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 may never divorce her
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יוּכַל לְשַׁלְּחָהּ כָּל־יָמָיו
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר האונס שלא לגרש אנוסתו. והוא אמרו לא יוכל שלחה כל ימיו, וזה הלאו כבר קדמו עשה והוא אמרו ולו תהיה לאשה. וכן בארו בגמרא ממכות (דף ט"ו) שזה לאו קדמו עשה. ושם אמרו האונס שגרש אנוסתו ומתה קודם שהחזירה או נשאת לזולתו לוקה שהוא לא קיים עשה שבה כמו שהוא השרש אצלנו קיימו ולא קיימו. והתבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשלישי וברביעי ממכות. (שם, נשים הלכות נערה בתולה פ"ג):
He prohibited a rapist from divorcing the women he raped. And that is His saying, "he shall not be able to send her away all of his days" (Deuteronomy 22:29). And this negative commandment was already preceded by a positive commandment; and that is His saying, "and to him shall she be as a wife." And they accordingly explained in the Gemara, Makkot (Makkot 15a), that this negative commandment was preceded by a positive commandment. And there, they said, "A rapist that divorces the woman he raped - but she died before he brought her back, or married someone besides him - is lashed." For he did not fulfill the positive commandment in it, according to the principle with us - 'he nullified it or did not nullify it.' And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in the third and fourth [chapters] of Makkot. (See Parashat Ki Tetzeh; Mishneh Torah, Virgin Maiden 3.)
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
- Lashes (malkot)
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 Not binding
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Disputed
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) 66:8-11 The catalog describes this reception as: harmonizing restrictive
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.70-71 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.252 The catalog describes this reception as: paraphrased rationalized
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 rape of an unbetrothed virgin living in her father's house; the father may treat the assailant's wife correspondingly (talion against the assailant's wife), the assailant pays triple the bride-price, and is compelled to marry the victim with no right of divorce Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §55 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi rape of a betrothed virgin still living in her father's house; the man is put to death and the woman exonerated — penalty contrast, not a compulsory-marriage parallel 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 substantive tension.
CEDAW Article 16 requires equal rights in dissolution of marriage; the permanent no-divorce restriction operates within a forced-marriage framework (#475) and, while it prevents the perpetrator from abandoning the victim, it also means the woman's only exit from a marriage initiated through violation depends on her own action under rabbinic refinements not present in the biblical text's plain reading.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes thirty-nine lashes for a violator who divorces his victim, deploying judicial corporal punishment to enforce a marriage-restriction; post-Enlightenment criminal law prohibits corporal punishment.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; the sanction of judicial flogging imposed on a man who divorces his victim meets that prohibition.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that malkot jurisdiction lapsed with the dissolution of the ordained Sanhedrin; the flogging sanction is de jure operative but has not been enforced for approximately two millennia.