If a man finds a lady who is a virgin, who is not pledged to be married, grabs her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the lady’s father fifty shekels of silver. She shall be his wife, because he has humbled her. He may not put her away all his days.
To adjudicate the case of a man who violates an unbetrothed virgin
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כִּי־יִמְצָא אִישׁ נַעֲרָ בְתוּלָה אֲשֶׁר לֹא־אֹרָשָׂה וּתְפָשָׂהּ וְשָׁכַב עִמָּהּ וְנִמְצָאוּ׃ וְנָתַן הָאִישׁ הַשֹּׁכֵב עִמָּהּ לַאֲבִי הַנַּעֲרָ חֲמִשִּׁים כָּסֶף וְלוֹ־תִהְיֶה לְאִשָּׁה תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר עִנָּהּ לֹא־יוּכַל שַׁלְּחָהּ כָּל־יָמָיו
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לשאת האונס את אנוסתו. והוא אמרו יתעלה ויתברך ולו תהיה לאשה. וכבר התבאר בגמרא מכות (דף ט"ו) שזה הלאו של אונס שהוא לא יוכל שלחה כל ימיו הוא לאו שקדמו עשה. הנה כבר התבאר שזה ולו תהיה לאשה מצות עשה היא. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו בג' וד' מכתובות. (כי תצא, נשים הלכות נערה בתולה):
That is that He commanded us that a rapist marry the woman he raped. And that is His, may He be exalted and may He be blessed, saying, "and she shall be his wife" (Deuteronomy 22:29). And it has already been explained in the Gemara, Makkot (Makkot 15a), that this negative commandment of rape - that "he cannot send her away all of his days" - is a negative commandment that is preceded by a positive commandment. Hence it has already become clear that this, "and she shall be his wife," is a positive commandment. And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in [Chapter] 3 and 4 of Ketubot. (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Virgin Maiden.)
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 Not binding
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Position not recorded
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.65-71 affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.252 affirmed it
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.
- hittite laws seizure for sex distinguished by location: in the mountains the man is presumed the aggressor and dies; in the house the woman is presumed culpable and dies Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §197 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws rape of an unbetrothed virgin living in her father's house: the offender's father pays the virgin's father the bride-price value of a virgin, the victim's father may take the offender's wife and treat her as he wishes, and the father may (at his option) give the violated daughter to the offender in marriage, in which case the offender may not divorce her Relationship to the parallel: direct parallel A §55 Roth, Law Collections 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.
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Article 16(1)(b) (right to freely choose a spouse and to enter marriage only with free and full consent)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The plain text of Deuteronomy 22:28–29 requires the assailant to marry his victim and prohibits him from ever divorcing her — a legally mandated marriage to one's rapist that directly contradicts CEDAW's requirement that marriage rest on free and full consent. Rabbinic interpretation introduced the woman's right to refuse, but the statutory text in its plain sense compels the union.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
Compelling a sexual-assault victim to marry her assailant as a legal remedy violates the principle that individuals retain sovereignty over their bodies and intimate relationships; the commandment treats permanent marriage to the perpetrator as a substitute for criminal accountability, a framework incompatible with modern understandings of bodily autonomy.
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Article 23(3) (no marriage without free and full consent of intending spouses)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 23(3) requires that no marriage be entered without the free and full consent of the intending spouses; the biblical provision mandates that the assailant take the violated woman as his wife — an arrangement in which the woman's consent is not constitutive of the legal obligation, in direct contradiction to this covenant standard.