her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife after she is defiled; for that would be an abomination to Yahweh. You shall not cause the land to sin, which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance.
A divorced woman who remarried and was divorced again or widowed may not return to her first husband
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יוּכַל בַּעְלָהּ הָרִאשׁוֹן אֲשֶׁר־שִׁלְּחָהּ לָשׁוּב לְקַחְתָּהּ לִהְיוֹת לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה אַחֲרֵי אֲשֶׁר הֻטַּמָּאָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר האדם מהחזיר את גרושתו אחר שנשאת לזולתו. והוא אמרו לא יוכל בעלה הראשון אשר שלחה לשוב לקחתה אחרי אשר הטמאה. והעובר על לאו זה לוקה. והתבארו משפטי מצוה זו במקומות מיבמות. (שם, נשים הלכות גירושין פ"ט):
He prohibited a man from bringing back his divorcee after she married someone else. And that is His saying, "Her first husband who divorced her may not remarry her to be his wife after her having been defiled" (Deuteronomy 24:4). And one who transgresses this negative commandment is lashed; and the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in [various] places in Yevamot. (See Parashat Ki Tetzeh; Mishneh Torah, Divorce 9.)
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
- 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
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding
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.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Deuteronomy §270 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.30-31 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.253 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 5:31-32 The catalog describes this reception as: reinterpreted stringent references the Deuteronomic sefer keritut while intensifying the prohibition on remarriage as adultery
- Matthew 19:7-9 reinterpreted it Jesus attributes the Mosaic divorce certificate to hardness of heart
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 2:230 inverted it polemically
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 remarriage of a wife during the husband's absence/captivity Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§135-136 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws status of a wife whose husband has disappeared and her remarriage Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §§36-37 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.
The commandment assigns permanent 'defiled' status to a woman based on her sexual-marital history (having been divorced and remarried), with no parallel restriction applying to the first husband's remarriage; CEDAW Article 16 requires equal rights for men and women in marriage, divorce, and its dissolution.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The prohibition rests on the concept that a woman is rendered ritually incompatible for reunion with her first husband by virtue of sexual relations with a second man, a defilement logic that operates asymmetrically and has no cognate norm governing the remarried first husband's eligibility.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The sanction of thirty-nine lashes for a first husband who remarries his divorced and widowed wife — a consensual adult act — is incompatible with post-Enlightenment proportionality principles that categorically reject 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 treatment or punishment; the application of judicial flogging (malkot) to a man who consensually remarries his divorced wife directly contradicts this prohibition.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that lashes may be administered only by an ordained Sanhedrin of twenty-three, which has not functioned since the Second Temple era; the corporal sanction is de jure operative but de facto unenforceable.