When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out in the army, neither shall he be assigned any business. He shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer his wife whom he has taken.
A bridegroom shall rejoice with his wife for one year and be exempt from military service
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
נָקִ֞י יִהְיֶ֤ה לְבֵיתוֹ֙ שָׁנָ֣ה אֶחָ֔ת וְשִׂמַּ֖ח אֶת־אִשְׁתּ֥וֹ אֲשֶׁר־לָקָֽח
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להתיחד חתן עם אשתו שנה תמימה שלא יצא חוץ לעיר ולא יצא לצבא ולא יעבור עליו דבר מהדברים הדומים לאלו אבל ישמח עמה עד מלאת לו שנה תמימה. והוא אמרו יתעלה נקי יהיה לביתו שנה אחת. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפרק ח' מסוטה. (כי תצא, הלכות מלכים פ"ז):
That is that He commanded us that a groom be with his wife a full year, such that he not go outside of the city, nor go out to the army nor undergo any of the things that are similar to these, but rather rejoice with her until the completion of a full year. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "he shall be free for his home one year" (Deuteronomy 24:5). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 8 of Sotah. (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 7.)
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 flat, unconditional command
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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Position uncertain
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) LVII-LIX (Law of the King), war-related exemptions context; cf. 1QM exemption lists reinterpreted it
Philo of Alexandria
- De Virtutibus 28-31 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.245 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Luke 14:20 The catalog describes this reception as: alluded The parable of the great banquet invokes 'I have married a wife, therefore I cannot come' as an excuse, possibly echoing the Deuteronomic newlywed-exemption motif, though the connection is inferential rather than an explicit citation.
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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.