might not realise what kind of woman she was, and would not therefore be deliberately sinning against the land. But he did know and would be doing so.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Deu 24:14-15 Comments Statute Regarding the Hired Servant – Note Jas 5:4, which also refers to the cry of the poor going up before the Lord.
Jas 5:4, “Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Chiefly of Divorce, Pledges, and Leprosy
v. 1. When a man hath taken a wife, v. 2. And when she is departed out of his house, v. 3. And if the latter husband, v. 4. her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife after that she is defiled, v. 5. When a man hath taken a new wife, v. 6. No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge, v. 7. If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him, v. 8. Take need in the plague of leprosy, v. 9. Remember what the Lord, thy God, did unto Miriam by the way, after that ye were come forth out of Egypt.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
LAWS RESPECTING DIVORCE, AGAINST MAN–STEALING AND INJUSTICE.
Deu 24:1-4
Of divorce. If a man put away his wife because she did not any longer please him, and she became the wife of another man, by whom also she was put away, or from whom she was severed by his death, the first husband might not remarry her, for that would be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and would bring sin on the land. This is not a law sanctioning or regulating divorce; that is simply assumed as what might occur, and what is here regulated is the treatment by the first husband of a woman who has been divorced a second time.
Deu 24:1-4
These verses should be read as one continuous sentence, of which the protasis is in Deu 24:1-3, and the apodosis in Deu 24:4, thus: “If a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she doth not find favor in his eyes, because of some uncleanness in her, and he hath written her a bill of divorcement, and given it in her hand, and sent her out of his house; and if she hath departed out of his house, and hath gone and become another man’s; and if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house; or if the latter husband who took her to be his wife, die; her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife,” etc.
Deu 24:1
Because he hath found some uncleanness in her; literally, a thing or matter of nakedness, i.e. some shameful thing, something disgraceful; LXX; : Vulgate, “aliquam foeditatem.” In the Targum of Onkelos, the expression is explained by ; “aliquid foeditatis” (London Polyglot); “iniquitas rei alicujus“(Buxtorf); “the transgression of a [Divine] word” (Levi). On this the school of Hillel among the rabbins put the interpretation that a man might divorce his wife for any unbecomingness (Mishna, ‘Gittin,’ 9.10), or indeed for any cause, as the Pharisees in our Lord’s day taught (Mat 19:3). The school of Shammai, on the other hand, taught that only for something disgraceful, such as adultery, could a wife be divorced (Lightfoot, ‘Her. Hebrews et Talm.,’ on Mat 5:31, Opp; tom. 2.290). Adultery, however, cannot be supposed here because that was punishable with death. A bill of divorcement; literally, a writing of excision; the man and woman having by marriage become one flesh, the divorce of the woman was a cutting of her off from the one whole. Lightfoot has given (loc. cit.) different forms of letters of divorce in use among the Jews (see also Maimonides, ‘De Divortiis,’ ch. 4. 12).
Deu 24:4
The woman was held to be defiled by her second marriage, and thus by implication, the marrying of a woman who had been divorced was pronounced immoral, as is by our Lord explicitly asserted (Mat 5:32). The prohibition of a return of the wife to her first husband, as well as the necessity of a formal bill of divorcement being given to the woman before she could be sent away, could not fail to be checks on the license of divorce, as doubtless they were intended to be.
Deu 24:5
A man newly married was to be exempt from going to war, and was not to have any public burdens imposed on him for a year after his marriage. Charged with any business; literally, there shall not pass upon him for any matter; i.e. there shall not be laid on him anything in respect of any business. This is explained by what follows. Free shall he be for his house for one year; i.e. no public burden shall be laid on him, that he may be free to devote himself entirely to his household relations, and be able to cheer and gladden his wife (comp. Deu 20:7). “By this law God showed how he approved of holy wedlock (as by the former he showed his hatred of unjust divorces) when, to encourage the newly married against the cumbrances which that estate bringeth with it, and to settle their love each to other, he exempted those men from all wars, cares, and expenses, that they might the more comfortably provide for their own estate” (Ainsworth).
Deu 24:6-14
Various prohibitions.
Deu 24:6
No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge; rather, the hand mill and the upper millstone (literally, the rider) shall not be taken (literally, one shall not take) in pledge. Neither the mill itself nor the upper millstone, the removal of which would render the mill useless, was to be taken. The upper millstone is still called the rider by the Arabs (Hebrew reehebh, Arabic rekkab). For he taketh a man’s life to pledge; or for (thereby) life itself is pledged; if a man were deprived of that by which food for the sustaining of life could be prepared, his life itself would be imperiled (cf. Job 22:6; Pro 22:27; Amo 2:8).
Deu 24:7
Against man-stealing: repetition, with expansion, of the law in Exo 21:16.
Deu 24:8, Deu 24:9
The law concerning the leprosy is in Lev 13:1-59; Lev 14:1-57. By this law the priests are directed how to proceed with those afflicted with leprosy; and here the people are counseled by Moses to follow the directions of the priests in this case, however painful it might be for them to submit to the restrictions that would be thereby imposed upon them, remembering what the Lord did to Miriam the sister of Moses, how even she was separated from the camp by the express command of God until she was healed (Num 12:14). Michaelis, Keil, and others, following the Vulgate (“Observa diligenter ne incurras plagam leprae sed facies quaecunque docuerint to sacerdotes“), understand this passage as inculcating obedience to the priests, lest leprosy should be incurred as a punishment for disobedience. But it is improbable that a general counsel to submit to the priests should be introduced among the special counsels here given; and besides, the formula means, “Take heed to yourself in respect of” (cf. 2Sa 20:10; Jer 17:21), rather than “Beware of,” or “Be on your guard against.”
Deu 24:10-13
If one had to take a pledge from another, he was not to go into the house of the latter and take what he thought fit; he must stand without, and allow the debtor to bring to him what he saw meet to offer. He might stand outside and summon the debtor to produce his pledge, but he was not insolently to enter the house and lay hands on any part of the owner’s property. To stand outside and call is still a common mode of seeking access to a person in his own house or apartment among the Arabs, and is regarded as the only respectful mode. There would be thus a mitigation of the severity of the exaction, the tendency of which would be to preserve good feeling between the parties. If the debtor was needy, and being such could give in pledge only some necessary article, such as his upper garment in which he slept at night, the pledge was to be returned ere nightfall, that the man might sleep in his own raiment, and have a grateful feeling towards his creditor. In many parts of the East, with the Arabs notably, it is customary for the poor to sleep in their outer garment. “During the day the poor while at work can and do dispense with this outside raiment, but at night it is greatly needed, even in summer. This furnishes a good reason why this sort of pledge should be restored before night”. The earlier legislation (Exo 22:25, Exo 22:26) is evidently assumed here as well known by the people. It shall be righteousness unto thee (see on Deu 6:25).
Deu 24:14, Deu 24:15
The wage of the laborer was to be punctually paid, whether he were an Israelite or a foreigner (cf. Le Deu 19:13; the law there is repeated here, with a special reference to the distress which the withholding of the hire from a poor man even for a day might occasion).
Deu 24:16
Among heathen nations it was common for a whole family to be involved in the penalty incurred by the head of the family, and to be put to death along with him. Such severity of retribution is here prohibited in the penal code of the Israelites. Though God, in the exercise of his absolute sovereignty, might visit the sins of the parent upon the children (Exo 20:5), earthly judges were not to assume this power. Only the transgressor himself was to bear the penalty of his sin (cf. 2Ki 14:6).
Deu 24:17, Deu 24:18
The law against perverting the right of strangers, widows, and orphans is here repeated from Exo 22:20, Exo 22:21; Exo 23:9, with the addition that the raiment of the widow was not to be taken in pledge. To enforce this, the people are reminded that they themselves as a nation had been in the condition of strangers and bondmen in Egypt (cf. Le 19:33, 34).
Deu 24:19-22
(Cf. Le Deu 19:9, Deu 19:10; Deu 23:23.) Not only was no injustice to be done to the poor, but, out of the abundance of those in better estate, were they to be helped.
Deu 24:21
Thou shalt not glean it afterward; literally, Thou shalt not glean after thee, i.e. after thou hast reaped and gathered for thyself. It is still the custom among the Arabs for the poor to be allowed to gather the berries that may be left on the olive trees after they have been beaten and the main produce carried off by the owner. All the injunctions in this section are adapted to preserve relations of brotherliness and love among the people of the Lord.
HOMILETICS
Deu 24:1-5
Permissive legislation.
No treatment of this passage can Be appropriate which does not set it in the light thrown upon it by Mat 19:1-12. The heading we have given to this outline indicates a point on which special stress should be laid whenever an expositor has occasion to refer to it. In the course of time, men had come to regard this passage in the light of a command. Hence the wording of the question in Mat 19:7. But our Lord informs us that it was simply permissive. Divorce, under the circumstances here named, was tolerated a while by Moses owing to “the hardness of men’s hearts,” but that the original Divine arrangement contemplated the indissolubility of marriage. The entire principle of the Mosaic Law was that of educating the people out of a semi-degraded state into something higher, Its method of doing this was by giving the people the best legislation they could bear; tolerating some ill for a while rather than forcing on the people revolutionary methods. The more gentle and gracious, though the slower process, was to sow the seed of higher good, and to let it have time to grow. The following Divine teaching on marriage may well be brought forward with this passage as a basis.
I. That the marriage bond is holy in the eye of God, and ought ever to be recognized as very sacred by man.
II. That by God’s own declared appointment this most sacred of all nature’s ties is indissoluble.
III. That however, owing to the degeneracy of national habit and thought, civil legislation may suffer the legal cessation of the marriage bond, yet it can in no case be severed, save by death, without heinous sin on one side or on both.
IV. That the claims of married life are such that, with them, not even the exigencies of military service are unduly to interfere (Mat 19:5).
V. That the highest and purest enjoyments of wedded life come to perfection only when it is entered on and spent in the Lord Jesus Christ. The law was but a (see 1Co 7:39).
Deu 24:6-22
Neighborly love and good will to be cultivated in detail.
One golden thread runs through all the varied precepts of this chapter. They are most interesting illustrations, one and all, of the spirit of humanity and of far-reaching wisdom which pervades the Mosaic Law. The following heading include the gist of the several injunctions here given, and show also their relation to each other.
1. Man’s “inhumanity to man” is sternly restrained. No Israelite, however poor, is to be kidnapped and sold into foreign slavery (Deu 24:7).
2. No one might be deprived of the machinery, tools, or implements on the use of which his daily bread depended, for a pledge (Deu 24:6). It is doubtless to this humane regulation that we owe the ancient common law of this realm, that no man shall be distrained of the necessaries of his trade or profession as long as there are other things on which the distraint can be made.
3. A man’s house is to be his castle. No one may enter it, even to fetch a pledge (Deu 24:10, Deu 24:11). The exception to this is in the case of leprosy, in which instance the priest had a right to enter a man’s house to see into the state of things, i.e. home is to be inviolable save where the public security demands it otherwise. Hence a special caution is given to avoid anything which might bring such a plague upon them. The case of Miriam should be before their eyes (Deu 24:8, Deu 24:9).
4. If the poor man has pledged that in which he needs to sleep, it is to be restored to him before sundown (Deu 24:13).
5. Hired servants were not to be oppressed, but were to have fair and even generous treatment (Deu 24:14, Deu 24:15).
6. The spirit of the checks upon blood-revenge, which are found in connection with the cities of refuge (see Homily thereon), is never to be violated, and no one is to suffer any civil penalty on account of another’s sin. Justice is to operate always (Deu 24:16).
7. No advantage is ever to be taken of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. They who are deprived of earthly helpers on whom they might lean are to find their safeguard in the sentiments of honor and benevolence which pervade the people (Deu 24:17, Deu 24:18).
8. Not only is no wrong to be done to them, but their aid and comfort are to be specially studied, in the time of harvest, and in the gathering in of the olive and the grape (Deu 24:19-22).
9. The reason for such cultivation of kindness to others is that God had been kind to them (Deu 24:18, Deu 24:22).
I. The requirements of God in the social relations of life are righteousness, justice, mercy, love, and good will to all.
II. God has fenced round the poor, the weak, the widow, and the fatherless with a special guard.
III. A wrong done by man to man is sin against God.
IV. The inspiring motive for our showing love to others is the love of God to us (cf. Mic 6:8, Mic 6:9).
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
Deu 24:1-4
Divorce.
The Hebrew Law, “for the hardness of men’s hearts,” found it was necessary to “suffer” many things not approved of absolutely (Mat 19:8). Divorce was one of these. It was permitted on grounds of strong personal dislike (Deu 24:3). The Law was inapplicable to adultery, that being judged a capital offense. While permitting divorce, Moses obviously aims at restricting it, and shows, by his modes of expression, how alien this rupture of the marriage bond is to the original institution. We may learn
I. THAT THE RIGHT OF DIVORCE IS ONE TO BE STRICTLY GUARDED. Divorce, even where most justified, is a great evil. It is the rupture of a tie intended by the Creator to be indissoluble. Adultery warrants it, but it must be deemed not the least part of the evil that so unhappy a cause for the dissolution of marriage should exist. The revelations of the divorce courts are most injurious to public morality. Facilities for divorce, such as some advocate, would lead to serious mischiefs. Besides being wrong in principle, they would create inconstancy, lead to domestic unhappiness, inflict hardship on children, prevent efforts being made to mend matters by forbearance and. compliance. Frequent divorces blunt the sense of the sacredness of the marriage union, and so lead to licentiousness. “At the time when divorces were most frequent among the Romans marriages were most rare; and Augustus was obliged, by penal laws, to force men of fashion into the married state” (Hume). Moses restrains divorce thus far that he requires it to take place:
1. By means of a legal document.
2. For reason given.
3. He debars the man divorcing from remarrying the woman divorced if, in the interval, she has been married to another. The Christian law recognizes no legitimate ground of divorce save adultery (Mat 5:32).
II. THAT RIGHT VIEWS ON DIVORCE ARE CONNECTED WITH A SENSE OF THE INHERENT SACREDNESS OF THE MARRIAGE RELATION. This is suggested by the terms employed in verse 4. A husband is prohibited from remarrying his divorced wife if in the interval she has been the wife of another, and the ground given for the prohibition is that “she is defiled.” But why “defiled?” The expression could not have been used had the first marriage been regarded as perfectly nullified by the legal divorce. The statement that a divorced woman, remarrying, is “defiled,” implies that deep view of the marriage relation given in Genesis (Gen 2:24), and reiterated by Christ (Mat 19:3-10). And it will be found, in practice, that light views of the sacredness of the marriage relation invariably work in the direction of increasing facilities for divorce. “The skeptical party in France not long ago proposed to make marriage dissoluble at the pleasure of the parties whenever the woman had passed the age at which child-bearing was no longer to be expected”. The writer just quoted ably argues that strict views on marriage, and divorce, are not possible, save under the sanction of a supersensual morality.J.O.
Deu 24:5
The man newly married.
The precept is in addition to those in Deu 20:5-8. It provides that the newly married man shall be left free to enjoy the relation into which he has entered for a whole year, not being required to serve in war, and not being liable to be called from home on public business. It may be inserted here as tending to prevent divorces.
We learn:
1. That it is the duty of the husband to love and cherish the wife (Eph 5:29).
2. That it is the interest of the State to do what it can to endear the marriage relation.
3. That laws should be framed in a spirit of kindness, and with consideration for the happiness of the subjects. This law shows kindly consideration for the wife,
(1) in not depriving her of the husband of her youth in the months of their early love;
(2) in allowing time for the husband’s affections to become securely fixed, so preventing inconstancy.J.O.
Deu 24:8
Leprosy.
I. A JUDGMENT TO BE DREADED. Leprosy is viewed here, as usually in Scripture:
1. As a stroke of Divine judgment. It was not always such (Job 2:1-13.). Nor did the stroke of Divine judgment always take this form (Uzzah, Jeroboam, Ananias, etc.). But it was a frequent form of punishment for sins of a theocratic nature (Uzziah, Gehazi, etc.). It is seldom safe to interpret judgments (Luk 13:1-6), but we may expect God’s stroke in some way to fall upon ourselves if we persistently despise his laws.
2. As a symbol of spiritual corruption. The worst penalty with which God can visit any one is to smite him with soul leprosy, to leave sin to have its natural dominion over him, to allow its corruption to work and spread through his inner man.
II. A WARNING TO BE PONDERED. They are bid remember the case of Miriam. We do well to lay to heart the instances we have known of sin working out punishment and death. Miriam’s case suggests the additional thought of pardon on repentance, and of the prevalence of intercession in obtaining forgiveness for offences (Num 12:9-16).J.O.
Deu 24:6-15
The treatment of the poor.
The helplessness and dependence of the poor expose them to much harsh treatment. The poor man has, however, his Friend and Judge in God, whose Law here steps in for his protection. It ordains
I. THAT THE NECESSARIES OF LIFE ARE NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM HIM. The millstone (Deu 24:6). His raiment, which if taken in pledge is to be restored by nightfall (Deu 24:12, Deu 24:13). These are considerate provisions. It is the excess of cruelty to press law against a man to the extent of depriving him of the necessaries of life. This would apply to needful clothing, to a bed, to cooking utensils, to the tools by which he earns his bread. It is nearly as bad to receive and keep these things in pledge or pawn. Help, free and ungrudging, should be forthcoming to all honest persons in need, without driving them to such straits. If men will not work, neither should they eat (2Th 3:10), but while this may be a reason for refusing to support them in their indolence, it can be no reason for helping them to strip themselves of the necessaries of their existence. Instead of taking a man’s tools from him, he should rather he encouraged to retain and ply them, “working with his hands the thing that is good,” that he may both support himself and “have to give to him that needeth” (Eph 4:28).
II. THAT HIS PERSONAL FREEDOM IS TO BE RESPECTED. (Deu 24:7.) No strong or rich neighbor was to be allowed to steal, enslave, or sell him. The stealing of a man was punishable with death. And the spirit of the Law carries us beyond its letter. It requires that we respect the poor man’s freedom in all the relations of his life. Whatever the degree of his dependence, it does not entitle another to force his convictions, or do aught that would interfere with the exercise of his rights as man or citizen. Yet how often is compulsion and intimidation applied to those in dependent situations to compel them to act, not as their consciences approve, but as their superiors desire! He who takes advantage of a man’s weakness to do anything of the kind is a “man-stealer” in principle and at heart.
III. THAT HIS DWELLING IS NOT TO BE INVADED. (Deu 24:10, Deu 24:11.) The fine sense of justice, the delicacy of feeling, in these precepts, is certainly remarkable. The poor man’s house is to be as sacred from invasion as the house of the wealthy. Even his creditor is to wait outside, and let the man fetch as his pledge what he can best spare. We are taught a lesson of respect for the domiciliary and proprietary rights of the poor. Many act as if the homes of the poor were not entitled to have their privacy respected in the same way as the homes of the rich, The Law of God teaches otherwise. We owe it to God, and we owe it to the humanity which is in our poorer brethren as well as in us, that we treat them and their belongings with precisely the same amount of respect that we would show to persons in a better social position.
IV. THAT HIS WAGES ARE TO BE PAID WITH REGULARITY. (Deu 24:14, Deu 24:15.) Every day, the text says, and in the East this was necessary. During the Indian famines it was found that the persons engaged on the relief works had to be paid in this manner. Great suffering was sometimes experienced from the neglect of the rule. The law extends to hired service of all kinds, and enjoins in principle regularity in payment of wages. A like principle applies to the payment of tradesmen’s accounts. We have heard tradesmen complain bitterly of the inconvenience to which they were subjected from the singular want of consideration displayed by wealthy families in this particular. Accounts are allowed to run on, and payment is withheld, not from want of ability to pay, but from sheer indolence and carelessness in attending to such matters. While to crave payment would, on the tradesman’s part, mean the forfeiture of custom.J.O.
Deu 24:16-22
Doing justice and loving mercy.
I. EACH SOUL IS TO BEAR ITS OWN SIN. (Deu 24:16.) This verse lays down the rule of human jurisprudence. Loss and suffering to the innocent, as a result of the course of justice inflicting punishment on the guilty, cannot always be avoided. But this is an incidental, not a designed result. With those wider movements of Divine justice, which seem to turn on the federal constitution of the race, and involve different principles, human justice has nothing to do. The rule for us is that the punishment of crime, with loss and suffering resulting therefrom, is to be confined as much as possible to the guilty person.
II. JUSTICE IS TO BE DONE TO THE WEAKEST. (Deu 24:17, Deu 24:18.) The stranger and fatherless and widow are again taken under the Law’s protection. Their right is not to be perverted. The widow’s raiment is not to be taken in pledge. There should need no inducement to do what is right, but Moses reminds the Israelites of their own past condition as bondmen. Oppression is doubly disgraceful when those guilty of it are persons who have themselves tasted its bitterness, or who have themselves been mercifully dealt with (Mat 18:23-35). We cannot sufficiently admire the combined justice and tenderness of these Mosaic precepts.
III. PROVISION IS TO BE LEFT FOR THE NEEDY. (Deu 24:19-22.) These are beautiful rules. The Jews were under the Law, but it was a Law the fulfilling of which was “love.” The variety of ways in which the Law seeks to instill love into the hearts of the chosen people would form a study eminently suitable for the pulpit. The poor we have always with us, and they should be often in our thoughts. (Southey’s poem, ‘The Complaints of the Poor.’) In the cornfield, among the olives, in the vineyard, they were to be remembered. When the wealthy are gathering in their abundance, then is the time for remembering the needy. Thus will the heart be kept warm, covetousness checked, our own happiness best secured, the wants of the poor supplied, their blessing obtained, a treasure laid up in heaven. “There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth” (Pro 11:24).J.O.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR
Deu 24:1-6
The rights of women.
The tendency of the true religion has been to secure and respect the rights of women. Now, we have here women’s rights brought under notice in two casesin a case of separation, and in a case of war. Moses, “because of the hardness of their hearts,” allowed divorce, because it prevailed to a lamentable extent in society in his time. He suffered them to divorce their wives, but insisted on a written divorce. Among other nations an oral divorce was sufficient, and so a divorce might be from the flimsiest caprice. Again, Moses forbade any coming together as man and wife again, a custom which prevails among the Arabs when the oral divorce is so lightly undertaken. Hence we notice in this law given by Moses
I. THE DIVORCE OF THE WOMAN MUST BE DELIBERATE AND FINAL. Woman was not to be the toy of man’s caprice; she was not to be lightly sent away, and, when sent away by the husband after deliberately writing her divorce, she was never to be taken back again. In this way Moses really consulted the rights of women. They had a right to a deliberate statement of the grounds of their divorce; they had also a right to be protected from further interference on the part of their former husbands. It was a wise expedient considering the degeneracy of the time. It is an improvement assuredly on the arrangements of Mahomet.
Our Lord still further secured the rights of women in ordaining that nothing but infidelity on the part of the wife should dissolve the marriage union (Mat 5:32).
II. WAR MUST NOT ROB A NEWLY MARRIED WIFE OF HER HUSBAND; SHE HAS A RIGHT TO HIS SOCIETY FOR A YEAR WITHOUT MOLESTATION. This was placing the interests of a single woman above the interests of the State. This was exalting the bride to a throne of highest honor surely. Other systems and the world as well may degrade woman, but God’s Law elevates her and enthrones her.
III. NOR IS SHE THROUGH HER HUSBAND‘S DIFFICULTIES TO LOSE EITHER OF HER MILLSTONES FOR THE GRINDING OF THE CORN. Here was another right of the housewife. No legal distraint could reach the little mill which ground the corn at home and kept the wolf from the door.
Thus in her sorrows and in her joys God stood her Friend, and insisted on her rights. A similar shield should be thrown over her still. It is by securing her in her rights at home that woman’s cause shall he advanced. She is intended to be a queen in the household. Everything that makes her position there more secure, everything that makes the home sacred even from the intrusion of a national war at certain times, everything that makes her feel the foundation firm below her,is in the interests of public weal. But if she is carelessly thrown into the competition with the stronger sex, she will get deteriorated. The rights of women constitute a much longer subject than even Mr. Mill has made it. May the interpreter in due season appear!R.M.E.
Deu 24:7
Man-stealing a capital crime.
We have already noticed the merciful fugitive law which forbade any one to restore a runaway to his master. That was the cure of existing evil. Here we have the prevention, which is better still. For man-stealing and man-selling are the origin of slavery, and the Lord attaches to this the penalty of death. As Cheerer said of it, “God be praised for this law! It strikes through and through the vitals of this sin.”
I. LIBERTY MUST BE MAINTAINED UNDER THE PENAL SANCTION OF DEATH TO HIM WHO INVADES IT. The ruffian who would steal and sell a brother deserves to die. His treason against the liberty of his fellow is an unpardonable sin against society, and he should get no quarter. No wonder men have fought and died for liberty when God surrounds it with such tremendous sanctions.
II. HOW MUCH GREATER THE CRIME OF BRINGING MEN INTO SPIRITUAL BONDAGE. And this is done daily. What is the meaning of the power exercised by superstitious priesthoods over their devotees? Is it not “spiritual despotism?” And should not the crime of man-stealing awake a suspicion in such hearts that their procedure is the exact analogue in the spiritual sphere? It should be combated and resisted unto the death, as destroying that heritage of liberty with which the Lord has endowed all men.R.M.E.
Deu 24:10-22
Consideration for the poor and needy.
After giving a cursory reference to leprosy as a Divine judgment to be divinely removed and ceremonially purged away (Deu 24:8, Deu 24:9), Moses enters in these verses into the consideration which should be shown to the poor and needy. The debtor is not to be pressed for his pledge, and, if raiment, it must be restored in time for him to sleep with due clothing. The hired servant, engaged for the day, is to get his pay punctually at sundown. The widow, fatherless, and strangers are to have justice dealt to them, and in harvest generous gleanings are to be left for them. The Law inculcates consideration and mercy.
I. THE GENEROSITY INCULCATED BY THE LAW MADE IT A MESSAGE OF MERCY TO ALL MEN. For even suppose no sacrificial system preached, typically, the Divine pardon and love, the mercy enjoined upon others argued mercy in the Lawgiver himself. He could not have commanded so much mercy, and manifested none.
II. THE POOR WERE SAVED FROM UTTER MENDICANCY BY THE LIBERALITY OF THE LAW. They got their need supplied by working for it. It was better to glean than to have it laid without any cost or trouble to them at their feet. They were free, and had to bestir themselves; thus self-respect was fostered, and real, wholesome work prescribed. No wonder that mendicancy was unknown. But nowadays things are made too easy for the “ne’er-do-wells,” and a laziness that sacrifices self-respect and liberty on its altar is the blessed result!R.M.E.
Deu 24:16
Responsibility not to be transferred according to human caprice.
We desire to notice this interesting direction. It is a contrast to the second commandment. There, God represents himself as “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.” We see it also in the law of heredity operating in nature. But it is a weapon which God retains in his own hand. We may for wise purposes treat men in the lump, and blend in common consequences the innocent and guilty. But man in his judgments must be particular to execute only the guilty.
I. HUMAN JUDGMENTS MUST BE FINAL IN THIS WORLD SO FAR AS THE JUDGING IS CONCERNED. Men do not get the chance of setting matters right in another world. They judge once for all, and if they execute the innocent, they have no reparation in their power.
II. GOD‘S IMPERFECT JUSTICE IN THE PRESENT WORLD IS THE CLEAREST INDICATION TO CONSCIENCE THAT THERE WILL BE A JUDGMENT IN THE OTHER WORLD. Were his justice here perfect, or were there no judgment at all, men would say there is nothing to arrange in another world. But now there is enough to show God reigns, and enough left over to indicate a judgment to come.
III. GOD‘S PREROGATIVE OF TRANSFERRING RESPONSIBILITY IS THE SECRET OF OUR SALVATION. For he has laid on Jesus, the Innocent One, the iniquity of us all. He has visited the iniquity of the children upon him who is called our “Everlasting Father.” The consequence is we are saved, and in salvation there is ample compensation for all who have to all appearance suffered unjustly here.R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY D. DAVIES
Deu 24:5
Nuptial joy.
Joy has its special seasons. The year has but one spring. Human life has but one nuptial feast. The freshness and charm of a first marriage can never be repeated. Around this special joy God has thrown a wall of defense.
I. NUPTIAL JOY IS A CARE OF GOD. In every act of Jesus Christ’s earthly life, he could have said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Thus, when he became a guest at the marriage feast at Cana, he appeared and spake and acted as his Father’s Representative. His miraculous deed was the expression of his Father’s pleasure. On every honorable marriage the sunshine of Jehovah rests. In all the beginnings of human life God’s fatherly interest centers. That human life may be full of joy is his main concern.
II. NUPTIAL JOY IS SUPERIOR EVEN TO CARES OF THE STATE. The marriage union is the spring-time of a man’s life; let no rough wind of war blast it! To spoil the nuptial joy is to spoil a man’s life. Other things can wait; this fleeting season of a man’s history cannot be recalled. Others can fight the battles of his country better than can he; for at such a time his heart will be elsewhere than the battle-field. To send such as he is to invite defeat. It is not simply a permissive law; it is obligatory: he shall not go. To be pressed into military service on his marriage day might sour his temper, exasperate his feelings, dissipate his young love, ruin his earthly home, and blast his domestic prospects. Pious homes are the nursery grounds for God’s kingdom.
III. NUPTIAL JOY HAS ITS LIMITATIONS. Such exemption prevailed for a year: then it ceased. The fresh and fragrant spring must give way to fruit-bearing autumn. Joy is a preparation for arduous service. It is worse than useless, if it begets only indolence. It is the parent of new exertion. It recreates the mind. It braces and vitalizes all the active energies. As sleep prepares for labor, so pleasure equips us for higher attainments. We need the spirit of wisdom to use our joys to advantage.D.
Deu 24:6, Deu 24:10-13
Prohibited Pledges.
Wealth is power; in every nation we need the safeguards of law to prevent such power from becoming tyranny. The poor are ever liable to become the prey of voracious avarice.
I. A SEASONABLE LOAN IS A PRICELESS SERVICE, Men can render service one to another in a thousand different forms. Redundance of possession on the part of one may serviceably supply the deficiencies of another. One man has riches which he cannot profitably employ, another has trade for which his money capital is insufficient. One man has accumulated experience, another has penetrative wisdom, another has technical knowledge. All this is equipment for useful service. So, in the spiritual kingdom, one has tender feeling, another has gift of prayer or gift of speech, another has extended influence. All human endowments are a common fund to be distributed for the benefit of all. There are occasions in human life when a loan is more useful than a gift. Temporary exigencies sometimes arise, for which loan, on fitting security, is the wisest alleviation.
II. FOR LOANS SUITABLE PLEDGES SHOULD BE TAKEN.
1. This serves as a check upon facile borrowing. If loans are granted on too easy terms, we may encourage a man in reckless commercial speculation, or destroy the natural checks on personal extravagance.
2. This serves to prevent strife. Borrowers have oftentimes a short memory for liabilities. While human nature has its imperfections and society its scoundrels, it is wiser to have solid guarantee for the redemption of loans, and honest borrowers will not object to give suitable pledges for honesty.
3. Pledges are needed on the ground of uncertain mortality. “We know not what a day may bring forth.”
III. PLEDGES WHICH TOUCH A MAN‘S LIFE ARE PROHIBITED. Money-getting is never to be so pressed as to impinge on the domain of life. Human life is a sacred thing, and must not be trifled with. It has latent capabilities, and may yet become a source of blessing to myriads. Gain becomes as the small dust, an inappreciable thing, when placed in the balance against a human life. The gold of a continent is a bubble in comparison with a man’s soul.
IV. GENEROUS SURRENDER OF POVERTY‘S PLEDGES AN ACT OF PIETY. Pledges are telltales of common dishonesty. If truthfulness and honor were as prevalent as they ought to be, no pledge would be needed. A man’s word ought to be as good as his pledge. It often does a man good if we make his honor the only pledge. He is ennobled by our confidence. He rises in self-respect. Debts of honor are often paid prior to those which have material security. If we form a high estimate of men, they will often strive to reach the ideal. Generous treatment of the poor secures their warmest interest on our behalf. The poorest of the poor has still access to the audience-chamber of the heavenly palace. Their simple suit on our behalf will sometimes secure blessings which no arithmetic can measure. Deeds of kindness done to the indigent are done to God, for God identifies himself with them. “He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.” If the concession he an act of sterling love, pure from the alloy of selfishness, it is an act of righteousnessthe fruit of the Divine Spirit’s grace. This is not self-righteousness, for genuine love to men is a gracious affection. It does not begin with self; it does not terminate in self. God is its object; hence it shall be counted for righteousness. As Abraham’s faith counted for righteousness, so does also genuine love.D.
Deu 24:7
Slave-traffic a capital offence.
Slavery, in modified form, has always prevailed in Eastern lands; and, with prudent limitations, was tolerated among the Hebrews. To promulgate laws for men, which transcended their moral sense, would defeat the ends of law. God has continually to lead men from lower levels to higher. A man may voluntarily sell his liberty for a time. But to deprive a man of liberty by violence is a scarlet sin; and man-stealing is rightly branded with the deepest indignation of God.
I. LIBERTY IS ESSENTIAL TO MAN‘S FULLEST LIFE. Any form of bondage is a curtailment of life, a mutilation of the man. His outward condition may be bettered. He may have more food and warmer clothing and a healthier home, but the real man is injured. He is not fully susceptible of self-development. The springs of life are poisoned. He learns to despise himself, and to despise oneself is a step on the slippery road to ruin. Yet liberty is a human right not well understood. It must be distinguished from license. True liberty has its limits and its checks. A man is at liberty to part with his liberty for a time. Every man who toils for his bread is compelled to do this. Yet even this temporary cessation of his liberty must be voluntary.
II. TO DEPRIVE A MAN FORCIBLY OF HIS LIBERTY IS TO DEPRIVE HIM OF HIS LIFE. The life of the body is not the whole of a man’s life. The intellect, affections, choice, will, have a life more precious than the life of the body. To steal a man or to kidnap a child is to interfere, wantonly and injuriously, with the proper life of the person. The outward conditions of training and probation are not such as God ordained. The man’s eternal prospects, as well as his earthly possibilities, are blighted. And all this moral damage is done for paltry gain. The man who can lend himself to such a business as slave-mongering is lost to all goodness, lost to shame. He is a disgrace to the human speciesa tool of Satan.
III. FOR SUCH A CRIME THE GOD–APPOINTED PENALTY IS DEATH. No heavier penalty is imposed by the civil magistrate, because no heavier penalty is possible. Such a monster must be removed from the scenes of human society, because his presence is pestilential, demoralizing, deadly. Where human judgment ends, God’s judgment begins. Such a one is hurried before the higher court of heaven, is arraigned before the great white throne of the Eternal, and fullest justice will here be meted out. My soul, be thou free from such taint as this!D.
Deu 24:8, Deu 24:9
Leprosy symbolic.
God has intended the material world to be a schoolhouse, and every event a vehicle of moral instruction. The sick-chamber may become an audience-room, where lessons of heavenly wisdom are conveyed by the Spirit of truth. Leprosy was singled out by God to be a visible picture of sin; so that “out of the eater there might come forth meat.” Out of seeming evil, good can be distilled.
I. LEPROSY HAD A RELIGIOUS CHARACTER. More was meant by the infliction than was seen by the bodily eye. It was mysterious in its origin, and irresistible in its progress. It gradually spread and covered the whole man. It touched and injured every faculty. The intention was salutary, viz. to lead the sufferer’s thoughts to the discovery of a deeper malady, and to awaken desire for a more enduring cure. The outward is an index of the inward. Leprosy is a type and picture of sin.
II. LEPROSY REQUIRED RELIGIOUS TREATMENT. It was vain to seek the offices of an ordinary physician. Earthly remedy was and still is unknown. The sufferer was required to visit the priest. Direct application to God was to be made. Meanwhile, the leper was to be completely isolated. He might not consort with his fellows. Hereby he might learn the disastrous effects of sin, viz. in disintegrating society; and hereby he might in solitude mourn over sin, and seek its cure. The only possibility of the removal of leprosy was in religious obedience. Every part of the prescription was furnished by God, and was to be applied by God’s ministers. Completest submission was a condition of cure.
III. LEPROSY, IN ITS CAUSE AND CURE, HAD AN HISTORIC TYPE. This type was furnished by Miriam. Her specific sin was known; it was insubordination to authority. Her chastisement was sudden. It came direct from God in the form of leprosy. The injured man became her intercessor. God graciously responded to the suit of Moses. Temporary separation and strict seclusion were the method of cure. Golden lessons lie here. Every leper may confidently follow this indication of God’s will. If he healed Miriam, can he not also heal me?
IV. LEPROSY HEALED WAS CHARGED WITH RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. As a healed man will cheerfully recompense the physician for his pains, so God required the restored leper to express his gratitude in the form of animal sacrifice. His gratitude could not be expressed in empty words. He was not permitted to bring that “which cost him nothing.” In the slaughter of the devoted victim, the grateful man would confess that he himself had deserved to die, and that God had permitted a substitute. If the man were fully penitent, the sight of the dying substitute would vividly impress his heart with a sense of God’s mercy. In every arrangement which God made, the good of man was sought. The method will often seem strange to our dim vision, but respecting the beneficent end there can be no question.D.
Deu 24:14, Deu 24:15
Omitted duty ripens into curse.
Thoughtlessness is a flimsy excuse for neglected duty. It is a sin to be thoughtless. One talent is buried in the earth. In proportion to the mischief produced is the punishment thereof.
I. WE HAVE HERE A CASE OF OBLIGATION FULLY MATURED.
1. The rich is debtor to the poor. Obligation between the several ranks of society is equal. The rich rely for many services upon the poor. The king depends upon the cook. The laborer gives his strength, the employer contributes his money. There is as much obligation on the one side as on the other.
2. At a fixed point of time the obligation is matured. Henceforth the neglect of the obligation becomes sin. My obligations today differ from those of yesterday. The element of time plays an important part. Obligations grow.
3. Obligations are implied as well as expressed. Custom is unwritten law. Riches carry with them no warrant for arrogance. Riches have cursed the man if they have made him churlish.
II. NEGLECTED OBLIGATION ENTAILS UNKNOWN MISERY. We cannot follow the effects of thoughtlessness into all their intricate ramifications and to their utmost issues. What would be regarded as a trivial disappointment on the part of one man may be an agony of pain to another. Wages expected and deferred may mean to a needy laborer pinching hunger, not only to himself, but to feeble wife and to helpless babes. A gloomy and sleepless night may follow. Bitter and angry feelings may be engendered. Faith in human integrity may be lost. Self-restraint may vanish. For want of a nail a shoe was lost, a battle was lost, ay, an empire fell!
III. NEGLECTED OBLIGATION MAY BRING HEAVY CURSE UPON THE CULPRIT. It is not safe to treat any human being with contempt, especially the poor. God is the avowed Champion of such. The command, “Honor all men,” is as binding as “Thou shalt not steal.” The cry of the injured man in his distress is sure to pierce the skies. The ear of God is specially attent to his children’s suffering cry, even as a mother catches the plaintive wail of her firstborn infant. Swiftly God attaches himself to the side of the oppressed, and takes upon himself the burden. The injustice done to the man becomes an insult done to God. The deed alters in its character, intensifies in its immorality, becomes heinous sin. Vials of wrath are preparing for the head of the unthinking transgressor. It will be as the sin of blasphemy or of murder unto them.D.
Deu 24:16-18
Public justice to be pure.
Unseen principles of justice lie at the foundation of human society, and if rottenness and decay appear in these foundations, the social structure will soon topple and fall. Visible prosperity is built upon invisible justice. In the absence of justice, property becomes untenable, commerce vanishes, peace spreads her wings for flight. “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
I. THE MAGISTRATE‘S TEMPTATION. Human nature, at its best, is accessible by temptation; and it is well that from the eyes of the nation a fierce light beats upon the judicial bench. If only the ear of the judge be open to the fascinating voice of self-advantage, if his hand be open to a bribe, wickedness will put on the most ravishing charms to deflect him from his duty. Because he occupies a seat so conspicuous, temptation selects him as a special target for her poisoned arrows. Yet even for temptation he may rejoice, for according to his trials should be his moral triumphs. Avarice may tempt him. Love of ease may tempt him. His own tastes and predilections may tempt. The praise of the powerful may tempt. He will become either the stronger or the weaker for the discipline, will grow in moral courage or in cowardice.
II. THE MAGISTRATE‘S QUALIFICATION. The qualification for the judicial throne is ardent love of justice. As only a wise man can be a teacher, so only a just man can be a true judge. No matter what may be the nationality of the litigants, no matter what their color, social rank, or sex, every one has an inherent claim on public justice. To pervert judgment is to arouse all the elements of wrath in heaven and earth. The judge is the visible exponent of justice; he wears the garb of justice, and if in him there dwells not the soul of justice, he is a sham and a pretence. Heart devotion to public justice is the only anchor that can hold him fast amid those currents and whirlpools of evil influences which ever surge around him. Things unseen are the most potent.
III. THE MAGISTRATE‘S RULE OF ACTION. This is clearly made known to him by God, viz. that punishment is to be personal, not corporate. The child is not to die for the father. Where there is corporate guilt there must be corporate punishment. But this is no contravention of the rule. The inducement is often great to release oneself from the pains of unraveling a complicated suit; or, if relatives of the accused seem to be accessories to an evil deed, a judge is often tempted to embrace all the suspected family in one punishment. The light of truth is to be his only guide; love of justice his compass; the revealed will of God his chart. To him human life is to be held a sacred thing; not one life is to be needlessly sacrificed. It is a sad fact that judges have been amongst the greatest criminals; they have slain many innocent men.
IV. THE MAGISTRATE‘S INSPIRING MOTIVE. Many motives may wisely influence him. He, too, must appear before a higher tribunal, and submit his whole life to judicial light. But the motive here pressed upon him is gratitude derived from past experience. The history of his nation is to mold his character and to teach him the value of human justice. He is expected to sympathize with the oppressed, to enter into their griefs, because he is a part of a nation that has felt the sharp scourge of oppression. He has learnt by national experience that, when justice by man is denied, God appears in court and champions the cause of the oppressed. He is the representative of a nation that has been redeemed. He himself is a ransomed one, and is under peculiar obligation to serve his Deliverer. His time, his capacity, his legal knowledge, his influence are not his own; he is redeemed, and belongs to another. Past deliverances are not to be lost upon us, or we are lost. To forget the lessons of the past is self-injury, yea, is heinous sin. In every station and office fidelity is demanded.D.
Deu 24:19-22
Autumn generosity.
If a man is not generous towards his poorer neighbors in time of harvest, he will never be generous. If the profuse generosity of God be lavished upon him in vain, his moral nature must be hard indeed. As men “make hay while the sun shines,” so should we yield to benevolent impulses while God surrounds us with sunshine of kindness. As we are undeserving recipients, we should share our unpurchased bounty with others.
I. WE HAVE HERE A FITTING OCCASION FOR GENEROSITY. God supplies us with fitting seasons for getting good and for doing good. It is not always autumn. We cannot gather corn and olives when we please. We have to wait the arrival of the season, and this season is God’s provision. We must gather then or verse Opportunity can never be trifled with. If abundance has been put into our bands, let us forthwith use it well, or it may be suddenly taken from us. If an unusual generous impulse be upon us, it is wisest to respond to it freely, to give it largest scope, for this is a visit of God to us for good.
II. FITTING OBJECTS FOR GENEROSITY ARE PROVIDED. Were it not for the existence of the poor, there would be no outlet for generosity in a practical and material form. There would be no discipline for the best part of our nature. It would be a pain and a loss to us if the instinct of benevolence within us found no field for its exercise. Thankful ought we to be that the poor shall not cease out of the land. The fatherless and the widow come to us as the sent of God, to loosen the sluices of our generosity, and to do us good. We are almoners of God’s royal bounty.
III. DELICATE PLANS FOR CONVEYING GENEROSITY. The finer forces of our bodily nature are conveyed to every part by most delicate, almost invisible, ducts. Nerve-power is distributed from the center to the circumference by minutest channels. So, too, should we employ the most refined delicacy in relieving the necessities of the poor. Let not our gift be spoilt by any assumption of superiority, nor by any arrogant rudeness. It is a noble thing to respect the manly feelings of the poor, and to touch with fairy finger the sensibilities of the suffering. We are to study, not only how much we can give, but especially how best to give it. From the harvest-field and the olive-grove we may learn this delicacy of kindness. Both the quantity and the quality of our service are important in God’s esteem.
IV. THE POTENT MOTIVE TO GENEROSITY. Remembrance of their own redemption was the mighty motive for all good deeds. This is the constant refrain of God’s message. As God is not wearied in reiterating the lesson, neither should we be wearied in hearing it. We are the objects of God’s tenderest love. He has set in motion his most prodigious energies to rescue us from misery. He has emptied his treasury of blessings so as to enrich us, and the end for which he has enriched us is that we may enrich others. Ye have been ineffably blessed, do you bless in return.D.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 1. When a man hath taken a wife The Hebrew nation having been accustomed to the liberty of putting away their wives from motives of dislike and aversion, and Moses being sensible that their hardness of heart, and severity of temper, would, upon an absolute restraint from such liberty, produce greater inconveniences and distractions in families; he now enacted, that when any husband laboured under an absolute dislike to his wife, either upon account of any bodily disease, or of her disagreeable temper, he should have the privilege of parting with her; yet not in a violent, hasty, and passionate method, but deliberately, by giving her, signed with his own hand, a discharge from all further relation to him; whence she obtained a full right to marry any other person. That by the phrase found some uncleanness in her, cannot be meant adultery, or any other enormous crime, as idolatry, apostacy, and the like, is evident, because those crimes were punished with death. The word uncleanness, therefore, which is used with great latitude in these books, must signify any thing creating dislike or aversion; something, either in her body or mind, which created in the husband a fixed disgust: but as he himself was sole judge what this uncleanness or turpitude was, whatever displeased him about her he might call by that name. Mr. Locke observes, in agreement to the Margin of our Bibles, that the phrase literally signifies the nakedness of any thing; and nakedness, says he, is usually referred in Scripture to the mind, as well as body. Houbigant is of opinion, that this uncleanness refers solely to some secret bodily defect, of which the husband alone could be conscious; and that such defect only could justify divorce. This, no doubt, gave husbands a great power over their wives, and must have been attended with very great inconveniencies to society. See ch. Deu 22:19; Deu 22:29 and Mat 19:3-9. The law enjoins, that a bill of divorcement (or of cutting off, so called, as it cut off a woman from her husband) was to be written and given to the woman. A form of this divorce may be seen in Selden and Buxtorf. As we have mention of divorces in several places, (Lev 21:14; Lev 22:13. Num 30:9.) many judicious interpreters have been of opinion, that it was usual to put away wives before the law of Moses; that he only indulged them in an established custom, which he knew their intractable tempers would not bear to have quite abolished; and therefore he contented himself with bringing it under proper regulations and restrictions. For more on this subject, we refer to St. Matthew as above, as well as to Selden’s Treatise de Uxor. Heb. lib. 3: cap. 18. J. Buxtorf de Sponsalib. & Divort. Grotius de Jure B. & P. lib. 2: cap. 5 sect. 9 and a very learned dissertation of the famous Mr. Mosheim, de Divortio.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Israel at Home
Chaps. Deu 23:15 to Deu 25:19
15Thou shalt not deliver5 unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: 16He shall dwell with thee, even among you in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates where it liketh [good for him, so margin] him best: thou shalt not oppress him. 17There shall be no whore6 [consecrated, devoted one] of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. 18Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the Lord thy God. 19Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother [lay upon thy brother]: usury7 of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent [accustomed to be lent] upon usury: 20Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it. 21When thou shalt vow a vow unto the Lord thy God, thou shalt not slack to pay it: for the Lord thy God will surely require it of thee; and it would be [and it is] sin in thee. 22But if thou shalt forbear to vow, it shall be no sin in thee. 23That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform; even a free-will offering [freely, voluntarily] according as thou hast vowed unto the Lord thy God, which thou hast promised with thy mouth. 24When thou comest into thy neighbors vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure [as thy desire (soul) is]; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel. 25When thou comest into the standing-corn of thy neighbor, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand: but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbors standing-corn.
Deu 24:1 to Deu 22:1 When [If] a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that [if] she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness [nakedness of a thing] in her: then let him write her a bill of 2divorcement,8 and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when 3she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another mans wife. And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement [a separating writing], and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife; 4Her former husband which sent her away, may not take her again [return to take her] to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the Lord: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin [make it sinful] which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance. 5When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business9: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken. 6No man shall take the nether [the hand-mill] or the upper10 mill-stone to pledge: for he taketh a mans life to pledge. 7If a man be found stealing any of his [a soul (person) of his] brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him [constrain him violently] or selleth him; then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you. 8Take heed in the plague of leprosy, that thou observe diligently, and do according to all that [as] the priests the Levites shall teach you: as I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do. 9Remember what the Lord thy God did unto Miriam by the way, after that ye were come [in your coming] forth out of Egypt. 10When thou dost lend11 thy brother anything, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch12 his pledge: 11Thou shalt stand abroad, and the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring out the pledge abroad unto thee: 12And if the man be poor [a bound, oppressed man], thou shalt not sleep with his pledge: 13In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment [over-cloak, mantle], and bless thee; and it shall be righteousness unto thee before the Lord thy God. 14Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: 15At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it, for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it [lifteth his soul unto it]: lest he cry [and he shall not cry] against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee. 16The fathers shall not be put to death for [with, on account of] the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for [in] his own sin. 17Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless, nor take a widows raiment to pledge: 18But thou shalt remember that [And remember, for] thou wast a bond-man in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence: therefore I command thee to do this thing [word]. When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, 19thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands. 20When thou beatest thine olive-tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again13 [search the boughs after thee]: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. 21When thou gatherest [cuttest off] the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterward [after this]: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. 22And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bond-man in the land of Egypt: therefore I command thee to do this thing.
Deu 25:1 to Deu 19:1 If there be a controversy between men, and they come [near (hither)] unto judgment, that [and] the judges may [omit may] judge them; 2then [and] they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked. Ana [Then] it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten [a son of stripes], that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault [what his fault requires] by a certain number. 3Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee. 4Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out [lit. and marg.: in his threshing] the corn. 5If brethren dwell together, and one of them die and have no child [son], the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husbands14 brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husbands brother unto her. 6And it shall be, that the first-born which she beareth, shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel. 7And if the man like not to take his brothers15 wife, then let his brothers wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My husbands brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husbands 8brother. Then [And] the elders of his city shall[om. shall] call him, and speak unto him: and if [om. if] he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her, 9Then shall his brothers wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer [reply], and say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brothers house. 10And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed [the bare-footed]. 11When men strive together one with another [together a man and his brother], and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: 12Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her. 13Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights [stone and a stone. So the marg.], a great and a small: 14Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures [an ephah and an ephah, marg.], 15a great and a small: But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just16 measure shalt thou have; that thy days may be 16lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. For all [every one] that do such things, and all [every one] that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the Lord thy God. 17Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, 18when ye were come forth out of Egypt; How he [who] met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary: and he feared not God. Therefore [And] it shall be, when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; 19thou shalt not forget it.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Deu 23:15-18. The previous directions for war, offer the point of union here, since in the time of war servants might easily escape from the enemy. It occurs, however, when Israel was abroad in the field; but now he is at home, Deu 23:16; hence there is a return so far to Deu 23:1-8, as (Deu 23:15) the dwelling of a heathen servant might be hazardous as to the sacred character of the people of God. But the escaped (who will rescue himself) to Israel desires the very same thing which Israel himself had experienced at the hand of God (Deu 23:15, ); without considering, that the individual ownership, the right of possession, even according to Egyptian ideas, ceases when that of the whole people comes to an end. (Schultz). If Jehovah delivers the enemy before Israel, Israel should not deliver any one, even a slave, into hostile, and at the same time arbitrary power. Hiphil delivered to be shut up, in order to be held more securely, perhaps even at first to be cruelly punished. Deu 23:16. But even in Israel itself such a fugitive should not be made to feel his position by oppression, fraud, defamation, etc., (Exo 22:21; Lev 19:33), but should be permitted to do as he likes, as a fellow-dweller in the good land of Jehovah. Comp. upon Deu 1:16; Deu 10:18 sq.; Deu 14:29 (Deu 14:21). No active efforts for the conversion of the heathen were enjoined. Baumgarten. Such a reception of one escaping from the heathen meets however, Deu 23:17, immediately its limitations. This consecrated (prostitute) belonged to the Phnician, Syrian goddess of love (Astarte, Mylitta). Prostitution might awaken in Israel a like religious service with that existing of old in Canaan (Gen 38:21) so that the designation (Kedeshah) becomes an honorable title for a prostitute, (Lev 19:29). There were Sodomites also, Lev 18:22; Job 36:14 (1Ki 14:24; 2Ki 23:7). Still less should they deliver to Jehovah (Deu 23:18) the gift or hire. from to depart from the true form of the sexual life, marriage; to digress, to commit excesses. Such gifts were a reward for religious iniquity, a present in which the God of Israel was treated as a lust idol. The special gift was a kid of the goats, Gen 38:17 sq., but also money, hence the price of a dog, not the money received for a dog sold, but the reward of gain of Kadesh () a Sodomite, one who endured, what one dog suffers from another. Knobel. Used here figuratively, because it had grown into a terminus technicus (Rev 22:15; Rev 21:8). Upon house of the Lord. Comp. Intro., 4, I. 23. For any vow, as Phnician lewdness, dedicated especially these fruits of the body to idols. Even both these, the gift and the giver.
2. Deu 23:19-20. The discourse passes from God to our neighbor, as in Deu 23:20, at the close, back again to God, in a genuine deuteronomic way, showing the profound understanding of the law, of the connection between the two tables. Deu 23:19. (from to bite) literally something biting, oppressive, the Hiphil is not to give interest, but to take, as Exo 22:25; Lev 25:36 sq.; for if the taking was forbidden, the obligation not to give is of course evident, especially since only the necessity of a brother could bring him to borrow, in the simple relations of Israel, and unselfish love should have arranged for this. We are not to think here of the speculations of trade. Deu 23:20. Comp. Deu 15:3; Deu 15:6; Deu 14:21; for the rest Deu 12:7. The stranger is perhaps one passing through Israel for purposes of trade, not one () remaining or dwelling for a time among Israel. The Phnicians, Arabians certainly, took interest from Israel. [The permission to take usury (interest) from the stranger carries with it of course the principal. And it is probable that the loaning of money at fair and easy rates, to aid or accommodate a brother, is not here prohibited. And even if prohibited here, it is only for the special cases, and in the peculiar circumstances of the ancient people of God.A. G.].
3. Deu 23:21-23. , kindred with to set apart, in Niphal: to abstain from anything, to consecrate oneself to anything, hence a devoted thing. The fulfilling must follow. Comp. Deu 15:9. If sin, then of course the demand with penalty. On the other hand the vow, even when near at hand, and customary, may be discontinued. For it is, Deu 23:23, voluntary, or a free-will offering; but the freedom before it is uttered, makes the obligation still stronger afterwards. as always to preserve. voluntariness, here without the (Hos 14:5), merely voluntary, from to move, to give freely, intrans. movable, to be willing, generous, generally what was vowed, especially the utterance, or vow. Comp. moreover Leviticus 27; Num 6:30.
4. Deu 23:24-25. The freedom over against God (with respect to that belonging to Him) leads now again to a corresponding freedom in regard to the property of our neighbor: the more comprehensible as Jehovah is the literal and permanent owner of the promised land. These verses relate to the thirsting and hungry, the former standing first here as the deepest and most painful necessity. The needy one therefore is not the laborer, but rather the traveller, the passer by. It is expressly forbidden that any one should make out of this freedom a means of support. The literal poverty in Israel is not in view here. Comp. further Deu 12:15; Deu 12:20 sq.; Deu 14:26. Fill thy desire. , full, be satisfied, satisfaction. Accusative of the closer limitation. Deu 23:25. Comp. upon Deu 16:9. the ears as standing out. [Ges.: as cut off], (Mat 12:1; Luk 6:1). Usually roasted, Lev 23:14. Thus take no store along with them.
5. Deu 24:1-5. This chapter leads us into the home of the Israelite, into his domestic life. Deu 24:1-4. Of divorce. Deu 24:1. Comp. Deu 22:13; Deu 21:13. To marry a wife, according to this, is to take property into possession, hence to become her lord. The divorce was thus as a mater of fact supposed, and indeed in the case which Moses, in this view of the wife, must leave as it iswhen in the closer and daily intercourse of life she was not pleasing to the husbandand thus entirely as in subjection to him who had power over her. Her not finding favor with him must truly rest upon a previous finding on his side with regard to her, and through this has its ground and motives. While the latter finding is always put into the husbands hands alone, it must still be something that is nakedness (uncleanness) and not might be nakedness (Deu 23:14). Thus a physical or moral occasion for divorce. The school of Hillel at the time of Christ interpreted it as (Mat 19:3), i.e., any thing which may not be pleasing to the husbandpurely subjective. The stricter school of Schammai confined it to some immodesty, shamelessness, lewdness, adultery. But this latter was a capital crime. Knobel holds correctly, no doubt, to some physical defect. Upon the writing see Hengstenb. Auth. I. 460. In connection with the supposed spread of the art of writing among Israel, this divorce does not appear to have been directly made more difficult by the (letter, writing) of divorcement, although this may have been the case when the learned priest or Levite must be brought, who would seek to reconcile the husband. Herxheimer. Such a form of divorce, gave only into the hand of the divorced wife that which would show, that she was legitimately dismissed, and so free, both generally and before other men, and over against her husband hitherto (Deu 24:4). Deu 24:2. Is a description of her freedom. Deu 24:3. In direct continuance of the preceding, Deu 24:1-2, this verse now utters more fully the case, which is literally in view here. Comp. Deu 21:15; Deu 22:13. A decided hatred alternates with what is said, Deu 24:1, which as to the rest is repeated, except that the case of a wife freed again by the event of death is further supposed here. The apodosis now follows with the condition or limitation of the divorce. [See textual notes. The sentence should be read as one, Deu 24:1-4. The pointing in the original makes it clear that Moses does not institute or command divorce. The pointing in our version implies that he does so. He is merely prescribing limitations or regulations to a prevailing custom, which was not in accordance with the institution of marriage, and was only permitted there in this limited sense, and under these restrictions, for the hardness of their hearts. At the same time all these directions tend evidently to prevent any hasty or passionate rupture of the marriage bond, and to guard the interests of the wife as the party most needing protection. For while it seems probable that the wife might initiate the divorce, it was very seldom done.A. G.]. It is worthy of notice, that the original husband is designated , while the second is always called merely But although the idea of marriage according to its institution (Gen 2:23 sq.) may not be brought out in this connection, yet still the prohibition, this legal impossibility to take her again, would serve without doubt to check, a hasty divorce, the degradation of the woman, and especially the bestializing of the sexual relation of man and wife. Reconciliation is possible, indeed may be silently read between the lines (comp. 2Sa 3:14), but not the taking her again to wife, after that ( referring to the , Deu 24:2), she is defiled. Hothpaal: Suffered herself to be defiled. Polluta est alius concubitu. J. H. Michaelis. [Thus it is clear even in these verses. As the Bib. Com. remarks that divorce whilst tolerated for the time contravenes the order of nature and of God. The divorced woman who marries again is defiled. This of course is subject to the interpretation of our Lord, who Himself makes divorce valid, and the innocent party free, on the ground of adultery. Our Lords teaching on this subject is found in Mat 5:31-32; Mat 19:3-9; Luk 16:18; and Mar 10:2-12. It seems to be clear that we are here taught that while marriage is an indissoluble compact between one man and one woman, which cannot be dissolved at the mere arbitrary will of either party, or indeed of both parties, it may be dissolved by the sin of fornication on the part of either. If a man puts away his wife for any other cause, he commits adultery; if upon this ground he is not guilty of any offence. Where divorce takes place upon this ground there is no sin, even if the man marries again. He is free; as the bond has been annulled by the sin of the other party, and so vice versa.A. G.]. See Lev 18:20; Num 5:13 sq., of adultery. Man and wife are one flesh, Gen 2:24. To become the same with a third party is not barely a levitical (Lev 15:18) but a moral desecration of the marriage union. So fundamentally and essentially, Mat 5:32; Mat 19:9. As the second marriage of the divorced was defilement, so here remarriage with her first husband is abomination before (in the face of) Jehovah; expressively said in every case as Deu 7:25; Deu 12:31; Deu 22:5. Comp. further Lev 18:25; Jer 3:1. sq.
Deu 24:5. The newly formed marriage. A new wife, in distinction from the old, just forbidden him, from whom he had divorced himself; a first or a second wife, perhaps even a divorced or a widow. a concentration of the soldierly or warlike manhood, Deu 20:7. While the betrothed must present himself, and then be dismissed, the newly-married is naturally not first marched out for a like release. To the previous prohibition limiting and making more difficult the marriage separation, now we have a positive relaxation in the interest of the marriage union, showing at the same time liberal indulgence to the fresh marriage band. to break in upon, to pass over any one. Job 13:13. Here generally no public burden. as in Deu 23:18. At home, for the good of his just established domestic life. And cheer up his wife instead of causing her sorrow through the exposure of his life, or burdening her with care of any kind.
6. Deu 24:6-7. The founding of a home leads naturally to its preservation. Deu 24:6 to bind, by the taking of a pledge, to pledge. the handmill, the dual, to indicate the millstones, literally the grinder, from to rub, crush. Neither the whole was to be so taken, nor the in the sense of fixingthe lower stationaryor in the sense of moving [or as the rider] the upper movable stone. The daily preparation of the daily bread depended upon this, and consequently the life (soul) of the poor who had only the most necessary utensils. F. Bovet, in a description of a house at the village of Bireh, says: the furniture consists of a handmill and a large earthen vessel containing the grain. The mill is a stone mortar, in which they turn a millstone by means of a handle, as in our corn-mills. [See Thomson, The Land and the Book, pp. 294296, for the structure and mode of using the mill.A. G.]. Deu 24:7. The house should not only be preserved for the Israelite, but the Israelite at his home. introduces the transition. Comp. further Deu 21:14. The harsh, violent treatment, is, as a true deuteronomic and real explanation, inserted between and Exo 21:16; (1Ti 1:10; Rev 18:13). Comp. still Deu 13:6. [Wordsworth: St. Paul transcribes 1Co 5:13, the words of the Sept. here, and thus teaches us to apply these Levitical laws to spiritual things.A. G.].
7. Deu 24:8-9. The case, when an Israelite must leave his home, is: in the time (upon the skin as from a blow) of (from to break forth) i.e., of the eruption, thus at the first appearance; as more precisely explained, Leviticus 13. sq. Schultz and Keil understand the needlessly as if: take heed because (of the cost) of the plague of leprosy (as a punishment, i.e., do nothing to incur it). Luther, as the Vulg., takes for , from before. They should exactly and strictly observe () hold fast, what Moses had commanded the priests and Levites (Intro., 4, I. 22). They thus direct only (Deu 17:10) according to the law, when they in case of the leprosy remove any one from his home and separate him from the people (Lev 13:45-46). The strictness of the admonition is followed by an equally stringent command to obedience, and this, Deu 24:9, is enforced by a reference to Miriam, Num 12:10 sq. In the case of Miriam the leprosy was the punishment for her rebellion against Moses; but it is not the leprosy, but what Jehovah had done to her (Num 12:14), her separation beyond the camp, which is here in view. The onward march of the people was at that time restrained by her course, Num 12:15. Neither the rank nor the person could be regarded.
8. 1013. For the rest, the home of a fellow-Israelite must be respected. Deu 24:10. Comp. Deu 15:2; Deu 15:6. Johlson: In order to take his pledge. Herxheimer: To seize from him a pledge or security. The lender should not invade or disturb the home of the debtor, he is not to act as a landlord. It presupposes better relations than Deu 24:6. According to Deu 24:11 the borrower defines what the pledge shall be; that he can do without it, is also presupposed according to Deu 24:6. For if it is something which he can spare, indeed, but only for the day, so it may be taken from him only for the day. Deu 24:12 sq.; Comp. Exo 22:25-26. Deu 24:13. Comp. upon Deu 6:25. [The directions here given are to guard the poor and unfortunate from oppression. Their homes could not be violated. The creditor must stand without and wait for the pledge to be brought. But the right to the pledge is recognized. It must be brought. And doubtless the law or custom would regulate what pledge was sufficient. Within these limits the creditor would have the right to judge.A. G.].
9. Deu 24:14-22. The mention of the debtor leads, Deu 24:14-15, to the similarly placed laborer, but with this to the still wider and varied methods how Israel must deport itself at home. Deu 24:16-22. For , Deu 24:14, as Deu 24:12 (comp. Deu 15:11), and upon the added (comp. Deu 15:4). , to cut, to defraud, comp. upon Lev 19:13. collectively. Deu 24:15. He was usually a day-laborer (Mat 20:8).Upon it, i.e. the wages which are still deferred (Eph 4:26). So also upon it, i.e. he raises, lifts up his desire upon that, which to each day is its fitting reward. Comp. further Deu 15:9 (Jam 5:4). The condition and expectation of the poor should Israel consider at home, and hence, Deu 24:16 does not confound the justice of God (Deu 5:9) with that of men, nor visit the death-penalty upon the closest kindred of the guilty, as the physical connection carried with it the punishment among the Persians and other heathen nations. (Deu 22:6), upon, i.e., on account of. In such wretched cases Israel must regard and spare the family band, which might impel to like heathen practices (2Ki 14:6; 2Ch 25:4; Jer 31:30; Eze 18:20). Deu 24:17 regards the condition of the poor in its wider relation; comp. Deu 16:19; Deu 10:18-19; Deu 27:19. Upon the whole passage, comp. Exo 22:21 sq.; Deu 23:9; Lev 19:33 sq. The righteousness, Deu 24:13, leads at first in Deu 24:14-15, to that which is privately right and reasonable, but then, Deu 24:16, to the public justice; so we pass in Deu 24:17 from right generally in the private relations, to the right as connected with security or pledges (Deu 24:6). In Israel right should be maintained publicly and privately, and indeed according to righteousness as it is love, or better still, grace and mercy, as man becomes acquainted with it in God (Deu 24:13, ), as Israel especially had already grown acquainted with it in his God. The widow, the womanly, is noticed with peculiar tenderness; her raiment may be viewed as a whole history of poverty (Deu 24:12). Upon Deu 24:18, comp. Deu 15:15; Deu 5:15; Deu 7:8. Deu 24:19-22. These verses respect the state and even expectation of the poor which they are justified in cherishing, from their position under Jehovah, the landlord of Canaan. Comp. Lev 19:9 sq.; Deu 23:22; Deu 14:29. The olives, when they were not entirely ripe, were beaten off with poles, and then yielded finer oil (Isa 17:6). Deu 24:22 as Deu 24:18. [The three-fold repetition, 19, 20, 21, of these classes who were thus partly provided for, is calculated surely to impress the care and tenderness of God over the poor, and the humanity of the laws of Moses.A. G.]
10. Chap. 25, Deu 25:1-3. To the wretched, not habitually, but for the time, in the ideal connection of this paragraph with the foregoing, belongs also the case of one exposed to punishment. But Deu 25:1 brings out first of all the prevailing righteousness for Israel. The poor or wretched even in this reference could only be treated righteously. Comp. Exo 23:7. , to be firm, straight. Opposed to , to separate, to turn aside. Whoever in any given case is righteous, the opponent is unrighteous, i.e. guilty, not however in the moral sense, but sensu forensi. Deu 25:2. , i.e. before the judge, who should observe the number and the kind of stripes, and perhaps also limit the dishonor in the case, through such a form of proceeding. Bovet, who regards the tabernacle as the tent of justice standing in the centre of the people, before which the Lord of Israel cites His people, describes the mode in which justice is pronounced and executed in Egypt to-day; the whole scene now aptly illustrating that which we may suppose to have occurred here. (comp. Deu 15:8), according to the measure, with reference to the number, i.e. as many as the crime demands according to the jus talionis, Deu 25:3. Forty, i.e. 4 10. thus according to all the world, on all sides, a perfect measure. (From Gen 7:12 it is the full measure of the development of judgment. Keil.)Not exceed, i.e., not more than forty. Anxious not to overstep this extreme limit, the later Jews fixed the number of stripes at thirty-nine (2Co 11:24).[And yet they did not hesitate to use the whip or scourge, instead of the stick or rod.A. G.]Any excess over these would be too many stripesnot so much in reference to what a man can endure, as with respect to its spiritual, humane side or aspect. In such a case there would be no limit to the arbitrary will; the sufferer, as to why he was still punished, would not be under the law, but barely under the rod; he would not be even under the protection of the law. Moreover, he would suffer loss in the eyes of his brethren, if it was not retribution nor even dishonor, but the stripes merely which were in view here. , from , to rub open, sweep away [Ges.: roast], e.g. by fire, hence light, to make small, despicable, so that it is not necessary to render the Niphal with Meier to be ruined.[Bib. Com.: The son of Israel was not to be lashed like a slave at the mercy of another. The judge was to see that the law was not over-passed.A. G.]
11. Deu 25:4. The treatment of a man as a brute, if we can think of such in an unlimited scourging, gives occasion for the mention of the brutes even, according to righteousness, Deu 25:4. If his wages are to be given to the hired laborer daily, so also the laboring animal should be permitted to eat of the grain which it treads out, or over which it draws the threshing-cart (Winer, Lex. I., p. 276). Comp. upon this the present usage in the East; Hengst., Moses and Egypt (1Co 9:9; 1Ti 5:18). Such a reference to animals makes the reference to the dead brother in the following paragraph to appear more appropriate.[Wordsworth dwells upon the use which the Apostle makes of this passage, not only as showing that the Levitical law has a spiritual sense, in which it is still binding upon all, but as giving us the key by which we may unlock the casket and take out of its treasures. But this opens wide the door to a very loose and fanciful exposition. It would need great sobriety and judgment to keep at all within bounds on the principle here stated. We cannot safely argue from what the apostle did, and justify ourselves in a like course. And the Apostle seems to use the words rather as illustrative of the truth he was teaching than as assigning to them a figurative and spiritual sense.A. G.]
12. Deu 25:5-10. The Levirate marriages. It is not the dead brother alone, but the widow also, who with him claims special notice here. In the following primitive institution there is no allusion to the taking possession of the landed property, Knobel, and hence, Deu 25:5, the dwelling together cannot be placed as a condition to the obligation, with Knobel, Keil [Bib. Com.], but only brings to bear from the beginning, the actual position, the local nearness of the brother-in-law as giving rise to it. It was customary to dwell together, if not in the same house, yet upon the same paternal inheritance. , according to Jewish tradition, without child or grandchild, Mat 22:24; Mar 12:19; Luk 20:28. That a son was alluded to here, and expressly in Deu 25:6, is only natural. But if the dead left behind him even a daughter, it was, according to Num 27:4; Num 36:8, sufficient. The widow was not free to marry any one belonging to a family beyond the tribe or kindred (Num 36:3). Comp. Gen 19:31. , literally, allied, related by marriage, levir (), in the Jewish interpretation: the own brother on the fathers side, if unmarried? , Piel, act the part of the brother-in-law. Deu 25:6. Shall succeed [Schroeder: stand up], not to the name of his own father, but to that of his dead uncle, and so be registered in the genealogical table, i.e. as is self-evident, be enrolled as his heir. Others hold that he should not only thus perpetuate the name of the dead, but that he should be literally named after him. But comp. Rth 4:10; Rth 4:17, for the refutation of this view., from , to wipe off, namely, from the genealogical tables. As e.g. Ohad (Gen 46:10; Exo 6:15; comp. with Num 26:12; 1Ch 4:24). Thus also it was not so much the marriage of the widow which was in question, as much more the preservation in this way of the name, and therewith the person of the dead. But while the law makes valid this custom, coming down from the time of the patriarchs (Gen 38:8), it is still only in its prevalent form a custom, and therefore without constraint. It leaves the inclination free, permits the refusal. Deu 25:7 delivers it from pure arbitrariness, regulates its expression (comp. Deu 21:19; Num 16:12-14), in the way of notice, accusation, public hearing and treatment by the magistrate, Deu 25:8, at which the marriage of the brother-in-law, as also the loss to his own inheritance (Rth 4:6), and even the perpetuation of his own name (Gen 38:9), may find public utterance, and ordains, in case the disinclination continues, no strictly legal punishment, but permits a temporary disgrace through the act of the sister-in-law, Deu 25:9, and a permanent disgrace in the community, Deu 25:10, both of which, however, could be maintained with the custom itself, or grow feeble, if they did not fall away with it.In the presence of the elders, i.e. publicly, and because he must submit to what follows. The loosing of the shoe from his foot by the sister-in-lawin distinction from Rth 4:7-8, in which case it was not the own natural brother, and in which also the redemption of the inheritance was especially in view, and thus the kinsman himself could loose his own shoedivested the unwilling brother-in-law of his rights with respect to the widow. Hupfeld: Psa 60:8 says correctly, it was the symbol of renunciation. The reproach put upon her is compensated by the spitting in his face (Lev 15:8; Num 12:14; Job 30:10); she now contemns him on her side. The Talmud weakens it into: spit before him on the ground. Upon , comp. upon Deu 21:7; Deu 19:16, and also Gen 16:2; Gen 30:3; Rth 4:11. The founding and establishment of the family! Hence the reproachful title extends even to his house, and thus the occurrence becomes a lasting remembrance and reproach. But still not as Knobel, Keil, a bare-footed abject, since it is not as bare-footed, as without possessions, that he is infamous, but as one from whom his sister-in-law has loosed his shoe.
Deu 25:11-12, limit the interference of a woman permitted in the above custom (comp. with , Deu 25:9); upon the other side, morality required such a limitation. Freedom, but not shamelessness, especially in regard to what the sister-in-law had precisely claimed (comp. Exo 21:22). The attack was, moreover, dangerous to life. Hence the severe and strict penalty which the Rabbins change into a penalty corresponding to the worth of the hand. Comp. Deu 19:21; Deu 7:16.[It is of course to be understood that the act was wilful, and that the penalty was inflicted by the sentence of the Judges. This is the only mutilation prescribed by the law of Moses, unless we accept the retaliation prescribed as a punishment for the infliction on another of bodily injuries, Lev 24:19 sq. Bib. Com.A. G.]
13. Deu 25:13-19. How Israel should proceed according to righteousness in trade, Deu 25:13-16, and in their intercourse with others, Deu 25:17-19. Deu 25:13. . As they usually had a purse at the girdle for this purpose, Mic 6:11. The repetition: stone and stone [divers weights], (Deu 25:14 : Ephah and Ephah [divers measures]), as is immediately explained, designates the diverse, the two kinds of weights, the large used in the purchase, and the small in selling (Psa 12:2; Amo 8:5). As with the weights, so it should be also with the grain-measures (from , to collect, gather, hold, whence: vessel). As in the purse, so in the house, i.e. neither to use, nor even to have. Deu 25:15. is unhurt, complete, whole, both all together, and each one by itself, must be just. For it concerns righteousness. Comp. Lev 19:36. The promise the same as in Deu 5:16 at the close of the first table. The more solemn conclusion follows in Deu 25:16; comp. Deu 28:12; Deu 22:5. The injunction passes from the particular trade, to every transaction of the kind generally. , to contract, distort, Arabia: to overstep the right measure. With this Deu 25:17 joins the exception, which is still however only according to the righteousness of God, and thus also forms the conclusion to this whole section. The case befel the Israelites on the way. Comp. Exo 17:8 sq. Deu 25:18 gives the closer description of the iniquitous conduct of Amalek from the recollection of an eye-witness, who had experienced it. , to extend, to swerve, in the Piel: to bend aside, injure, destroy the tail, the rear. This inhumanity shows already that there is no fear of God with Amalek. Comp. on the other hand Exo 15:14; Exo 18:1. Deu 25:19. Comp. Deu 12:10; Exo 17:14; Deu 9:7. The execution follows in 1 Samuel 15.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Israel itself rescued from bondage, realizes in Deu 23:15-16, a command to humanity (Knobel), but a humanity which appears to be stamped with the highest ideas of human nature. As according to its original destination, it was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth, so it is in Christ the asylum of enslaved humanity.
2. From the Old Testament stand-point, the conversion of the Gentiles rests in the depths of hope and desire. Baumgarten.
3. The element of lust in the heathen religions still in Mohammedanism. The dangerous character of religious fanaticism in this aspect. The sobriety of the religion of Israel.
4. Interest must be distinguished from usury; but also the persons, whether it is the poor borrowing from necessity, or others borrowing for gain.
5. Compare L. Wiese, upon the Vow in the evangelical sense, Berlin, 1861. Mosheim [Ethics VI., p. 177) distinguishes: either to omit things which otherwise could be done innocently, or to perform something which (or binding to some kind and manner of observance) the law does not require. The purpose: gratitude, desire to devote ourselves to God, zeal in sanctification. Vows should be maturely considered beforehand. Ben. Pictet, Morale Chret. I. Book III., Chap. 16.: The vow is a solemn promise to God to do some special thing in His service, and to His honor. Thus not as to the general life, as in baptism and in prayer.
6. When Moses comes to speak of divorce, the bill of divorcement is a , a record literally of the cleaving apart, cutting away, namely, one from the other, of those who together were one flesh. Thus throughout according to the idea of marriage, which is its ethical spirit and end. The writing of divorcement is likewise also something more than the mere utterance or declaration of the husband; thou art dismissed, repudiated, as occurs among other Oriental nations. It is here treated especially in the interest of the ideality of marriage, see the Exegetical Notes. The law-giver, Knobel remarks, appears to have regarded divorce unfavorably (Deu 23:4), and therein to have agreed with the prophets, Mal 2:16. Israel is therein considered in its perfection, although the ordinance of Moses must imply the hardness of their hearts, as is truly the case (comp. Lange, Matthew 5 and Matthew 19). The negative character of the divine law has, in like manner as its pre supposition, what we are ever prone, to in our evil nature. Israel according to its nature separates the kind of his wives, but that he does so in opposition to the nature of true marriage, that appears manifoldly; and therewith the rays of the full divine truth and revelation break through the dark veil, under which the actual life of Israel is permitted provisional room and scope. Baumgarten.
7. As a militant church Israel must not however interfere with or prevent the inward peace and joy, Deu 24:5.
8. Generally in the last discourses of Moses love is presented clearly as the innermost spirit of the law (Baumgarten). A parallel: the last discourse of Jesus in the gospel by John.
9. How has the Mosaic law-giving obviated from the very first the violent measures which in Greece and Rome, from time to time, were found necessary to correct the hard and intolerable relations of the poor debtor!
10. When Moses, who so strongly, and before all things, urges purity and holiness of heart, does not hesitate to consider the somewhat hard treatment of an animal (Deu 25:4) in the midst of the most important laws, he stands at the divine central point of the world, from which straight lines lead to all creatures. (Baumgarten).
11. The Levirate marriage has indeed no connection with the general human needs and desires of immortality (Keil), although a similar custom is found among the Mongolians, Circassians, Druses, Abyssinians, and others. This necessity was not indeed distinctly felt by Israel, (hence the Sadduceean pretence, Mat 22:24 sq.), but it is truly from Abraham on entirely included in the promise, as Christ asserts, Matthew 22, and indeed the promise of this life, for the Word must become flesh. Thus the custom lying at the basis of the legal regulation is an old and honored one in the chosen family. Indeed the main line of the tribe of Judah, the peculiar line of promise, Mat 1:3 sq., springs from that forced or surreptitious marriage of Thamar (Genesis 38). Leyrer, Herz. Encycl., VIII. 358. Compare beside the Levirate marriage of Ruth. In Israel all is directed with reference to the name and the house, and not so much generally to a continuous life in posterity (Schultz). Hence beyond the law, and even those more distant than the brother are allowed to act. The Goel appears as the husbands brother, Ruth 4. Hence even against the law (Lev 18:16), incest [Blutschande] is blood-honor; love as the fulfilling of the law. [It should be rather, that in this case and for the ends in view, to preserve the name, the house, the ordinary rules as to inter-marriage were set aside. Such a marriage was not incest.A. G.].
12. For Amalek comp. Doct. and Eth. upon i. 6 sq. 6. What was said as to Israel at home, closes significantly with a recollection of the Edomite Amalek; for thus it is said that a mans enemies will be those of his own house, and that Israel as the people of Jehovah must remain in the camp. Israels perfection is not merely secured through the promise in the future, but in the way of duty made dependent upon its development in obedience.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Deu 23:15-16. The letter of Paul to Philemon. Deu 23:18. Luther: Thus all gains by sin are unacceptable to God; He will be honored with reverence. Berl. Bib.: Even everything devoted in some measure to the Lord, on account of currish quarrels and bitterness among each other is also an abomination to the Lord. Deu 23:19-20. Osiander: If we decline a gain to please God He will in turn restore it to us in another place and way. Deu 23:21-23. God loves a free-will service. Promises create obligation, and our acts should correspond with our words. Deu 23:24-25. Wurth. Bib.: God gives the blessing upon our fields not for ourselves alone, but for our neighbors also. Berl. Bib.: See the community of goods! It is all yours. But if thou takest for thyself unreasonably, with a false freedom, it applies not to thee.
Deu 24:1. Berl. Bib.: The tying together of Samsons foxes sets all in a flame. Wurth. Bib.: God often suffers that to happen in which He has no pleasure, in order to avoid greater evil and distress, Mat 13:30. Berl. Bib.: Christ wills that among believers, whose disposition is not so harsh, there should be obedience to the first institution, that all opposition should be obviated by love and reasonable endurance, all crosses and sickness should be patiently borne, and the marriage state preserved in faithfulness to the end of life. Schultz: Lycurgus, Solon, and Numa, permit according to Plutarch a change of wives. Comp. Isa 1:1. God receives back again, Jer 3:1. [Wordsworth: Here was Gods love made manifest. He invites the people generally of spiritual adultery to return to him.A. G.]. Deu 24:5. Osiander: Woe to those who forbid to marry, 1Ti 4:3. Berl. Bib.: God spares young Christians heavy tests, and gives them some sweet foretastes of knowledge and consolation. Deu 24:7. Starke: Judas took his own life, Act 1:18. Berl. Bib.: The slave trade. Osiander: We should learn prudence from the loss of others, rather than by our own misfortune. Berl. Bib.: That the whole lump may not be leavened. 1Co 5:2; 1Co 5:6; 1Co 5:13. [Wordsworth: Deu 24:13. He who injures the poor does violence to God.A. G.]. Deu 24:15. Baumgarten: Thus was the master put in the place of his laborers. But such feeling is possible only through love, which alone knows how to feel for others, to feel as they feel. Comp. Jam 5:4. Osiander: He is a thief in the sight of God. Deu 24:16. Baumgarten: If only strict righteousness rules then no child of Adam can hope for salvation or life; thus this iron link of the natural connection must be broken, which occurs only through divine grace. (Jer 31:29-30; Eze 18:20). Deu 24:17 sq. Strangers, fatherless, widows; these three classes are here four times recommended. Deu 24:19. The forgotten sheaf the sheaf of the Lord. In this point they should not have a good remembrance, but a good conscience. Osiander: Pious generosity brings no loss. Deu 24:22. Lange: God reveals the grounds of His will, to convince us so much more fully of its reasonableness; thus man should not require a blind obedience.
Deu 25:1. Richter: An image of the righteousness of God, 1Ki 8:32. Berl. Bib.: The judicial office, a characteristic of God, is often made to be a characteristic of the devil. Starke: One may thus come before the judgment with a good conscience in case of need. Deu 25:2, Herxheimer: Every one was equal before the law in Israel. Schultz: This punishment fails in the modern idea of dignity, but not with respect to the knowledge of that worth or dignity, even in the body, grounded in the inward relation to Jehovah. The divine law requires that when a man has put off his own worth the delusive appearance of it shall be taken away also. Corporeal punishment, because of the moral earnestness and sense of truth. Deu 25:3. The offender still a man. Schultz: The guilt of the individual should bring to mind the guilt of all. The number forty characterizes the humiliation, the temptation, and the wandering as ordained by divine power. Comp. Gen 7:12; the forty years in the wilderness; Deu 9:9; Deu 9:18; Lev 12:1 sq.; Jon 3:4; Eze 4:6; 1Ki 19:8; Mat 4:2. Comp. Bahr II. 490. Deu 25:5 sq. Baumgarten: In the duty of mutual love and aid, the external communion first reaches its real truth and significance. The levirate marriage has ceased among the Jews. Wurtb. Bib.: Blood relatives should truly receive the widows and fatherless left behind, and aid them in word and deed. Deu 25:9-10. Berl. Bib.: Each family should be preserved by this law, that we may better recognize the Messiah, who should be born from the entirely humbled or sunken family of David. Deu 25:11 sq. Starke: Every immodest touch is sin. Deu 25:13 sq. Schultz: The most customary and daily transactions are the most important; where there is the most sin there will be the most sighs. Mammon is always a mammon of unrighteousness. [It is noteworthy that John the Baptist puts the like duties in the fore-front of his preaching, Luk 3:12 sq.; and that the prophets, Eze 45:10-12; Amo 8:8; Mic 6:10-11, and the Psalms, insist upon these duties; Bib. Com.A. G.]. Richter: 1 Thess. Deu 4:6. The curse of God is the righteous penalty for such secret sins. Israel must have just balances as God in His sanctuary. Berl. Bib.: Not two kinds of words in thy mouth. Baumgarten: These manifold directions of love and indulgence, end in this sharp point, that love and indulgence may never blunt in Israel the sense for the opposition to all evil. Schultz: As the development of the world cannot end but in the dualism of heaven and hell, so neither the development of the law, without this dualism of love and hatred.
Footnotes:
[5][Deu 23:15. Literally: Thou shalt not shut.A. G.].
[6][Deu 23:17. Margin: Sodomites. Literally: sanctified, or a holy one. Words expressive of consecration were applied by the heathen to designate those sunken in peculiar sins.A. G.].
[7][Deu 23:19. The Hebrew word is expressive from the root, to bite, as if any interest was biting or oppressive.A. G.].
[8][Deu 24:1. Literally: and he shall give unto her a roll, writing, of cutting off. The accents in the original do not justify the colon in this verse; and the construction requires that the periods at the end of Deu 23:1-2 should be removed. A. G.].
[9][Deu 24:5. Margin: more literally: not any thing shall paes upon him.A. G.].
[10][Deu 24:6. Hebrew: the chariot or rider.A. G.].
[11][Deu 24:10. Margin: lend the loan of anything.A. G.].
[12][Deu 24:10. To pledge his pledge. Schroeder: that he may pledge his pledge.A. G.].
[13][Deu 24:20. Margin: Thou shalt not bough it after thee.A. G.].
[14][Deu 25:5. The margin: next kinsman is not so literal as the text. It is rather an interpretation than a reading.A. G.].
[15][Deu 25:7. The text is to be preferred to the margin.A. G.].
[16][Deu 25:15. Literally: a full stone and righteousness shall be to thee, a fall ephah and righteousness shall be to thee. So Schroeder.A. G.].
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
The Chapter before us is a continuation of certain laws, appointed to be observed in certain cases. Here are directions concerning divorces; of the permission, for the newly married to refrain from war; concerning pledges; men-stealers; leprosy; hire of wages; of justice, and of charity.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Our blessed LORD’S comment upon this law throws a full light upon the subject of divorces in general. The permission of such acts, carries with it the evidence of the hardness of the human heart. Mat 19:8 . But what a precious thought is it to the true believer in JESUS, that his union with him admits of no divorce. No, not even our backsliding, for he saith himself, I have betrothed thee to me forever. And though thou hast played the harlot with many lovers, yet return again unto me, saith the LORD, Jer 3:1 ; Hos 2:19 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
(See the Deuteronomy Book Comments for Introductory content and Homiletic suggestions).
XIII
SECOND GREAT ORATION, PART 2
Deuteronomy 12-26
This section is on the second part of the second great oration of Moses, as embodied in Deuteronomy 12-26 inclusive, of the book of Deuteronomy. If you have carefully read all this section, it will be easier for me to emphasize in the brief limits of this chapter the most salient points and easier for you to grasp and retain them. By the grouping of correlated matters under specific heads, the important distinction between many statutes and the constitutional principle from which they are logically derived will become manifest. A constitution is a relatively brief document of great principles, but legislative enactments developing and enlarging them become a library, which continually enlarges, as new conditions require new statement and application.
Yet again you must note that while one discussion arranges in order many statutes, it necessarily leaves out much of the homiletical value of each special statute. Each one of them may be made a text for a profitable sermon. Indeed these fifteen chapters constitute a gold mine of texts for the attentive preacher.
First of all, it should be noted that Moses is speaking here to the whole people as a national unit and concerning the future national life in the Promised Land which they are about to occupy. He carefully puts before them the national ideal of a people belonging to Jehovah separated from other nations and devoted to a special mission. Because addressing the whole people he recalls the history and law in Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers much more particularly than the special legislation of Leviticus relating mainly to the official duties of a single tribe.
Secondly, when he touches the tribe of Levi in Deuteronomy, it is as a part of the nation rather than about their specific duties as priests and Levites. On this account Deuteronomy is called the people’s code and Leviticus the priest’s code. This fact will help us much to understand tithing in Deuteronomy when compared with tithing in the preceding books. Note carefully this point.
While it is difficult to classify satisfactorily such a multitude of topics and laws, we may profitably group the whole section under the following heads:
I. Unity in the Place of National Worship, Deu 12:5
In their pilgrimage history the cloud and the ark, shifting from place to place according to the exigency of travel, designated day by day the central place of worship. But the people are here admonished that when they conquer the land and become a settled people, God himself will designate one fixed locality as the center of national unity and one permanent place of national worship. In Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and I Samuel, when we get to those books, we shall find only a temporary central place, and occasionally, more than one at the same time, the land not yet all conquered, the people not yet all settled, but in David’s time everything prescribed about the central place of worship is fulfilled, Jerusalem is the place thenceforward throughout their history until Jesus, that prophet like unto Moses, comes and says to the woman of Samaria, “Believe me, the hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father. Ye worship that which ye know not; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and Truth.”
To this place, that is, the central place of worship, three times a year must the tribes come in national assembly to keep the great festivals of the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles, and as a nation they must observe the great day of atonement. In this connection observe particularly that the tithing in Deuteronomy, to which we have before referred, is not the first tithe of the other books, which was the Lord’s inheritance and devoted to the general support of the great festivals, in which indeed the Levites share as a part of the people. Hence the Levites’ share of this tithe does not correspond to their title to the whole of the first tithe, and hence the third year’s provision in Deuteronomy for the poor is unlike any provision of the first tithe. If you have that point fixed in your minds, you are able to answer one of the gravest objections ever brought against Deuteronomy, that is, that it contradicts, on the question of tithes, what had been previously said in other books.
The marvelous effect of this one fixed place of national worship, and of these great festivals, on national unity, on the preservation of a pure worship, appears in all their subsequent history and becomes the theme of psalm, song, and elegy. When we get over into the Psalms and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, we will see backward references to this central place of worship. It is in the light of this law that we discover the sin in the later migration of the Danites and their setting up a new place of worship (Jdg 18 , particularly verses Jdg 18:27-31 ); the sin of Jeroboam (1Ki 12:26-33 ); the sin of the Samaritans later, and the sin of a temple in Egypt. That is the first thought, the unity in national worship. For an account of the Samaritan Temple see Josephus, “Antiquities,” Book XI, chapter 8, and for the Egyptian Temple see “Antiquities,” Book XIII, chapter 3.
2. Unity in the Object of Worship
The second thought in this oration is unity in the object of worship, the exclusive worship of Jehovah. Under this head the section prescribes the death penalty on the following:
(1) The false prophet, who however attested by signs and wonders, shall seek to divert the people to the worship of some other god.
(2) Any member of a family, however near and dear the tie of kindred, who sought to induce the rest of the family to turn away from the worship of Jehovah to worship another god, that member of the family had to die.
(3) Any city that turned aside as a municipality to other worship, that city must be placed under the ban and blotted out. If you have been much of a student of classic literature, you must have noticed how each city stresses the worship of some particular patron divinity, as Minerva at Athens, Diana in the City of Ephesus and Venus at Corinth. Now, this law teaches that any city, in its municipal life, turning aside from the worship of Jehovah to worship a false god for local advantage shall be blotted off the face of the map. The underlying principle here is of immense importance in our times. Cities are tempted continually to sacrifice the paramount spiritual and moral interests of the community in order to promote material interests. So in their annual fairs which bring local advantage in commercial affairs, they lose sight of God and handicap what is commendable in these enterprises by overloading them with poisonous and corrupting attachments, and count any man an enemy to his home place, however much he may approve the good, if he protest against the bad. See the striking examples and illustrations in the cases at Philippi and Ephesus (Act 16:19 ).
(4) To show more emphatically that Jehovah alone is God and must be worshiped, the death penalty was assessed on any necromancer, soothsayer or wizard who sought by illicit ways to understand and interpret the future. To Jehovah alone must the people come to know secret things. What he chose to reveal was for them and their children. What he withheld must remain hidden. All prurient curiosity into Jehovah’s domain of revelation must be rebuked; all seeking unto the dead, all fortunetelling and divinations were mortal sins and punishable by death in every case.
(5) All persons guilty of crimes against nature; the nature of the subject forbids me to specify. They were such outrageous violations of the dignity of man made in God’s image, and indicated such disregard for Jehovah that capital punishment alone would meet the requirements of the case.
(6) Every breaker of the covenant must be put to death. If any had knowledge that another had violated the covenant, it became his duty to investigate the case and bring the attention of the magistrates to it. There is a reference to that in the letter to the Hebrews, where it is said, “He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God [offense against the Father], and hath counted the blood of the everlasting covenant an unholy thing [sin against the Son], and hath done despite unto the Spirit of Grace [sin against the Holy Spirit, and an unpardonable sin]?” (Heb 10:28-29 ).
(7) To impress still more this thought of the exclusive worship of Jehovah: There must be no borrowing from other religions in bewailing the dead; Jehovah’s law alone was the one exclusive standard. The custom of cutting themselves, and disfiguring themselves in the days of their mourning as practiced in other religions, finds here a positive prohibition. I stop to say, Oh, what a pity that so soon after apostolic times, in the great apostasy which Paul predicted and which took place in the Roman Catholic development, there was borrowing old robes of every religion in the world.
3. All Administrations of Law Subject to Jehovah
Whether ceremonial law, moral or civil and criminal law, all administration of law was subject to Jehovah. The government was a theocracy pure and simple, no matter whether it remained a republic or became a kingdom, as it did in the days of Saul, it was a theocracy, God was the only real King and governed all officers himself, whether executive, judicial, or religious.
(1) They were representatives of Jehovah and must first of all consider his honor, justice, and mercy. This fact determined the prescribed character and qualifications of every prince, ruler, elder, judge, sheriff and scribe. These officers must be God-fearing men, hating covetousness, impartial and fearing not the face of any man.
(2) They must in judging hear all evidence fairly.
(3) They must not convict except upon adequate testimony.
(4) It took two good witnesses to prove any point.
(5) They must justify the innocent and condemn the guilty without any regard for age, sex, social position, or financial position. Even and exact justice must be administered to all.
(6) Decision when given must be enforced speedily.
(7) If the case was too hard for them, they must appeal to Jehovah and no other for light. A provision was made by which Jehovah would give the right answer in every such case of appeal. What a pity we have not that kind of a supreme court!
(8) The conduct of all their wars must be under the laws prescribed by Jehovah. War must not be declared against any nation except upon his direction. Their later history furnishes many examples of referring the declaration of war to Jehovah, and it furnishes many examples of disaster befalling them when they went to war in their own wisdom and strength. The regulations touching war covered all material points, such as sanitary measures in camp, treatment of prisoners, conducting sieges, and sparing fruit trees when besieging a city. The boasted progress of modern civilization falls far short of the Mosaic code in ameliorating the sufferings and horrors of war. A great Federal general of the War Between the States well said, in view of his own practice in conducting it, “War is hell!”
(9) On account of this subordination to Jehovah, note the remarkable paragraph Deu 21:1-9 , touching civic responsibility in a case of murder where the offender is unknown. In my prohibition speech in the last prohibition contest in Waco, I used that paragraph as a principle upon which prohibition is based. If you will look at the passage in your Bible and mark it, you will notice that the case is this: A man is found murdered and it is not known who killed him; the nearest city thereto is determined by measurement and must purge itself of responsibility for the crime. The municipal officers in that city must come in the presence of that dead body, hold up their hands before God and swear that they are innocent of the blood.
In my speech I recalled the case of the County Attorney of Tarrant County who was shot down on the streets of Fort Worth, his murderer also being killed; nobody could be held directly responsible for the murder. I said, “Suppose the mayor, the city council, and all the other city officers had been required to place their hands on that dead body and swear that no negligence on their part was resposnible for that murder. They could not have taken the oath. Every one would have been convicted, because they were responsible for the conditions that not only made that particular murder possible, but made murder in some cases certain.”
(10) The numerous statutes concerning charities, mercy, and humanity constrain the people to imitate Jehovah himself in dealing with the poor and with the unfortunate. Indeed some of the most beautiful and pathetic of these laws relating to treatment of the lower creatures embody principles capable of application in a wider range of higher things. They reprobate all cruelty and the infliction of all unnecessary suffering as hateful to Jehovah, for example: “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn”; and “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.”
Once in Waco a young man whom I had known when he was a little fellow came to me bringing a letter purporting to be from his father, commending this young man to me and asking me to help him in any way I could. When he next came and asked me to endorse a paper for thirty dollars, I endorsed it. When it matured, I had to pay it. I wrote to the father about it and he replied that his son had forged that letter, and that is was only one case out of many. That son had broken him up. The boy was arrested on a similar case at Corsicana and sent to the penitentiary. When it was suggested that I testify against him, I would not, because of this scripture, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.” The only way I could help to convict that boy would be to submit his father’s testimony to prove that he was a forger.
(11) In like manner all laws regulating business, such as weights and measures. Once I called upon a man whose name I will not give, and asked him why, when he bought goods, he weighed on one scale and when he sold goods he sold by another. He said. “They are all right.” I said, “No, sir, you have loaded the one you sell by and whoever buys from you does not get full weight.” All laws touching business, such as weights and measures, the restraints on exacting pledges for debt, the withholding of wages for day laborers which they have fairly earned, the limitations on usury and the like are but expressions of divine mercy and justice and tended to build up an honest and righteous people, not forgetful of mercy.
(12) The social laws concerning marriage, slavery, parental power over children, while far from the highest expression of God’s will, do yet in every particular prohibit many current evils freely practiced in other nations. Our Lord himself explains that on account of their hardness of heart and low order of development imperfect laws were suffered. “The people but recently were a nation of slaves, with much more of the slave spirit remaining. It cannot be denied that even the civil and criminal codes on these points were far superior to the codes of other nations. The sanctity of human life, the sanctity of the home, and the sanctity of the family are marvelously safeguarded in these laws. And wherever this code touched an evil custom, it never approved the evil but limited the power and scope of the evil, as far as the unprepared people were able to bear it.
(13) Restrictions on entering the covenant, Deu 23:1-7 , constitute a paragraph very few people understand. This applied to proselytes from other nations. The body politic must not be corrupted by alien additions that could not be easily assimilated. On that line our own nation is gravely troubled by loose naturalization laws that permit the scum and offscourings of other nations to be absorbed into our national life and so fearfully endanger the perpetuity of free institutions and make our great cities cesspools of iniquity. An orator once prayed, “O that an ocean of fire rolled between us and Europe!” The Pacific Slope seems also praying ,”O that an ocean of fire rolled between us and the Orient!”
(14) The governing Jehovah idea appears in an emphatic way in the paragraph Deu 24:1-11 , where by an offering of a basket of firstfruits the Israelite must confess Jehovah’s absolute ownership over his products and his own unworthy derivation. The oration concludes with his general result: “Thou hast avouched Jehovah this day to be thy God, and that thou wouldest walk in his ways and keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his ordinances, and hearken unto his voice: and Jehovah hath avouched thee this day to be a people for his own possession, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments, etc.”
QUESTIONS
1. What the importance of grouping correlated matters under specific needs and what is a constitution?
2. What the homiletic value of these fifteen chapters?
3. What two things especially noted concerning the second part of Oration Two?
4. Under what three heads does the author group all the material of these fifteen chapters?
5. Under the first head, when was the central place of worship to be established; when, where and by whom actually established; how long continued?
6. How often and at what festivals must the nation assemble at this central place of worship?
7. What bearing has this fact on the tithing question of Deuteronomy?
8. What the marvelous effects of this one fixed place of national worship?
9. Give examples of the violation of this law, and what their particular sin?
10. Under the second head, what cases of violation called for capital punishment?
11. What underlying principle governing the cities is of great importance in our times? Illustrate.
12. What reference to the covenant breaker in the New Testament, and what the threefold sin therein described?
13. Which of these prohibitions are Romanists most guilty of violating?
14. Under the third head (1) What must be the qualifications of all officers? (2) What their several duties? (3) If the case was too hard for them what were they to do? What the provision for Jehovah’s answer? (4) What prescriptions concerning war? (5) How determine civic responsibility in the case of murder where the murderer was unknown? Present day application and illustrate. (6) What laws relating to the poor and to lower animals? (7) What laws regulating business? (8) What social laws? (9) What the restrictions on entering the covenant and the present day application? (10) How does the governing Jehovah idea appear emphatically
15. How does the oration conclude?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Deu 24:1 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give [it] in her hand, and send her out of his house.
Ver. 1. Because he hath found some uncleanness. ] He is displeased with some defect which he hath found either in her body or behaviour: as our Henry VIII pretended at least to do in his Anne of Cleve, sister to William, duke of Cleve, whose other sister Frederick, duke of Saxony, Luther’s patron and protector, had espoused. This lady being sent into England, against Frederick’s liking, and married to King Henry, seemed nothing pleasing in his eye, and was therefore ( sed quo iure?) soon after divorced. This Stephen Gardiner thought a fit subject for him to work upon against the Lord Cromwell, who had made the match, and now opposed the divorce, and was therefore put to death, which he suffered right Christianly and cheerfully. a
Let him write her a bill of divorcement.
a Speed’s Hist, fol. 1042.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Deu 24:1-4
1When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house, 2and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, 4then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance.
Deu 24:1-4 when. . .then This construction is a Qal PERFECT (BDB 224, KB 243) of come to pass with the hypothetical PARTICLE (BDB 49). This hypothetical situation is continued for the first three verses. Deu 24:1-4 are one sentence with the conclusion stated in Deu 24:4. Notice that this is not a general discussion on divorce, but a special case of divorce, remarriage, and divorce/death and remarriage to the original partner. It is difficult to draw too many universal truths from this context. Even Jesus discussion about this passage and the issue of divorce is colored by the religious leaders’ attempts to trap Him in controversy for the purpose of reducing His support among the people and to find legal/theological grounds to charge Him. Divorce has never been the best option!
she finds no favor in his eyes This common VERB (BDB 592, KB 619) is used twice in this verse (first, Qal IMPERFECT and the second Qal PERFECT). It is used in the sense of to recognize an existing condition (cf. Deu 22:14; Deu 22:17).
The term favor (BDB 336) is used of both God’s favor (e.g., Gen 6:8; Exo 33:17) and mankind’s (e.g., Gen 30:27; Gen 33:8; Gen 33:10; Gen 33:15; Rth 2:2; Rth 2:10; Rth 2:13). It means a favorable acceptance or attitude of responsiveness. Here it is negated. It recognized the fallen condition of human love, which is sometimes fickle and fleeting.
This text has been a source of great controversy among the rabbis. Shammai (the conservative group of rabbis) said it only referred to adultery, while Hillel (the liberal group of rabbis) said it could refer to anything, even trivial things (i.e., bad food, bad in-law relations, found a prettier woman). In Israel only the husband had the legal right of divorce.
NASBsome indecency
NKJVsome uncleanness
NRSVsomething objectionable
TEVsomething about her that he doesn’t like
NJBsome impropriety
JPSOAsomething obnoxious
Literally this is the nakedness of a thing (BDB 788). In Deu 23:14 the same term is used in a non-moral sense. This cannot refer to proven adultery because the automatic penalty was death (cf. Deu 22:22). Jesus, when quoting this text, seems to interpret it by the phrase fornication in Mat 19:9, which was a Greek term (porneia) that involved any sexual impropriety or unfaithfulness. The term is meant to be ambiguous and, thereby covers the widest possible circumstances.
Moses wrote this text to protect the rejected, vulnerable wife. It is shocking to me that Jesus asserts that this legal protection of divorce and remarriage was never God’s intention (cf. Mat 5:27-32; Mat 19:7-12; Mar 10:2-12; Luk 16:14-18), but Moses’ idea because of the hardness of the hearts of the Israelites. How many other things recorded in the Pentateuch are not the intended will of God? Jesus, as Lord of Scripture, showed His authority by correcting both OT texts and their interpretation (cf. Mat 5:17-48; Mar 7:1-23). This is distressing to us modern evangelicals who put such an emphasis on the Bible as the word of God (and it surely is!), but we must remember that Jesus is the Living Word and we only have a fraction of all the things He did and said (cf. Joh 20:30). The Bible is primarily designed to first give us salvation (cf. Joh 20:31; 2Ti 3:15) and then to guide us in living the Christian life (cf. 2Ti 3:16-17). We have all the information that we need to be saved and live a life pleasing to God. We do not need additional rules and laws. The texts we have and the indwelling Spirit guide us from the texts we have into the areas of uncertainty. I am reminded that Jesus commented that all Scriptural teaching on how to live for God is summed up in only two priority statements (cf. Mat 22:34-40; Mar 12:28-34; Luk 10:25-28):
1. Deu 6:4-5 – love God completely
2. Lev 19:18 – love your neighbor as yourself
certificate of divorce This was a legal document of separation. It may have involved giving back the dowry. This later required an involved legal procedure which hopefully gave time for the partners to reconcile, but here it seems to be written by the husband or his representative (i.e., a Levite).
Divorce and remarriage are also discussed in relation to priests in Lev 21:7; Lev 21:14; Lev 22:13. It must have been common (cf. Num 30:9).
Deu 24:2 becomes another man’s wife The right of remarriage was assumed and stated. This was the very purpose of the procedure.
Deu 24:3 if the latter husband turns against her The word if is not in the Hebrew MSS. It is assuming another hypothetical situation (like Deu 24:1).
The VERB turns against is literally hates (BDB 971, KB 1338, Qal PERFECT) and was used in Aramaic for divorce.
if the latter husband dies This is another possible scenario.
Deu 24:4 her former husband. . .is not allowed to take her again to be his wife The original couple are encouraged to reconcile (legal procedure of the bill of divorcement), but once separated and the wife remarries, reconciliation is forbidden! This is the purpose of all of the conditions found in Deu 24:1-3. This may have been a way to protect the second marriage.
she has been defiled The defilement seems to be related to knowing two different men sexually, which would make the original husband taking her again a type of adultery!
The ambiguity of the wording of the paragraph makes it difficult to pronounce universal spiritual principles. This is not a context on the evil of divorce and remarriage, but on the first husband taking his divorced wife again after a second marriage. Divorce and remarriage were common and not condemned in the ancient Near East.
The IVP Bible Background Commentary has an interesting comment:
The very unusual form of the Hebrew verb used in Deu 24:4 makes it clear that the woman in this case is the victim, not the guilty party. She has been forced to declare her uncleanness by the uncharitable actions of the first husband, and the second marriage demonstrates that another husband has been capable of accommodating whatever ‘impurity’ she was plagued with. The prohibition is aimed at preventing the first husband from marrying the woman again (in which case he might be able to realize some financial gain), whereas if the woman were impure the prohibition would be against her and would preclude a marriage relationship with anyone (p. 198).
you shall not bring sin on the land God desires strong, godly marriages and families. They provide strength, stability, and education for the next generation of covenant people. Marriage is modeled more than taught! Divorce is not the sin, but the first husband taking back his wife after another husband!
Two Prophets use this passage metaphorically to describe God’s dealing with Israel’s faithlessness (Isa 50:1; Jer 3:1; Jer 3:8). Going after other gods was considered spiritual adultery.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
man. Hebrew ‘ish. App-14. Compare Mat 5:31; Mat 19:7, Mat 19:8.
write. See note on Exo 17:14 and App-47. Compare Mat 5:31.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 24
Now,
When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she finds no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in unto her hand, and send her out of his house ( Deu 24:1 ).
So the law of divorce.
Now what does constitute an uncleanness? A man marries a woman and finds an uncleanness. There are some who say “Well, he discovers that she is not a virgin”. No, that’s not it because that has already been dealt with in the previous laws. If he says she is not a virgin and they can’t prove her virginity she is to be put to death. So it isn’t that he marries her and then finds out the uncleanness, that she is not a virgin. That isn’t it and that was the big argument among the Jews, what constituted uncleanness.
And one school of the rabbis said, “Well, if she wasn’t a virgin”. Well that could not be so because God has already dealt with that under other laws. So it left open what constituted uncleanness and that is an open issue.
Now surely they became extremely liberal in their interpretation of it. One school of the rabbis, they taught that if she doesn’t fix your eggs to suit you for breakfast, that’s uncleanness: you can give her a writing of divorcement. And of course in those days divorces were quite easy. All you do is write out “I divorce you” and you hand it to her and she’s had it.
Now Jesus was challenged on this very issue. And really the challenge was “what constitutes uncleanness?” They came to Jesus one day with a trap question, and it was a definite trap question. They said to Jesus, “Can a man put away his wife for any cause?” Now here in the Mosaic Law if he find an uncleanness in her he can give her a bill of divorcement. Now they knew that Jesus was teaching a more strict code. So they came to Him with this trick, trap question, “Can a man put away his wife for any cause?” Jesus said, “If a man puts away his wife and marries another except it be for fornication, he causes her to commit adultery and whoso marries her commits adultery.”
Aha. He’s fallen right into their trap. That’s just what they were hoping He would answer. So they came right back to Him, and said, “How is it then that Moses said let him give her a writing of a bill of divorcement”? They figured they had trapped Him. We’ve got you now because it is acknowledged that God gave the law to Moses. No challenge: no question about that. It was a well-established fact that the law came by God to Moses. So Jesus is actually now in conflict with what God declared. For God said unto Moses, “Let him give her a writing of a bill of divorcement” and the law of divorce was established by God through Moses, and it’s there in their law. And for Jesus to come down in such a strict way puts Him now at variance against God, exactly what they were hoping He would do. But Jesus went on to say, “In the beginning it was not so.”
Now the law was added later on; the law came many years later. “In the beginning,” God now goes back to Adam and Eve. Jesus now goes back to God’s perfect initial plan for family relationships or husband and wife relationships. It was originally God’s divine intent, that you have a once for life marriage relationship. “In the beginning God made them male and female and for this cause a man shall leave his mother and father and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Therefore that which God has joined together, let no man put asunder”. And that is God’s divine ideal for every couple. But Jesus said, “because of the hardness of your hearts Moses said let him give her a writing of a bill of divorcement”.
Now, Jesus is not going back to the law. He’s going back to before the law. He’s going back to God’s divine intent for man, for husband and wife relationships. But because man’s heart is hard and he can not come up to God’s divine ordinance and will, God then under the law gave the law of divorce that a man finding an uncleanness in his wife could put her away.
Now, I believe that some marriages are a mistake from the beginning. They should never have been. Young people so often getting married have a totally wrong concept of marriage. I’m tired of living at home. I don’t want to take orders from my parents anymore. I’m going to escape. I’m going to get married. I want my freedom. And you say, “When are you going to get married?” “Oh, we’re getting married the first.” “The first what?” “The first chance I get.” You know, they’re just out to get married. So that many times they do not use good sense or good judgment in their choice of a marriage partner. Because he was good-looking and he was a tackle on the football team, and played first string and all, oh, you know, I’m in love. But the guy is as mean and rough at home as he is out on the football field. He has no love, no care, no tenderness; the marriage was a mistake from the beginning. He uses his wife as a punching bag. He gets rid of all his aggressions on her. And the poor little thing is beat up, terrified.
Now does God say, “Well, young lady, you made a mistake, you made your bed, you live in it. You’re just going to have to settle down with the fact you are going to be his punching bag and you’re going to live the rest of your life in terror of this brute”. I don’t believe so. I don’t believe that God requires that. I don’t believe that God ever intended that marriage be a terrorized paranoia where you live in constant terror. I don’t think that was God’s intention for marriage, ever.
In fact God said to the husbands, “Love your wives as God loves the church and gave Himself for it”. But there are some people whose hearts are hardened against God’s divine ideal. Whose hearts are hardened against God, thus they make very poor marriage partners. And God, knowing that people could not achieve, that is all people could not achieve His divine ideal, then created the alternate out by the law of divorcement that He gave to Moses. But no, that isn’t God’s best for a person’s life; the best and first ideal that God gave to a person is one marriage for life. Now those who have made mistakes or can’t live with that, God has developed the alternate, then give her a writing of a bill of divorcement.
Now it is obvious that this would come early, “If he marries her and finds an uncleanness in her;” in other words, just as soon as you’re married, you realize, “hey this was a mistake” then you’re allowed to put her away with a bill of divorcement. Now, if then she were to go out and marry another man and the other man that she married in time would die, and you think, “Well, she wasn’t to bad, maybe I’ll take her back”. No, you can’t do that. You’ve already put her away once: thus you are not to take her back again as your wife. This would be an abomination unto the Lord.
And so interesting law of divorce that is here under the law that God did give in certain conditions. And Jesus declared, “the law was given for the hardness of the hearts of the people” because man could not come up to God’s divine ideal. How much better if we come up to God’s divine ideal, but if you can’t handle that then God has made the out through divorce.
Now when a man has taken a new wife, he doesn’t have to go to war, or charged with any business: for a whole year. He can just stay at home and cheer his wife ( Deu 24:5 ).
With some wives it wouldn’t be much cheer after a few months.
You’re not to take the upper millstone as a pledge ( Deu 24:6 ):
Now the reason why you weren’t to take a millstone as a pledge is because people, actually that was their livelihood. You used your millstone to grind your wheat and all. If you don’t have your millstone you’re out of bread, you know. So you weren’t allowed to take these as a pledge for a debt.
If a man was found stealing [or kidnapping] any of the children to make merchandise of them; he was to be put to death [kidnappers, capital punishment]; Then watch out for the plague of leprosy, let the priest follow Moses’ instructions on that. Remember what the Lord did to Miriam; [that is by her coming against Moses.] ( Deu 24:7-9 )
So, honor the leadership.
Then further laws concerning the pledges that you could take and the pledges you weren’t to take. You weren’t to take a man’s blanket as a pledge because if at night he got cold and he said, “Oh, God, I’m cold” and started praying to God, God would hold it against you because you had his blanket. So you’re in trouble with God because this guy is complaining to God and you’re the fault, you see. You don’t want to do any thing that would cause a fellow to complain to God about his situation, because then God comes to you for it.
And so if you hire a man, you are to pay him at the end of the day lest he is hungry and he complain to God. “Oh God he didn’t pay me today and I’m so hungry, Oh I’m hungry”. Then God comes to you because you’re the fault of this guy bothering God.
So you’re not to put the fathers to death for the sins of the children, and you’re not to put the children to death for the sins of the fathers: A man was to be put to death for his own sin. You’re not to pervert the judgment of a stranger, or the fatherless; or take a widow’s raiment as a pledge ( Deu 24:16-17 ):
God watches out for the stranger, for the fatherless, for the downcast, for the outcast, and so forth; God has a special tender care for them.
Now when you cut down the harvest in your field and if you remember, “Oh, I left a sheaf out in the field”, don’t go back and get it. Just leave that for the poor, they can come in behind you and get it.
When you go through and pick your olives, you only pick the olive tree once ( Deu 24:20 ):
Those olives that are still green and not ready to be picked you just leave them on the tree, so the poor people can come into your grove. They can pick the olives that you leave.
When you go through and pick the grapes in your vineyard, you’re to not pick them all ( Deu 24:21 ):
Leave the green ones, those that aren’t completely ripe, but you can’t go back and pick your vineyard the second time. You have one shot through to get your harvest; whatever is left you just leave it on the vines for the poor people. So, it was an excellent welfare program. The poor could always go out into the fields and gather up whatever was left in the fields.
Now I’ve noticed up here when they are harvesting the cabbage and all. Actually they leave as much in the field as what they pick, almost. How wonderful it would be if after they have gone through, rather than plowing under the cabbage, the poor people could just come in and help themselves to the cabbage, or the celery, or the lettuce, or these various fields that are planted up here; much better than plowing it under. It would be there and you just say, “All right. Just come in and help yourselves.” And the people would just come in and help themselves to it. That’s what they did in those days. You could shake your olive tree once, and whatever came down in that first shaking you could have but then you had to leave the rest of it and the poor could move in, and thus the poor could actually, you know, gather enough to actually get along themselves. And so it was an excellent welfare program for the poor. You shall leave it. You’re not to glean, for it will be for the stranger, the fatherless and the widow.
“
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
20. Concerning Divorce and Laws of Mercy
CHAPTER 24
1. Concerning divorce (Deu 24:1-5)
2. Concerning pledge and slavery (Deu 24:6-7)
3. Concerning leprosy (Deu 24:8-9)
4. Concerning the oppression of the poor (Deu 24:10-15)
5. Concerning injustice (Deu 24:16-18)
6. The stranger, the fatherless and the widow remembered (Deu 24:19-22)
Mat 19:1-9 must be studied with the words of Moses on divorce. The Pharisees asked the Lord why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? But they erred when they called Moses word a commandment. It was only something which Moses allowed. Adultery according to the law was punishable with death. He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away doth commit adultery.
No part of the handmill, the millstone, was to be taken as a pledge, for that would have deprived the person of the necessary instrument in the preparation of food. Manstealing was forbidden under penalty of death (Exo 21:16).
Merciful are the laws found in verses 10-15. If these laws were obeyed how many questions would be solved and how much injustice would be abolished. See also Jam 5:4. Mercy was to be shown to the poor in remembrance of their former condition in Egypt.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
hath taken: Deu 21:15, Deu 22:13, Exo 21:10
uncleanness: Heb. matter of nakedness
then let him: Deu 24:3, Jer 3:8, Mat 5:31, Mat 5:32, Mat 19:7-9, Mar 10:4-12
divorcement: Heb. cutting off, Isa 50:1
send her: Deu 22:19, Deu 22:29, Mal 2:16, Mat 1:19, Luk 16:18, 1Co 7:11, 1Co 7:12
Reciprocal: Lev 21:7 – put away Jer 3:1 – If a man Eze 44:22 – put away
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Deu 24:1. Some uncleanness Some hateful thing, some distemper of body, or quality of mind, not observed before marriage: or some light carriage, as this phrase commonly signifies, but not amounting to adultery. Let him write This is not a command, as some of the Jews understood it, nor an allowance and approbation, but merely a permission of that practice for prevention of greater mischiefs, and this only until the time of reformation, till the coming of the Messiah, when things were to return to their first institution and purest condition.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Deu 24:1. Some uncleanness; not adultery, but leprosy, secret infirmities, or insupportable wickedness. Moses, says our Saviour; because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. The magistrates executing the writing, would no doubt see the woman invested with all her property, or provided with a maintenance. With us a man may put away his wife for adultery, but he cannot marry another without leave from parliament. Among the Jews divorce was merely permitted, as the less of two evils. Mat 19:7. Mal 2:16.
Deu 24:5. One year, that he may form a family establishment. Then if he afterwards fell in war, he might leave a son to inherit his lot of land. Surely this law was just and humane.
Deu 24:6. Millstone. The Israelites, like our ancient Britons, used handmills, the construction of which is very simple. The stones are two feet diameter, and four inches thick, cut exactly like the great millstones. The frame on which the nether stone is placed consists of four posts, two of which are three feet high, and the other two are five feet high, with a bar across. The iron spindle resembles that of a razor grinders wheel, bended to admit the hand. If the use of these mills were revived, they would save a poor family from sixpense to a shilling per week.
Deu 24:7. If a man steal any of his brethren he shall die. Never was law more just. Are we not all brethren; have we not all one Father, even God?
Deu 24:13. Thou shalt deliver him his pledge. The ancient poor were ill clad, and poor indeed: they slept in their one dress, or were covered with it. What then shall we say of christian pawnbrokers; and what shall we think of our courts of conscience. What right have those shop traps, first to trust, and then to distress, the poor?
Deu 24:16. The fathers shall not die for their children. See Dan 6:24.
Deu 24:19. Forgot a sheaf. What is said above of pledges, justifies all the subsequent precepts of mercy.
REFLECTIONS.
If a man might not receive back a repudiated wife who had since married another man, how holy is the covenant of marriage! And if the parents are holy, the children are also holy, and heirs of life and salvation by the grace of the covenant. They who do not look to the Lord in their marriage, are ignorant of its nature and true glory.
The caution to do all as the priests and levites shall teach, in the ritual service, is enforced by the judgment inflicted on Miriam. There are no sins more resented of heaven than those committed against religion: and if God smote the sister of Moses with the uncleanness of leprosy, how can others expect to escape? Those who oppose the ministers of religion and the elders of the church, in the exercise of their delegated power and holy discipline, will bring upon themselves the discipline of Gods almighty hand.
Next follows a law of humanity to the poor. If a man pledged his upper garment in a morning to buy bread, and if any accident happened to him in the day, that he had no wages at night, his raiment must not be detained. When we aid the poor with a little kindness or loan, the surest way of being repaid is to take the Lords bond; then at farthest, we shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.
This law of kindness to the poor is next followed by an injunction to masters, not to oppress a servant, but to allow him an indulgent price for labour, that he may procure bread for his family; nor in any case of the like poverty to withhold at night the hire of the day. All crimes committed against the poor, the orphan and the widow, are considered as peculiarly committed against God, who has charged himself with their protection and defence.
The son not being allowed to suffer for the sins of the father, nor the father for the sins of the son, shows the protection which God afforded to the whole Hebrew nation. Justice must be administered according to law, and law must be founded on equity. The Egyptians, the Macedonians, and the Amorites were so cruel as to require these rigours. Though the last nation required the sacrifice of seven of Sauls sons; yet it is highly probable from Davids compliance, that they had been privy to the massacre of the Gibeonites, occasioned by their father. 2Ki 21:9; 2Ki 21:14. How gracious, how pure are thy precepts, oh Lord of Hosts! Write thy law of love deeply on my heart, that I may never depart from the rules of rectitude and truth.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Deuteronomy 22 – 25
The portion of our book on which we now enter, though not calling for elaborate exposition, yet teaches us two very important practical lessons In the first place, many of the institutions and ordinances here set forth prove and illustrate, in a most striking way, the terrible depravity of the human heart. They show us, with unmistakable distinctness, what man is capable of doing, if left to himself. We must ever remember, as we read some of the paragraphs of this section of Deuteronomy, that God the Holy Ghost has indicted them. We, in our fancied wisdom, may feel disposed to ask why such passages were ever penned? Can it be possible that they are actually inspired by the Holy Ghost? and of what possible value can they be to us? If they were written for our learning, then what are we to learn from them?
Our reply to all these questions is, at once, simple and direct; and it is this, the very passages which we might least expect to and on the page of inspiration teach us, in their own peculiar way, the moral material of which we are made, and the moral depths into which we are capable of plunging. And is not this of great moment? Is it not well to have a faithful mirror held up before our eyes in which we may see every moral trait, feature and lineament perfectly reflected? Unquestionably. We hear a great deal about the dignity of human nature, and very many find it exceedingly hard to admit that they are really capable of committing some of the sins prohibited in the section before us, and in other portions of the divine Volume. But we may rest assured that when God commands us not to commit this or that particular sin, we are verily capable of committing it. This is beyond all question. Divine wisdom would never erect a dam if there was not a current to be resisted. There would be no necessity to tell an angel not to steal; but man has theft in his nature, and hence the command applies to him. And just so in reference to every other prohibited thing; the prohibition proves the tendency – proves it beyond all question. We must either admit this or imply the positive blasphemy that God has spoken in vain.
But then it may be said; and is said by many, that while some very terrible samples of fallen humanity are capable of committing some of the abominable sins prohibited in scripture, yet all are not so. This is a most thorough mistake. Hear what the Holy Ghost says, in the seventeenth chapter of the prophet Jeremiah. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Whose heart is he speaking of? Is it the heart of some atrocious criminal, or of some untutored savage? Nay; it is the human heart, the heart of the writer and of the reader of these lines.
Hear also what our Lord Jesus Christ says on this subject. “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” Out of what heart? Is it the heart of some hideously depraved and abominable wretch wholly unfit to appear in decent society? Nay; it is out of the human heart the heart of the writer and of the reader of these lines.
Let us never forget this; it is a wholesome truth for every one of us. We all need to bear in mind that if God were to withdraw His sustaining grace, for one moment, there is no depth of iniquity into which we are not capable of plunging; indeed, we may add – and we do it with deep thankfulness it is His own gracious hand that preserves us, each moment, from becoming a complete wreck, in every way, physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, and in our circumstances. May we keep this ever in the remembrance of the thoughts of our hearts, so that we may walk humbly and watchfully, and lean upon that arm which alone can sustain and preserve us!
But, we have said, there is another valuable lesson furnished by this section of our book which now lies open before us. It teaches us, in a manner peculiar to itself, the marvellous way in which God provided for everything connected with His people. Nothing escaped His gracious notice; nothing was too trivial for His tender care. No mother could be more careful of the habits and manners of her little child, than the Almighty Creator and moral Governor of the universe was of the most minute details connected with the daily history of His people. By day and by night, waking and sleeping at home and abroad, He looked after them. Their clothing, their food, their manners and ways toward one another, how they were to build their houses, how they were to plough and sow their ground, how they were to carry themselves in the deepest privacy of their personal life – all was attended to and provided for in a manner that fills us with wonder, love and praise. We may here see, in a most striking way, that there is nothing too small for our God to take notice of when His people are concerned. He takes a loving, tender, fatherly interest in their most minute concerns. We are amazed to find the Most High God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the Sustainer of the vast universe, condescending to legislate about the matter of a bird’s nest; and yet why should we be amazed when we know that it is just the same to Him to provide for a sparrow as to feed a thousand millions of people daily?
But there was one grand fact which was ever to be kept prominently before each member of the congregation of Israel, namely, the divine presence in their midst. This fact was to govern their most private habits, and give character to all their ways. “The Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up, thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy; that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.” (Deut. 23: 14.)
What a precious privilege to have Jehovah walking in their midst! What a motive for purity of conduct, and refined delicacy in their persons and domestic habits! If He was in their midst to secure victory over their enemies, He was also there to demand holiness of life. They were never, for one moment, to forget the august Person who walked up and down in their midst. Would the thought of this be irksome to any? Only to such as did not love holiness, purity and moral order. Every true Israelite would delight in the thought of having One dwelling in their midst who could not endure ought that was unholy, unseemly or impure.
The Christian reader will be at no loss to seize the moral force and application of this holy principle. It is our privilege to have God the Spirit dwelling in us, individually and collectively. Thus we read, in 1 Corinthians 6: 19, “What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” This is individual. Each believer is a temple of the Holy Ghost, and this most glorious and precious truth is the ground of the exhortation given in Ephesians 4: 30, “Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.”
How very important to keep this ever in the remembrance of the thoughts of our hearts! What a mighty moral motive for the diligent cultivation of purity of heart, and holiness of life! When tempted to indulge in any wrong current of thought or feeling, any unworthy manner of speech, any unseemly line of conduct, what a powerful corrective would be found in the realisation of the blessed fact that the Holy Spirit dwells in our body as in His temple! If only we could keep this ever before us it would preserve us from many a wandering thought, many an unguarded and foolish utterance, many an unbecoming act.
But, not only does the Holy Spirit dwell in each individual believer, He also dwells in the church collectively. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3: 16.) It is upon this fact that the apostle grounds his exhortation in 1 Thess 5: 19 “Quench not the Spirit.” How divinely perfect is scripture! How blessedly it hangs together! The Holy Ghost dwells in us individually; hence we are not to grieve Him. He dwells in the assembly, hence we are not to quench Him, but give Him His right place, and allow full scope for His blessed operations. May these great practical truths find a deep place in our hearts, and exerts more powerful influence over our ways both in private life and in the public assembly!
We shall now proceed to quote a few passages from the section of our book which now lies open before us strikingly illustrative of the wisdom, goodness, tenderness, holiness and righteousness which marked all the dealings of God with His people of old. Take, for example, the very opening paragraph. “Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them; thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother. And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again. In like manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his raiment; and with all lost thing of thy brother’s, which he hath lost, and thou hast found shalt thou do likewise; thou mayest not hide thyself. Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them; thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again” (Deut. 22: 1-4)
Here the two lessons of which we have spoken are, very distinctly, presented. What a deeply humbling picture of the human heart have we in that one sentence, “Thou mayest not hide thyself!” We are capable of the base and detestable selfishness of hiding ourselves from our brother’s claims upon our sympathy and succour – of shirking the holy duty of looking after his interests – of pretending not to see his real need of our aid. Such is man! Such is the writer!
But oh! how blessedly the character of our God shines out in this passage! The brother’s ox, or his sheep, or his ass was not – to use a modern phrase – to be thrust into pound, for trespass; it was to be brought home, cared for, and restored, safe and sound, to the owner without charge for damage. And so with the raiment. How lovely is all this! How it breathes upon us the very air of the divine presence, the fragrant atmosphere of divine goodness, tenderness and thoughtful love! What a high and holy privilege for any people to have their conduct governed and their character formed by such exquisite statutes and judgements!
Again, take the following passage so beautifully illustrative of divine thoughtfulness: “When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.” The Lord would have His people thoughtful and considerate of others; and hence, in building their houses, they were not merely to think of themselves, and their convenience, but also of others and their safety.
Cannot Christians learn something from this? How prone we are to think only of ourselves, our own interests, our own comfort and convenience! How rarely it happens that, in the building or furnishing of our houses, we bestow a thought upon other people! We build and furnish for ourselves; alas! self is too much our object and motive spring in all our undertakings; nor can it be otherwise unless the heart be kept under the governing power of those motives and objects which belong to Christianity. We must live in the pure and heavenly atmosphere of the new creation, in order to get above and beyond the base selfishness which characterizes fallen humanity. Every unconverted man woman and child on the face of the earth is governed simply by self, in some shape or another. Self is the centre, the object, the motive-spring of every action.
True, some are more amiable, more affectionate, more benevolent, more unselfish, more disinterested, more agreeable than others; but it is utterly impossible that “the natural man” can be governed by spiritual motives, or an earthly man be animated by heavenly objects. Alas! We have to confess, with shame and sorrow, that we who profess to be heavenly and spiritual are so prone to live for ourselves, to seek our own things, to maintain our own interests, to consult our own ease and convenience. We are all alive and on the alert when self, in any shape or form, is concerned.
All this is most sad and deeply humbling. It really ought not to be, and it would not be if we were looking more simply and earnestly to Christ as our great Exemplar and model in all things. Earnest and constant occupation of heart with Christ is the true secret of all practical Christianity. It is not rules and regulations that will ever make us Christ-like in our spirit, manner and ways. We must drink into His spirit, walk in His footsteps, dwell more profoundly upon His moral glories, and then we shall, of blessed necessity, be conformed to His image. “We all with open face beholding as in a glass [or mirror katoptrizomenoi.] the glory, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the, Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Cor. 3.)
We must now ask the reader to turn, for a moment, to the following very important practical instructions – full of suggestive power for all Christian workers “Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds, lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard be defiled.” (Deut. 22: 9.)
What a weighty principle is here! Do we really understand it? Do we see its true spiritual application? It is to be feared there is a terrible amount of “mingled seed” used in the so-called spiritual husbandry of the present day. How much of “philosophy and vain deceit.,” how much of “science falsely so called,” how much of “the rudiments of the world” do we find mixed up in the teaching and preaching throughout the length and breadth of the professing church! How little of the pure, unadulterated seed of the word of God, the “incorruptible seed” of the precious gospel of Christ, is scattered broadcast over the field of Christendom, in this our day! How few, comparatively, are content to confine themselves within the covers of the Bible for the material of their ministry! Those who are, by the grace of God faithful enough to do so, are looked upon as men of one idea, men of the old school, narrow and behind the times.
Well, we can only say, with a full and glowing heart, God bless the men of one idea, men of the precious old school of apostolic preaching! Most heartily do we congratulate them on their blessed narrowness, and their being behind these dark and infidel times. We are fully aware of what we expose ourselves to in thus writing; but this does not move us. We are persuaded that every true servant of Christ must be a man of one idea, and that idea is Christ; he must belong to the very oldest school, the school of Christ; he must be as narrow as the truth of God; and he must, with stern decision, refuse to move one hair’s breadth in the direction of this infidel age. We cannot shake off the conviction that the effort on the part of the preachers and teachers of Christendom to keep abreast of the literature of the day must, to a very large extent, account for the rapid advance of rationalism and infidelity. They have got away from the holy scriptures, and sought to adorn their ministry by the resources of philosophy, science and literature. They have catered more for the intellect than for the heart and conscience. The pure and precious doctrines of holy scripture, the sincere milk of the word, the gospel of the grace of God and of the glory of Christ, were found insufficient to attract and keep together large congregations. As Israel of old despised the manna, got tired of it, and pronounced it light food, so the professing church grew weary of the pure doctrines of that glorious Christianity unfolded in the pages of the New Testament, and sighed for something to gratify the intellect, and feed the imagination. The doctrines of the cross, in which the blessed apostle gloried, have lost their charm for the professing church, and any who would be faithful enough to adhere and confine themselves in their ministry to those doctrines might abandon all thought of popularity.
But let all the true and faithful ministers of Christ, all true workers in His vineyard apply their hearts to the spiritual principle set forth in Deuteronomy 22: 9; let them, with unflinching decision, refuse to make use of “divers seeds” in their spiritual husbandry; let them confine themselves in their ministry to “the form of sound words,” and ever seek “rightly to divide the word of truth,” that so: they may not be ashamed of their work, but receive a full reward in that day when every man’s work shall be tried of what sort it is. We may depend upon it, the word of God – the pure seed – is the only proper material for the spiritual workman to use. We do not despise learning; far from it, we consider it most valuable in its right place. The facts of science, too, and the resources of sound philosophy may all be turned to profitable account in unfolding and illustrating the truth of holy scripture. We find the blessed Master Himself and His inspired apostles making use of the facts of history and of nature in their public teaching; and who in his sober senses, would think of calling in question the value and importance of a competent knowledge of the original languages of Hebrew and Greek, in the private study and public exposition of the word of God?
But admitting all this, as we most fully do, it leaves wholly untouched the great practical principle before us-a principle to which all the Lord’s people and His servants are bound to adhere, namely, that the Holy Ghost is the only power, and holy scripture the only material for all true ministry in the gospel and the church of God. If this were more fully understood and faithfully acted upon, we should witness a very different condition of things throughout the length and breadth of the vineyard of Christ.
Here, however, we must close this section. We have elsewhere sought to handle the subject of “The Unequal Yoke,” and shall not therefore dwell upon it here.* The Israelite was not to plow with an ox and an ass together; neither was he to wear a, garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen. The spiritual application of both these things is as simple as it is important. The Christian is not to link himself with an unbeliever, for any object whatsoever, be it domestic, religious, philanthropic, or commercial, neither must he allow himself to be governed by mixed principles. His character must be formed and his conduct ruled by the pure and lofty principles of the word of God. Thus may it be with all who profess and call themselves Christians.
{*See a pamphlet entitled, “The Unequal Yoke.”}
Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch
Deu 24:1-4. The right of divorce on mans part (not womans) is taken for granted here and elsewhere in the OT (see Deu 22:19; Deu 22:29, Lev 21:7; Lev 21:14; Lev 22:13 f., Num 30:9; cf. Mat 19:9). Later Judaism (Kethuboth, vii. 10) extended to woman the right of divorce under certain specified conditions.
Deu 24:1. some unseemly thing: the Heb. as in Deu 23:14 (cf. mg.), unclean thing, LXX an ugly (lit. unshapely) thing. Unchastity is hardly meant, that is dealt with in Deu 22:13-30, but probably physical incapacity of some kind.
Deu 24:5. Cf. Deu 20:7.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE
(vs.1-4)
Under law there were cases such as often arise similarly at any time. A man may marry a woman and afterwards be thoroughly dissatisfied with her. This is a warning to every young man and woman today that they take time to be sure that they marry only a partner they have proven trustworthy. For a believer, this partner should be only another believer, and both should be persuaded that it is the Lord’s will for them to marry. Both would be thus preserved from the dangers of a breakup and divorce.
However, the sad fact is that a man often finds an excuse for putting away his wife. In such a case in Israel he was required to give her a certificate of divorce, thereby leaving her free to marry another (vs.1-3). but if she did marry another man and he also divorced her, or if he died, then the former husband must not take her back a wife (v.4). This would be most unseemly, for he had before rejected her for what he considered good reason. This is said to be “abomination before the Lord.” If there had been no marriage to another, the case would be different. The law is firm and decided about this matter, though when the grace of God is known, it can lead to honest self-judgment on the part of those who are guilty, and can wonderfully overcome the evil by a gracious and righteous recovery. Believers too often put themselves into positions that are so compromising as to be outwardly hopeless; yet we must remember that there is no situation too difficult for the grace of God.
VARIOUS MISCELLANEOUS LAWS
(vs.5-22)
God’s laws were not merely arbitrary exactions: rather they were for the greatest good of His people Israel, whether they realized it or not. Verse 5 shows God’s consideration of a newly married couple. The man was not to go to war for a year, nor be charged with anything that would separate him from his wife. It is not likely that Israel would now act on this if they should be engaged in war, and certainly no other nation would excuse men for this reason.
The law of verse 6 also is one of consideration for people’s need. It was allowed that one could take a pledge of another, who was indebted to the first. But the creditor must not take the upper or lower millstone of the other as a pledge, for this would deprive the debtor of the means of doing his normal work. Actually, this would hinder his ability to repay his debt, as the creditor should realize, but worse than this, it would be disobedience to God.
Consistently with this also, God’s consideration of the people is seen in verse 7. One who kidnaped any of the children of Israel, mistreating him or selling him, was to be put to death. This is plain justice.
Verse 8 reminds Israel that the scourge of leprosy might break out among the people, and if so, let the people observe carefully the instructions of the priests, to whom God had given explicit commandments in Lev 13:1-59; Lev 14:1-57. This was also consideration for the whole nation, that the plague would not spread, but be contained. But Israel was to remember that the Lord Himself had inflicted Miriam with leprosy after Israel’s coming out of Egypt (v.9). For Miriam initiated this, but it was rebellion against God’s authority, which would work havoc among the people, but again God’s care for His people is evident.
This is clear also in verses 10 and 11. If one loaned money to another, he must not enter the house of his debtor to take a pledge of repayment, but allow the debtor to bring this out to him. The reason is evident, for the creditor might see something in the house that he would prefer to have and demand this as a pledge. If the debtor would bring out a pledge that was fair, the creditor could of course refuse this and ask a more equitable pledge. But this law would protect the debtor from the tyranny of his creditor.
If the debtor was poor and had to give something that he required to keep him warm at night, then the creditor must give the pledge back to him for the night (vs.12-13). Again, this was proper consideration, and by this the friendship of another is gained.
A hired servant was not to be oppressed, whether an Israelite or a Gentile. If he were poor, his wages should be given him every day (vs.14-15) This is only right, for when the work is done it should be paid for. In the New Testament, masters are told to give their servants “what is just and fair” (Col 4:1)
It would be an unfair practice to put children to death for the guilt of their fathers, or to put the father to death because of the guilt of his children. David made a sad blunder in this matter when he allowed the Gibeonites to hang seven of the sons or grandsons of Saul because of Saul’s previous sin against the Gibeonites (2Sa 21:1-9). Saul’s house could have been punished in a different way than this, but this was opposed to God’s Word. David did not enquire of the Lord before he made this mistake.
One may be in a position to take unfair advantage of a stranger or of a fatherless child. But such perversion of justice was sternly forbidden (v.17). Also forbidden was taking a widow’s garment as a pledge for debt. For Israel was to remember that they too at one time were in a place of slavery in Egypt, reduced to poverty.
When one harvested his crops, if he left a sheaf in the field he was not to return for it, but leave it for either a stranger, a fatherless child, or a widow (v.19). This is added to the command in Lev 19:9-10 that the corners of the field were not to be reaped, but left for the poor. Ruth was blessed in taking advantage of this law in the field of Boaz (Rth 2:2-23). A similar command was given as regards their beating their olive trees to make the olives fall. Some would be left if they did not beat it a second time, and they were to leave these for the stranger, the father less and the widow (v.20). Also, when grapes had been gathered, the gleanings were to be left (v.21). Thus God showed His gracious consideration of those who were oppressed, as Israel must remember they were in the land of Egypt. We too who are Christians must remember that we were once in the bondage of sin before being saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus. If so, we shall be concerned about the needs of those who have not been delivered from the poverty of their sinful state, and should gladly sacrifice something of our own prosperity for their sakes.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
24:1 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: {a} then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give [it] in her hand, and send her out of his house.
(a) By this God does not approve light divorcement, but permits it to avoid further inconvenience; Mat 19:7.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Marital duties and rights 24:1-5
A discussion of divorce and remarriage fits into this context because both practices involve respect for the rights of others. The first of the two situations Moses dealt with in this section concerns a married, divorced, and remarried woman (Deu 24:1-4).
"In modern society, marriage and divorce are not only regulated by law, but are invalid unless conducted or decreed by accredited officials in accredited places (churches and register offices, or law-courts in the case of divorce). In Israel, however, both were purely domestic matters, with no officials and scarcely any documents involved; the bill of divorce was the exception, and it was essential, to protect the divorced woman from any charge of adultery, which was punishable by death (cf. Deu 22:22)." [Note: Ibid., pp. 133-34.]
Moses allowed divorce for the "hardness of heart" of the Israelites, but God’s preference was that there be no divorce (Gen 1:27; Gen 2:24; Mal 2:16; Mat 19:8). This, then, is another example of God regulating practices that were not His desire for people, but that He permitted in Israel (e.g., polygamy, etc.). The worst situation envisaged in these verses is divorce, remarriage, divorce, and then remarriage to the first spouse. The better situation was divorce and remarriage. Still better was divorce and no remarriage. Best of all was no divorce.
The Egyptians practiced divorce and gave written certificates of divorce, so perhaps the Israelites learned these practices from them. [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, 3:417.] Divorce was common in the ancient Near East, and it was easy to obtain. [Note: Thompson, p. 244.] However, the Israelites took marriage more seriously than their neighbors did.
The reason for the granting of the divorce by the husband, who alone had the power to divorce, was "some indecency" in his wife (Deu 24:1). This could not have been simple adultery since the Israelites stoned adulteresses (Deu 22:22). However it is debatable whether the Israelites enforced the death penalty for adultery. [Note: Henry McKeating, "Sanctions Against Adultery in Ancient Israelite Society," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 11 (1979):57-72.] It could not have been just suspicion of adultery either since there was a specified procedure for dealing with that (Num 5:5-31). Two schools of rabbinic interpretation of this phrase developed in time. Rabbi Hillel’s liberal position was that God permitted a divorce "for every cause" (Mat 19:3), for example, burning the husband’s food. Rabbi Shammai’s conservative position allowed divorce only for fornication (sexual sin). Jesus said that God permitted divorce for fornication, but He warned against remarrying after such a divorce (Mat 19:9). [Note: See Appendix 1 at the end of these notes for a detailed discussion of the major interpretive problems in Deuteronomy 24:1-4. See also Appendix 2 for some suggestions for preventing divorce.]
Divorce not permitted by God followed by remarriage, which involved post-marital adultery for the woman, resulted in the moral defilement and uncleanness of the woman (Deu 24:4; cf. Lev 18:20; Num 5:12-14).
The point of Moses’ legislation was that when a couple divorced and then wanted to remarry, the woman’s first husband could not marry her again if she had married someone else following her divorce. Evidently Israel’s neighbors would divorce their mates, marry someone else, and then remarry their first spouse after their "affair." This ordinance would have discouraged hasty divorce as well as strengthening second marriages in Israel. [Note: For discussion of other possible purposes, see J. Carl Laney, "Deuteronomy 24:1-4 and the Issue of Divorce," Bibliotheca Sacra 149:593 (January-March 1992):9-13.]
"Thus the intent of the legislation seems to be to apply certain restrictions on the already existing practice of divorce. If divorce became too easy, then it could be abused and it would become a ’legal’ form of committing adultery." [Note: Craigie, The Book . . ., p. 305.]
One scholar argued that the giving of a certificate of divorce implies not only a legal permission for divorce but also the legal permission for the woman to remarry. He also believed that the improper behavior for which divorce was allowed was behavior that fundamentally violated the essence of the marriage covenant. [Note: Sprinkle, pp. 529-32 and 546-47.]
Jesus taught His disciples not to divorce (Mat 19:1-12; Mar 10:1-12). Matthew included Jesus’ clarification of the condition for divorce that God permitted (Mat 19:9; cf. Deu 24:1), but Mark did not. Paul restated Jesus’ point (1Co 7:10-11) and added that a believing spouse need not remain with an unbelieving mate if the unbeliever departs (i.e., divorces; 1Co 7:12-16). After a divorce he encouraged remarriage to the former spouse or remaining single (1Co 7:11). [Note: Some of the best writings on marriage, divorce, and remarriage are these. For the view that God permitted divorce and remarriage for immorality and desertion, see John Murray, Divorce (scholarly); Jay E. Adams, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage (popular); and Tim Crater, "Bill Gothard’s View of the Exception Clause," Journal of Pastoral Practice 4 (1980):5-10 (popular). For the view that God permitted divorce and remarriage for unlawful marriages, as the Mosaic Law specified unlawful marriages, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, "The Matthean Divorce Texts and Some New Palestinian Evidence," Theological Studies 37:2 (June 1976):197-226 (scholarly); J. Carl Laney, The Divorce Myth (popular); and Charles C. Ryrie, You Mean the Bible Teaches That . . ., pp. 45-56 (popular). For the view that God permitted divorce and remarriage in Israel for unfaithfulness during the betrothal period, see Abel Isaksson, "Marriage and Ministry in the New Temple," pp. 7-152 (scholarly); and Mark Geldard, "Jesus’ Teaching on Divorce," Churchman 92 (1978):134-43 (popular). For the view that God permitted divorce but not remarriage, see William A. Heth and Gordon J. Wenham, Jesus and Divorce (scholarly). A helpful general resource is James B. Hurley, Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective.]
The second situation Moses dealt with in this section concerns a recently married male (Deu 24:5). Such a person did not have to participate in military service for one year. The reason for this provision was so the man could establish a strong home and begin producing descendants. Both strong homes and descendants were essential to God’s purposes through Israel. Going into war and dying was a type of stealing from his wife.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
LAWS OF PURITY (CHASTITY AND MARRIAGE)
IN dealing with the ten commandments it has been already shown that, though these great statements of religious and moral truth were to some extent inadequate as expressions of the highest life, they yet contained the living germs of all that has followed. But we cannot suppose that the reality of Israelite life from the first corresponded with them. They contained much that only the experience and teaching of ages could fully bring to light; therefore we cannot expect that the actual laws in regard to the relations of the sexes and the virtue of chastity should stand upon the same high level as the Decalogue. The former represent the reality, this the ultimate ideal of Israelite law on these subjects. But neither is unimportant in forming an estimate of the value of the revelation given to Israel, and of the moral condition of early Israel itself, nor can either be justly viewed altogether alone. The actual law at any moment in the history of Israel must be regarded as inspired and up-borne by the ideal set forth in the ten commandments. But it must, at the same time, be a very incomplete realization of these, and its various stages will be best regarded as installments of advance towards that comparative perfection.
In regard to the relations of the sexes and the virtue of purity this must be peculiarly the case. For though chastity has been safeguarded by almost all nations up to a certain low point, it has never been really cherished by any naturalistic system. Nor has it ever been favored by mere humanism. Consequently there is no point of morals in regard to which man has more conspicuously failed to work out the merely animal impulse from his nature than in this. And yet, for all the higher ends of life, as well as for the prosperity and vigor of mankind, purity in the sexual relations is entirely vital. One great cause of the decay of nations, nay, even of civilizations, has been the abandonment of this virtue. This was the main cause of the destruction of the Canaanites. It may even be said to have been the cause of the wreck of the whole ancient world. We should consequently measure what the Mosaic influence did for purity of life, not by comparing early Israelite laws with what has been accomplished by Christianity, but with the condition of the Semitic peoples surrounding Israel, in and after the Mosaic times.
What that was we know. Their religions, far from discouraging sexual immorality, made it a part of their holiest rites. Both men and women gave themselves up to natural and unnatural lusts, in honor of their gods. To the north, and south, and east, and west of Israel these practices prevailed, and as a natural result the moral fabric of these nations life fell into utter ruin. In private life adultery, and the still more degrading sin of Sodom were common. The man had a right to indiscriminate divorce and remarriage, and marriage connections now reckoned incestuous, such as those between brother and sister, were entirely approved. In all these points Israel as a nation was without reproach. The higher teaching this people had received in respect to the character of God, and it may be some reminiscence of Egyptian custom, which was in some respects purer than that of the Semitic peoples, raised them to a higher level. Yet in the main the early Israelite view of women was fundamentally the uncivilized one.
But at all periods of Israelite history, even the earliest, women had asserted their personality. In the eye of the law they might be the chattels of their male relatives, but as a fact they were dealt with as persons, with many personal rights. They had no independent position in the community, it is true. They could take no part in a festival so important as the Passover, nor were they free to make vows without the consent of their husbands. In other ways also social restraints were laid upon them. Nevertheless their position in early Israel was much higher than it is in the East today, and their liberty was in no wise unreasonably abridged. In Davids day women could appear in public to converse with men without scandal (Cf. 1Sa 25:18 ff.; 2Sa 14:1 ff.). They also took part in religious festivals and processions, giving, life to them by beating their timbrels, by singing, and by dancing (Cf. Exo 15:1-27 and 1Sa 18:6 f.). They could be present also at all ordinary sacrifices and at sacrificial feasts; and, as we see in the case of Deborah and others, they could occupy a high, almost a supreme, position as prophetesses. In the main, too, the relations between husband and wife were loving and respectful, and in Israels best days, when the people still remained landed yeomanry, the wife, by her industry within the house, supplemented and completed her husbands labor in the fields. The Israelite woman was consequently a very important person in the community whatever her status in law might be; and if she had not the full rights which are now granted to her sex in Western and Christian lands, her position was for the times a noble and independent one. That all this was so was largely due to the improvements which Mosaism wrought on the basis of that ancient Semitic custom which we sketched at the beginning of this chapter, and with which it seems natural to suppose the Israelite tribes had also begun.
Bearing these preliminary considerations in mind, we now go on to consider the actual legislation in regard to the relations of the sexes. But here we must once more, recall the fact that, in regard to all matters vitally affecting the community, there had always been a custom, and even before written law appears that custom had been adopted and modified in Yahwism by Moses himself. That this was actually the case here is rendered highly probable by the history of legislation in this matter. In the Book of the Covenant there is no mention of sexual sin, save in one passage, {Exo 22:16} where the penalty for seduction of a virgin who is not betrothed is that the seducer shall offer a “mohar” for her, and marry her without possibility of divorce, if her father consent. If he will not, then the “mohar” is forfeited to the father nevertheless, as compensation for the degradation of his daughter. But it is obvious that there must have been laws or customs regulating marriage other than this, for without them there could have been no such crime as is here punished. Obviously, also, there must have been laws or customs of divorce. But of what these laws of marriage and divorce were Exodus gives us no hint. Deuteronomy, the next code, which on the critical hypothesis arose at a much later time as a revision of the Book of the Covenant, contains much more, i.e., it draws out of the obscurity of unwritten custom a more extensive series of provisions in regard to purity. The Law of Holiness then adds largely to Deuteronomy, and with it the main points of the law of purity have attained to written expression. But the influence of the higher standard set in the Decalogue also makes itself felt, -not in the law so much as in the historic books and the prophets-and our task now is to trace out first the legal development, then the prophetical, and to show how the whole movement culminated and was crowned in the teaching of Christ.
Beginning then with Deuteronomy, we find that the chastity of women was surrounded by ample safeguards. Religious prostitution was absolutely prohibited. {Deu 23:18} Further, if any violence was done to a woman who had been betrothed, the punishment of the wrong was death; if done to a woman who was not betrothed, the wrong was atoned for by payment of fifty shekels of silver to her father, and by offering marriage without possibility of divorce. If marriage was refused, then the fifty shekels was retained by the father in consideration of the wrong done him. When the woman was a sharer in the guilt the punishment in all cases was death; while pre-nuptial unchastity, when discovered after marriage, was punished, as adultery also was, with the same severity. {Deu 22:13-18} In women who were free, therefore, purity was demanded in Israel as strenuously as it ever has been anywhere, though in man the only limit to sexual indulgence was the demand, that in seeking it he should not infringe upon the fathers property in his daughter, or the husbands in his wife or his betrothed bride.
Admittedly the original underlying motive for this moral severity was a low one, the mere proprietary rights of the father or husband. But it would be a mistake to suppose that purely ethical and religious motives had no place in establishing the customs or enactments which we find in Deuteronomy. With the lapse of time higher motives entwined themselves with the coarse strand of personal proprietary interest, which had originally, though perhaps never alone, been the line of limitation. Gradually there grew up a standard of higher purity; and when Deuteronomy was written, though the original line was still clearly visible, it was justified by appeals to a moral sense which reached far beyond the original motives of the customary law. The continually recurring burden of Deuteronomy in dealing with these matters is that to work “folly in Israel” is a crime for which only the severest punishment can atone. To “extinguish the evil from Israel,” and to put away such things as were “abominations to Yahweh their God,” are the great reasons on which the writer of Deuteronomy founds the claim for obedience in these cases. Obviously, therefore, by his time, under the teaching of the religion of Yahweh, Israel had risen to a moral height which took account of graver interests than the rights of property in legislating for female purity. The cases included in the law had been determined by considerations of that kind; but the sanctions by which the commands were buttressed had entirely changed their character. The holiness of God and the dignity of man, the consideration of what alone was worthy of a “son of Israel,” have taken the place of the coarser sanctions. In this way a possibility of unlimited moral progress was secured, since the cause of purity was indissolubly bound to the general and irresistible advance of religious and moral enlightenment in the chosen people.
Moreover the personality of the woman was acknowledged in the entire acquittal of the betrothed woman who had been exposed to outrage in the country, where her cries could bring no help. In the earliest times most probably the punishment of death would have been inflicted equally in that case, since the husbands property had been deteriorated to such a degree as to make it unworthy of him. But in the Deuteronomic provision quite other things are drawn into the estimate. The moral guilt of the person concerned is now the decisive consideration. The woman has ceased to be a mere chattel, and the full claims of her personality are in the way to be recognized. These were great advances, and for these it is vain to seek for other causes than the persistent upward pressure of the Mosaic religion. The moral superiority of Israel at the time of the conquest over the much more cultured Canaanites, as also over the nomadic tribes to which they were more nearly related, is due, as Stade says, ultimately to their religion; and no reader of the Old Testament, in our time at least, can fail to see that their moral progress ill the land they conquered depended entirely upon the same cause. At the Deuteronomic epoch purity had already been placed upon a worthy basis, as a moral achievement of the first importance, and impurity had taken its proper place as a degrading sin. But much still remained to be done before these principles could be extended into all domains of life equally.
How far they had penetrated in early times may perhaps best be seen in the Deuteronomic references to divorce. Before Deuteronomy there is no law of divorce, nor indeed is there any after it. We may perhaps even say that there is in it not so much the statement of a law of divorce, as a reference to custom which the writer wishes to correct or reinforce in one particular respect only. Notwithstanding the Jewish view, therefore, which finds in Deu 24:1-4 a divorce law, we must adduce the passage as a new and striking proof of what we have all along asserted, that neither Deuteronomy nor any other of the legal codes can be taken as complete statements of what was legally permitted or forbidden in Israel. Behind all of them there is a vast mass of unwritten customary law, and divorce was doubtless always determined by it. That this was the case will be seen at once if the passage we are now concerned with be rightly translated. It runs thus: “When a man taketh a wife and marrieth her, and it shall be (if she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found in her some unseemly thing) that he writeth her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it into her hand, and sendeth her out of his house, and she go forth out of his house and goeth and becometh the wife of another man, and if the latter husband also hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand and send her out of his house, or if the latter husband die who took her to him to wife, then her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after that she has permitted herself to be defiled.” All the passage provides for, therefore, is that a divorced woman shall not be remarried to the divorcing man after she has been married again, even though she be separated from her second husband by divorce or death.
There is consequently no law of divorce here stated. There is merely a reference to a general law or custom by which divorce was permitted for “any unseemly thing,” and according to which a chief wife at any rate could be divorced only by a “bill of divorcement,” and not by mere word of mouth, as is common in many Eastern lands today. Mosaic influence may have procured this last slight increase in rigor, and Deuteronomy certainly adds three other restrictions, viz. that after remarriage a woman cannot be again married to her first husband, and that pre-nuptial wrong done to a woman by her husband, or a false accusation by him after marriage, takes away his right of divorce altogether. But the woman has no right of divorce at all, so firmly fixed throughout all Old Testament time was the belief in the inferiority of women. On the whole, therefore, divorce in Israel remained, after the law had dealt with it, much on the level to which the tribal customs had brought it. So far as the legislation dealt with it, it tended to restriction; but when all is said it remains true that the Israelite law of divorce was in the main much what it would have been had there been no revelation. But the spirit of the religion of Yahweh was against laxity in this matter, and this more rigorous feeling finds expression in the evident distaste for the remarriage of a divorced woman which is expressed Deu 24:4. Remarriage is not forbidden; but the woman who remarries is spoken of as one who has “let herself be defiled.” No such expression could have been used, had not remarriage after divorce been looked upon as something which detracted from perfect feminine purity. The legislator evidently regarded it as the higher way for a divorced woman to remain unmarried so long at least as the divorcing husband lived. If she remained so, the possibility of reunion was always kept open, and the law evidently looked upon the ultimate annulment of the divorce as the course which was most consonant with the ideal of marriage.
It is thus clearly seen how our Lords statement {Mat 19:8} -” Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it hath not been so”-is true.
And when we leave the law and come to history and prophecy, we find this view to have been a prevalent one from early times. In one of the earliest connected historical narratives, that of J, {Gen 2:24} the union of husband and wife is said to be so peculiarly intimate that it makes them one body, so that separation is equivalent to mutilation. And the prophets remain true to this conception of marriage, as the one which fitted best into their deeper and loftier views of morality. From Hosea onwards {Hos 2:19} they represent the indissoluble bond between Yahweh and His people as a marriage relation, founded on free choice and unchangeable love. The possibility of divorce is no doubt often admitted, and the conduct of Israel is represented as justifying that course. But the prophetic message always is that the love of God will never permit Him to put away His people; and the people are often addressed as faithless and faint-hearted, because they yield to the temptation of believing that He has cast them off. {Isa 1:1} Evidently, therefore, the prophetic ideal of marriage was that it should be indissoluble, that it should be founded upon free mutual love, and that such a love should make it impossible for either husband or wife to give the other up, however desperate the errors of the guilty one might have been.
Perhaps the finest expression of this view occurs in Isa 54:1-17 in the exhortation addressed to exiled Israel and beginning. “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear.” There the ideal Israel is urged to lay aside all her fears with this assurance: “For thy Maker is thine husband; Yahweh of Hosts is His name: and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole earth shall He be called. For Yahweh hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit; how can a wife of youth be rejected? saith thy God.” The full meaning of this last touching question has been well brought out by Prof. Cheyne (Isa 2:1-22, p. 55): “Even many an earthly husband (how much more then Yahweh!) cannot bear to see the misery of his divorced wife, and therefore at length recalls her; and when his wife is one who has been wooed and won in youth, how impossible is it for her to be absolutely dismissed.” The rising tide of prophetic feeling on this subject culminates in the pathetic scene depicted by Malachi, who in Mal 2:12 ff. reproves his people for their cruel and frivolous use of divorce. Drawn away by love of idolatrous women, they had divorced their Hebrew wives; and these in their misery crowded the Temple, covering the altar of Yahweh with “tears and weeping and sobbing,” till He could endure it no more. He had been witness of the covenant made between each of these men and the wife of his youth; yet they had broken this Divinely sanctioned bond. He therefore warns them to take heed, “for Yahweh the God of Israel saith, I hate putting away, and him who covers his garment with violence.” The Rabbinic interpreters, not being minded to give up the privilege of divorce, have wrested these words into “for Yahweh the God of Israel saith, if he hate her put her away.” But, so wrested, the words bring down the whole context in one ruin. They are intelligible only if they denounce divorce, and in this sense they must undoubtedly be taken.
There remains for consideration, however, a marriage which the Deuteronomist permits, which seems to run counter to all the finer feelings and instincts of his later time. It is dealt with in Deu 25:5-10, and is notable because it is a clear breach of the definite rule that a man should not marry his deceased brothers wife. But it will be obvious at once that the permission of this marriage stands upon quite a different footing from the prohibition. It is permitted only in a special case for definite ends; and while the sanction of the prohibition is the infliction of childlessness, {Lev 20:21} the man who refuses to enter upon marriage with his deceased brothers wife is punished only by being put to shame by her before the elders of his city. We have not here, therefore, a law in the strict sense. It is only a recognition of a very ancient custom which is not yet abolished, though evidently public feeling was beginning to make light of the obligation. Its place in the twenty-fifth chapter, away from the marriage laws, {which are given in Deu 21:10 ff., Deu 22:13 ff., and Deu 24:1-4} and among duties of kindness, seems to hint this, and we may consequently take the law as a concession. That the custom was ancient in the time of Deuteronomy may be gathered from the fact that in Hebrew there is a special technical term, yibbem, for entering on such a marriage. The probability is, indeed, that levirate marriage was a pre-Mosaic custom connected with ancestor-worship. It certainly is practiced by many other races, e.g., the Hindus and Persians, whose religions can be traced to that source. Under that system, it was necessary that the male line of descent should be kept up in order that the ancestral sacrifices might be continued, and to bear the expense of this the property of the brother dying childless was jealously preserved. In India, at present, both purposes are served by adoption, either by the childless man or by the widow. In earlier times, when fatherhood was to a large extent a merely juridical relationship, when, that is to say, it was a common thing for a man to accept as his son any child born of women under his control, whether he were the father or not, the same end was also attained by this marriage. Originating in this way, the practice was carried over into the Israelite social life when it changed its form, and the motives for it were then brought into line with the new and higher religion. The motive of keeping alive the name and memory of the childless man was substituted for that of securing the continuance of his worship; and the purpose of securing the permanence of property, landed property especially, in each household, was substituted for that of supplying means for the sacrifice. Later, the motive connected with the transmission of property possibly became the main one. For, since the levirate marriage came in, according to the strict wording of our passage, whenever a man died without a son, whether he had daughters or not, this marriage would seem to have been an alternative means of keeping the property in the family to that of letting the daughters inherit. But the spirit of the higher religion, as well as a more advanced civilization, was unfavorable to it. The custom evidently was withering when Deuteronomy was written, though in Judaism it was not disallowed till post-Talmudic times.
The impression, therefore, which the laws and customs regulating the relations of men and women in Israel give to the candid student must be pronounced to be a strangely mixed one. It would probably not be too much to say that it is at first a deeply disappointing one. We have been accustomed to fill all the Old Testament utterances on this subject with the suffused light of Gospel precept and example, till we have lost sight of the lower elements undeniably present in the Old Testament laws and ideas concerning purity. But that is no longer possible. Whether of enmity or of zeal for the truth, these less worthy elements have been dragged forth into the broad light of day, and in that light we are called upon to readjust our thoughts so as to accept and account for them. Evidently at the beginning the Israelite tribes accepted the uncivilized idea of woman. On that as a basis, however, customs and laws regarding chastity, marriage, and divorce were adopted, which transcended and passed beyond that fundamental idea. The moral complicity of woman, or her innocence, in cases where her chastity had been attacked, came to be taken into account. Polygamy, though never forbidden, received grievous wounds from prophets and others of the sacred writers; and as marriage with one became more and more the ideal, the higher teachers of the people kept the indissolubleness of marriage before the public mind, till Malachi denounced divorce in Yahwehs name. In regard to the bars to marriage there was little change, probably, from the days of Moses; but the old family rules were reinforced by a deep and delicate regard for even the less palpable affections and relations which grew up in the home.
The final attainment, therefore, was great and worthy enough; but the cruder and less refined ideas, which had been inherited from pre-Mosaic custom, always make themselves felt, and have even dominated some of the laws. They dominated, even more, the practice of the people and the theory of the scribes; so that on the very eve of His coming who was to proclaim decisively the indissolubility of marriage, the great Jewish schools were wrangling whether mere caprice, or some immodesty only could justify divorce. Nevertheless the Decalogue, with its deep and broad command, culminating in prohibition even of inward evil desire, had always had its own influence. The teachings of the prophets, which breathe passionate hatred of impurity, had I taught all men of good-will in Israel that the wrath of God surely burned against it But the stamp of imperfection was upon Old Testament teaching here as elsewhere. Like the Messianic hope, like the future of Israel, like all Israels greatest destinies, the promise of a higher life in this respect was darkened by the inconsistencies of general practice; and uncertainty prevailed as to the direction in which men were to look for the harmonious development of the higher potencies which were making their presence felt. It was in them rather than in the law, in the ideals rather than in the practice of the people, that the hidden power was silently doing its regenerating work. The religion of Yahweh in its central content surrounded all laws and institutions with an atmosphere which challenged and furthered growth of every wholesome kind. The axe and hammer of the legislative builder was rarely heard at work; but in the silence which seems to some so barren, there slowly grew a fabric of moral and spiritual ideas and aspirations, which needed only the coming of Christ to make it the permanent home of all morally earnest souls.
With Him all that the past generations “had willed, or hoped, or dreamed of good” came actually to exist. He made what had been aspiration only the basis of an actual Kingdom of God. As one of its primary moral foundations He laid down the radical indissolubility of marriage, and made visible to all men, the breadth of the law given in the Decalogue by forbidding even wandering desires. In doing this He completely surpassed all Old Testament teaching, and set up a standard which Christian communities as such have held to hitherto, but which from lack of elevation and earnestness they seem inclined in these days to let slip. That such a standard was ever set up was the work of a Divine revelation of a perfectly unique kind, working through long ages of upward movement. Humanity has been dragged upwards to it most unwillingly. Men have found difficulty in living at that height, and nothing is easier than to throw away all the gain of these many centuries. All that is needed is a plunge or two downwards. But if ever these plunges are taken, the long, slow effort upwards will only have to be begun again, if family life is to be firmly established, and purity is to become a permanent possession of men.