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.
A man who has violated a virgin shall not divorce her
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְלוֹ־תִהְיֶה לְאִשָּׁה תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר עִנָּהּ לֹא־יוּכַל שַׁלְּחָהּ 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 Undetermined
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 3.70-71 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.252 reinterpreted it
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/defloration of unbetrothed virgin compensated by triple bride-price and compelled marriage Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §55 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws sexual offense resolved through marriage and compensation Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§197-198 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi forced intercourse with a betrothed virgin prescribed as capital offense but silent on unbetrothed victims — the legal gap that ANE parallels (including the biblical law) address through marriage-and-compensation provisions Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §130 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- laws of eshnunna intercourse with a betrothed/pledged woman taken by force treated as a capital offense; addresses the betrothed but not the unbetrothed scenario that the Deuteronomic law covers Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §26 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 direct contradiction.
CEDAW Article 16 guarantees equal rights in all matters of marriage and family law, including the right to freely dissolve a marriage; the commandment's plain-text effect is to force a woman to remain permanently married to the man who violated her, subjecting her to his continued marital authority as a consequence of his offense against her — a result CEDAW's equality framework categorically rejects.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment compels a woman to remain in a permanent legal marriage with her rapist or seducer (per the plain text of Deuteronomy 22:28–29, prior to rabbinic mitigation allowing the victim's refusal); bodily-autonomy frameworks hold that no person may be compelled to enter or remain in an intimate partnership arising from an act of sexual violence against her.
-
Article 23
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 23(3) requires the free and full consent of the intending spouses as an essential prerequisite for marriage; a forced or compelled marriage arising from an act of sexual violence, even one softened by a no-divorce restriction on the perpetrator, fails the free-consent requirement.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The prescribed penalty of thirty-nine lashes for divorcing the woman one violated 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; the commandment is recorded as not in force today, and enforcement of the corporal penalty is suspended, though the de jure norm remains.
The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #476 — Structural duplicate of #476 — both cite Rambam SHM Negative 358 (Deuteronomy 22:29) with identical halakhic content. #476 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..