They shall fine him one hundred shekels of silver, and give them to the father of the young lady, because he has given a bad name to a virgin of Israel. She shall be his wife. He may not put her away all his days.
The man who defames his bride 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 מוציא שם רע שלא לגרש את אשתו והוא אמרו לא יוכל לשלחה כל ימיו, וזה הלאו גם כן קדמו עשה, והוא אמרו ולו תהיה לאשה. ודינו בגרושין לענין המלקות כדין האונס כמו שהתבאר בסוף מכות ובשלישי וברביעי מכתובות. (שם, שם):
He prohibited one who puts out a bad name [upon his wife] from divorcing [her]. And that is His saying, "he shall not be able to send her away all of his days" (Deuteronomy 22:19). And this negative commandment was also preceded by a positive commandment; and that is His saying, "and to him shall she be as a wife." And the law for him with divorce, concerning lashes, is the same as the law for the rapist, as has been explained at the end of Makkot and in the third and fourth [chapters] of Ketuvot. (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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding, with modification
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) LXV:7-15 reinterpreted it
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.79-82 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.246-248 expanded it homiletically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 24:4 carried a parallel
- Q 24:6-9 carried a parallel, with divergence
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.
- code of hammurabi slander of a nadītu or married woman's reputation, punished by shaving half the slanderer's head (muttatu) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §127 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws false accusation of a man's wife of sexual misconduct, slanderer flogged and subjected to forced labor Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §18 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws one man repeatedly alleging another man's wife is sexually loose without proof Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §17 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 substantive tension.
CEDAW Article 16 requires equal rights of spouses in dissolution of marriage; the permanent no-divorce restriction imposed on the defamer locks both parties in a marriage constituted through false accusation, and while rabbinic refinement grants the woman the practical exit, the biblical norm does not.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment imposes thirty-nine lashes on a man who divorces the wife he falsely defamed; judicial corporal punishment is prohibited under post-Enlightenment criminal law.
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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 imposition of flogging as the enforcement sanction for violating the no-divorce prohibition meets that standard.
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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.