“ ‘They shall not marry a woman who is a prostitute, or profane. A priest shall not marry a woman divorced from her husband; for he is holy to his God.
A regular priest shall not marry a divorced woman
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאִשָּׁה גְּרוּשָׁה מֵאִישָׁהּ לֹא יִקָּחוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהיר הכהן שלא יקח חללה. והוא אמרו וחללה לא יקחו. וכל זמן שיבא עליה חייב מלקות. (שם, שם):
That He prohibited a priest - that he not take (marry) a desecrated woman. And that is His saying, "They shall not take a woman that is desecrated" (Leviticus 21:7). And each time he has sexual relations with her, he is lashed. (See Parashat Emor; Mishneh Torah, Forbidden Intercourse 17-19.)
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 prohibition
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 Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Position uncertain
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)
- Damascus Document (CD) and 4QD fragments (4Q266-273), reflecting priestly marriage purity concerns read it more strictly
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.101-111 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.276-277 The catalog describes this reception as: restated
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 the legal-social status of the divorced woman Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§137-143 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws the divorced woman's social and legal status, including property she retains, marking her as 'returned' or categorically distinct from a woman in active marriage Relationship to the parallel: shared theme Tablet A §§37-38 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 the same right to enter marriage without discrimination; prohibiting a kohen from marrying a divorced woman penalizes the woman for a freely exercised civil right (divorce) and permanently restricts her access to marriage partners based on prior marital history.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The restriction falls exclusively on the woman's marital history; a kohen who is himself divorced or widowed faces no equivalent disqualification from remarrying within the priestly caste, encoding a sex-asymmetric standard for marital eligibility.
-
general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Violation of the priestly marriage restriction carries thirty-nine lashes (malkot); no post-Enlightenment legal system imposes corporal punishment on a man for marrying a divorced woman.
-
Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; inflicting thirty-nine lashes for contracting a marriage falls within that prohibition.
-
rabbinic tradition
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Malkot requires a functioning Sanhedrin; the lashes sanction is de facto suspended, though the prohibition on a kohen marrying a divorcée remains de jure enforced in Orthodox communities and generates ongoing pastoral hardship as divorce rates rise.