and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you are attracted to her, and desire to take her as your wife,
To follow the laws concerning a beautiful captive woman in war
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְרָאִיתָ בַּשִּׁבְיָה אֵשֶׁת יְפַת־תֹּאַר וְחָשַׁקְתָּ בָהּ וְלָקַחְתָּ לְךָ לְאִשָּׁה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו בדין אשת יפת תואר. והוא אמרו יתעלה וראית בשביה וגו'. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפרק ראשון מקדושין. (כי תצא, הלכות מלכים):
That is that He commanded us about the law of the [captive woman of] beautiful form. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And you see among the captives, etc." (Deuteronomy 21:11). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the first chapter of Kiddushin. (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars)
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
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
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
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)
- 11QTa (Temple Scroll) 63:10-15 The catalog describes this reception as: stringent reinterpretation
Rabbinic aggadah
- Tanḥuma Ki Tetze 1 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Virtutibus 111-115 The catalog describes this reception as: humanitarian reframing
Josephus
- Ant. 4.257-259 reinterpreted 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 abduction/betrothal disputes and bride-price; only loosely related to wartime captive marriage Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§28-29 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws veiling regulations and legal status distinctions among classes of women; imposes no waiting/mourning provision or release-with-dignity framework comparable to Deut 21:10-14 Relationship to the parallel: shared theme A §40 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.
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Article 16
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment prescribes a regulated procedure by which a soldier may take a captive woman as a wife after a month-long mourning period, with no mechanism for the woman's consent; CEDAW Article 16 requires that marriage be entered into only with the free and full consent of both parties.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment operates entirely from the male captor's perspective, granting him the right to initiate and complete a marriage-like arrangement with a captive woman whose desires, consent, and agency are not consulted at any stage.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment presupposes the soldier's right to sexual access to the captive woman after the prescribed mourning period, without any requirement that the woman consent to the relationship — a direct violation of the principle that sexual activity requires affirmative consent.
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Article 23
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 23(3) provides that no marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses; the captive-woman procedure coerces an unwilling prisoner into a marriage relationship without any consent mechanism.