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.
The man who violates a virgin shall marry her and may never divorce her
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלֽוֹ־תִהְיֶ֣ה לְאִשָּׁ֔ה תַּ֖חַת אֲשֶׁ֣ר עִנָּ֑הּ לֹא־יוּכַ֥ל שַׁלְּחָ֖הּ כָּל־יָמָֽיו
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 Not binding
- Conservative Rejected
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Position not stated
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 3.70-71 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.252 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.
- middle assyrian laws compelled marriage of seducer/rapist to unbetrothed virgin with payment to father Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §55 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws consensual case where the man pays and the father may give or withhold the daughter Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §56 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi violation of a betrothed virgin still in her father's house (man executed, woman acquitted); parallels the Deut 22:25-27 betrothed-woman provision and stands in contrast to the present unbetrothed case Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §130 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
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
CEDAW Article 16 requires that women have the same rights as men with respect to choice of spouse and to enter into marriage only with their free and full consent; this commandment requires a woman who has been sexually violated to marry her attacker, making the perpetrator's act the operative trigger for a marital obligation she has no primary right to refuse.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment makes sexual violation the legal basis for a compulsory marriage, effectively compounding a violation of bodily autonomy by imposing a permanent marital bond on the victim as the law's primary remedial mechanism.
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Article 23
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 23(3) guarantees that no marriage shall be entered into without the free and full consent of the intending spouses; a law mandating that the victim of sexual violation marry the offender violates this requirement by making the absence of consent the very trigger for a compulsory marriage.