When a man takes a wife and marries her, then it shall be, if she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a certificate of divorce, put it in her hand, and send her out of his house.
Divorce is executed by the husband giving a written bill of divorce (get)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכָתַב לָהּ סֵפֶר כְּרִיתֻת וְנָתַן בְּיָדָהּ וְשִׁלְּחָהּ מִבֵּיתוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לגרש בשטר עכ"פ כשנתרצה לגרש והוא אמרו יתברך וכתב לה ספר כריתות. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשלמות במסכת גיטין. (כי תצא, נשים הלכות גירושין):
That is that He commanded us - if one wants to divorce - to divorce with a contract under all circumstances. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "he shall write her a scroll of divorce" (Deuteronomy 24:1). And the regulations of this commandment have already been completely explained in Tractate Gittin. (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Divorce)
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.
- Recorded as practiced today
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
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- 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)
- CD 4:20-5:2 read it more strictly
- 11QTemple 57:17-19 read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Gittin 90b The catalog describes this reception as: halakhic midrashic dispute
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.30-31 affirmed it treats principally the Deut 24:1-4 prohibition on restoration of the first marriage, not the divorce authorization per se
Josephus
- Ant. 4.253 affirmed it
- Vita 426 The catalog describes this reception as: attested practice Josephus's autobiographical notice of dismissing his wife
The New Testament
- Mark 10:2-9 treated it as abrogated Jesus reads Deut 24 as a Mosaic concession to sklerokardia, subordinated to Gen 2:24
- Matthew 19:3-9 read it more strictly Matthean redaction adds porneia exception, aligning with the Shammaite reading of ervat davar
- Matthew 5:31-32 read it more strictly Antithesis form citing Deut 24:1, with the porneia exception paralleling 19:9
- Luke 16:18 treated it as abrogated
The Church Fathers
- Hermas, Shepherd, Mandate 4.1 read it more strictly
- Augustine, De Adulterinis Coniugiis read it more strictly
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:229-230 carried a parallel, with divergence
- Q 65:1-2 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 divorce procedure and financial settlement Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§137-143 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna divorce of mother of children; forfeiture of house and possessions Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §59 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of lipit ishtar second-wife provision and obligations to a first wife who has borne children Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§28-30 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws husband's discretionary divorce without settlement Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §§37-38 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(1)(c) requires equal rights and responsibilities of spouses at dissolution of marriage; the get framework vests the formal initiation of divorce exclusively in the husband's unilateral act, with no legally equivalent instrument available to the wife, producing the agunah problem in which a woman can be permanently prevented from remarrying by a husband who refuses to issue the get.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment establishes a unilateral male-controlled dissolution mechanism with no corresponding female counterpart; the structural asymmetry in which the husband alone holds the legal instrument of release remains a live gender-equality conflict wherever the get is operative in contemporary Jewish legal practice.