1“When a man will take a woman and marry her, and it will be that, if she does not find favor in his eyes because he has found an exposure of something in her, and he will write a document of cutting-off for her and put it in her hand and let her go from his house,
24:1. When a man will take a woman. This law (vv. 1–4) has been taken as the biblical law of divorce, but it is not. It is the law governing a specific instance in which a couple might want to return to each other after they were divorced and she was remarried and then was divorced again or widowed. Divorce law in general has been derived in part from this case because of the curious fact that there is no law in the Torah telling how to get married and no law telling how to get divorced. Here, the divorce procedure appears to be assumed, as a known practice.
The absence of marriage and divorce procedures has been used as a proof of the existence of oral law that was given along with the law that is written in the Torah. But the case may be rather that these ceremonies were not regarded as having been given in detail by God—as few ceremonies outside of the sacrifices at the Tabernacle are so given. The divine interest is in the marriage relationship rather than in the ceremony: the husband’s treatment of the wife, the prohibition of adultery, their relationship with their children, inheritance, making one’s spouse happy (see 24:5). The same goes for funerals and bar mitzvah. Even such well-known Jewish practices as saying kaddish and sitting shivah are not mentioned in the Torah. And bar and bat mitzvah are not treated (or even mentioned): the concern is with doing the commandments. The details of the ceremony of arriving at the age of doing them are left for humans to choose. All of these ceremonies were detailed in rabbinic law and practice later. Ceremonial procedures are given in the Torah for less common cases, such as the slave who declines to leave a master (Deut 15:16–17), or the brother-in-law who declines to perform levirate marriage (25:7–10), or the present case of return marriage.
24:1. an exposure of something. See the comment on 23:15 above.
24:1. a document of cutting-off. A divorce.
2and she will go out from his house and go and become another man’s,
3and the latter man will hate her and write a document of cutting-off for her and put it in her hand and let her go from his house, or if the latter man who took her to him for a wife will die:
4her first husband who let her go shall not be able to come back to take her to be his for a wife since she has been made impure, because that is an offensive thing in front of YHWH, and you shall not bring sin on the land that YHWH, your God, is giving you as a legacy.
24:4. her first husband shall not be able to come back. Jeremiah transforms this into a metaphor in which God has cut off Israel the way the husband in this law cuts off his wife (Jer 3:1), yet God would still take Israel back, seemingly against God’s own law concerning human marriages (3:12,14,22)!
5“When a man will take a new wife, he shall not go out in the army and not go along with it for any matter. He shall be free at his house for one year and shall make his wife whom he has taken happy.
6One shall not take a mill or an upper millstone as security, because he is taking one’s life as security.
7“When a man will be found stealing a person from among his brothers, from the children of Israel, so he will get profit through him and sell him, then that thief shall die. So you shall burn away what is bad from among you.
8“Be watchful with the plague of leprosy, to be very watchful and to do according to everything that the Levite priests will instruct you. You shall be watchful to do according to what I commanded them.
9Remember what YHWH, your God, did to Miriam on the way when you were coming out from Egypt.
24:9. Remember what God did to Miriam. Why is this brought up here in the context of a general law about leprosy? Because the law here is not concerned only with the correct treatment for leprosy after one has contracted it (which is the concern of Leviticus 13–14). It also warns to be watchful (the term occurs three times) against behavior that would bring about leprosy as a consequence (see 24:8). Miriam does something that causes her to be stricken with leprosy. Rashi understands her offense to be slanderous gossip (l
ôn hr‘), but leprosy is more likely to be tied to a ritual offense. Miriam’s words are not gossip; she is stricken with leprosy for having challenged Moses’ status as a prophet compared with her own (Num 12:9–15; see the comment on 12:2). And later, King Uzziah is stricken with it for burning incense in the Temple, which only priests can do (2 Chr 26:16–21).
10“When you’ll make a loan of anything to your neighbor, you shall not come into his house to get his pledge.
11You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you’re lending shall bring the pledge outside to you.
12And if he is a poor man, you shall not lie down with his pledge.
13You shall give back the pledge to him as the sun sets, and he’ll lie down with his clothing, and he’ll bless you, and you’ll have virtue in front of YHWH, your God.
24:13. you’ll have virtue. See the comment on Deut 6:25.
14“You shall not exploit a poor or an indigent employee, from your brothers or from your aliens who are in your land, in your gates.
15You shall give his pay in his day, and the sun shall not set on it—because he is poor, and he maintains his life by it—so he won’t call against you to YHWH, and it will be a sin in you.
16“Fathers shall not be put to death for sons, and sons shall not be put to death for fathers. They shall each be put to death through his own sin.
24:16. each through his own sin. This does not contradict the statement that God “reckons fathers’ crime on children and on children’s children, on third generations and on fourth generations” (Exod 34:7). That applies to divine justice and may refer to the way in which behavior recurs through generations in a family. This applies to human justice and refers to the point of law that Israelite courts cannot execute people for their relatives’ offenses.
17“You shall not bend judgment of an alien or an orphan, and you shall not take a widow’s clothing as security.
18And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and YHWH, your God, redeemed you from there. On account of this I command you to do this thing.
19When you’ll reap your harvest in your field, and you’ll forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to take it. It shall be the alien’s and the orphan’s and the widow’s, so that YHWH, your God, will bless you in all your hands’ work.
20When you’ll beat your olive trees, you shall not do a bough afterward. It shall be the alien’s and the orphan’s and the widow’s.
21When you’ll cut off grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean afterward. It shall be the alien’s and the orphan’s and the widow’s.
22And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. On account of this I command you to do this thing.
