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.
Not to remarry one's former wife after she has married another
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יוּכַל בַּעְלָהּ הָרִאשׁוֹן אֲשֶׁר־שִׁלְּחָהּ לָשׁוּב לְקַחְתָּהּ לִהְיוֹת לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה אַחֲרֵי אֲשֶׁר הֻטַּמָּאָה כִּי־תוֹעֵבָה הִוא לִפְנֵי יְהוָה
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.30-31 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.253 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Matthew 5:31-32 The catalog describes this reception as: reinterpreted (stringent) Engages the Deut 24:1 bill-of-divorce clause, treating remarriage after divorce as adultery rather than addressing the v.4 remarriage prohibition directly
- Matthew 19:7-9 reinterpreted it Cites Deut 24:1's bill-of-divorce concession as accommodation 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 Mesopotamian divorce provisions governing financial rights upon dissolution, which permit remarriage between former parties without the specific Israelite ban on restoring a marriage after the woman has wed another man Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§137-143 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- middle assyrian laws provisions governing the status and remarriage of a wife who has gone to or remarried another man during her husband's absence, bearing indirectly on remarriage rights after an intervening union Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence Tablet A §§36, 45 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 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.
-
Article 16
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment prohibits a woman's former husband from remarrying her after an intervening marriage, partly grounding the bar in the concept that she has been 'defiled' (huṭammaʾah) by the intervening union; CEDAW Article 16 requires equal rights for men and women in all matters relating to marriage, including the right to freely choose a spouse, and the defiled-status framing applies asymmetrically to the woman rather than to either party equally.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The prohibition is addressed exclusively to the first husband and categorises the woman's status as 'defiled' after a second marriage, a classification that attaches a negative relational or moral quality to the woman's intervening marital experience rather than to both parties equally, reflecting a gender-asymmetric purity logic.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The prescribed penalty of thirty-nine lashes for violating the remarriage prohibition employs corporal punishment, which modern criminal law universally prohibits as cruel and degrading.
-
Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; flogging as the enforcement mechanism constitutes degrading punishment under international human rights standards.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the lashes sanction requires a functioning Sanhedrin, which lapsed with the Second Temple's destruction; enforcement of the corporal penalty is suspended in practice, though the prohibition itself remains operative in Orthodox family law.
The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #481 — Structural duplicate of #481 — both cite Rambam SHM Negative 356 (Deuteronomy 24:4) with identical halakhic content. #481 is the canonical placement, integrated into the dataset's Chinukh-ordered marriage-law cluster (positive/negative pairings around #469–#483). #510–#515 form an isolated SHM-ordered run inserted into an otherwise Chinukh-ordered span. See task #93..