If its owner is with it, he shall not make it good. If it is a leased thing, it came for its lease. “If a man entices a virgin who isn’t pledged to be married, and lies with her, he shall surely pay a dowry for her to be his wife.
To adjudicate cases involving a seducer of an unbetrothed virgin
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכִי־יְפַתֶּה אִישׁ בְּתוּלָה אֲשֶׁר לֹא־אֹרָשָׂה וְשָׁכַב עִמָּהּ מָהֹר יִמְהָרֶנָּה לּוֹ לְאִשָּׁה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו בדין המפתה. והוא אמרו יתעלה וכי יפתה איש וגו'. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשלישי ורביעי מכתובות. (ואלה המשפטים, נשים הלכות נערה בתולה פ"א):
That is that He commanded us about the law of the seducer. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "If a man seduces a virgin" (Exodus 22:15). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the third and fourth [chapters] of Ketubot. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, Virgin Maiden 1.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a case law — "if X, then Y"
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
- A monetary penalty
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
- Restitution (tashlumin)
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Binding, with modification
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QTemple (11Q19) LXVI 8-11 read it more strictly
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.70-71 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.252-253 The catalog describes this reception as: harmonized
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi related sexual offenses against household sexual property: §130 (rape of a betrothed woman still in her father's house) and §156 (a man's son having intercourse with the father's designated bride, with monetary settlement and forfeiture) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§130, 156 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws violation of an unbetrothed virgin, payment to father and compelled or exchanged marriage Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §55 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna intercourse with a betrothed woman (§26) or slave girl (§31) treated as a property/compensation offense — analogous but not a direct parallel to seduction of an unbetrothed free virgin Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§26, 31 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
-
Article 16(1)(b) (right to freely choose a spouse and enter marriage only with free and full consent)
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment frames the offense of seduction as a property wrong against the father, whose consent is the operative legal fact — the man pays the bride-price to the father and may marry the daughter. CEDAW Article 16(1)(b) requires that marriage rest on the free and full consent of the intending spouses, not on a transaction between men over the daughter's person.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The daughter's sexuality is constructed throughout the law as a paternal property interest whose violation is compensated through payment to the father; the woman's legal standing in the proceeding is derivative, not primary. This patriarchal property logic is incompatible with the principle that men and women hold equal legal personhood in matters of marriage and bodily autonomy.