Remarrying Your Ex-Wife

Alternatively, it has no specific ritual or legal process in mind.

NJPS has “since she has been defiled,” and many commentators read this as a motive clause explaining why the woman may not be taken back (see, e.g., Carolyn Pressler, The View of Women Found in the Deuteronomic Family Laws (BZAW 216; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993), p. 61). However, most motive clauses in the Bible begin with כִּי, “because,” so it makes the most sense to read כִּי־תוֹעֵבָה הִוא לִפְנֵי יְ-הוָה as the beginning of the motive clause here. The first husband is prohibited from taking his former wife back after she has been defiled, i.e., after the first marriage has been consummated. This interpretation is found in Sifre 270, where it is attributed to R. Yose b. Kipper, who states that the law applies only after consummated marriage (נישואים), but not after inchoate (not-yet-consummated) marriage (ארוסים).

Philo continues in a very harsh tone, though it is unclear whether he is cursing the second husband (the most likely possibility) or the first husband upon reconciliation, or even some third husband:

But if any man should choose to form an alliance with such a woman, he must be content to bear the reputation of effeminacy and a complete want of manly courage and vigor, as if he had been castrated and deprived of the most useful portion of the soul, namely, that disposition which hates iniquity, by which the affairs both of houses and cities are placed on a good footing, and as having stamped deeply on his character two of the greatest of all iniquities, adultery and the employment of a pander; for the reconciliations which take place subsequently are indications of the death of each. Let him, therefore, suffer the punishment appointed, together with his wife.

Philo appears to see the woman’s abandonment of her husband as adulterous (arguably foreshadowing Jesus’s equation of divorce with adultery) and thus sees the second husband as partaking in this sin by marrying her.

The connection that Sforno draws between adultery and the term תועבה, “abhorrence,” may be based on Ezekiel 22:11: ‏וְאִישׁ אֶת־אֵשֶׁת רֵעֵהוּ עָשָׂה תּוֹעֵבָה, “They have committed abhorrent acts with other men’s wives.”

Samuel Rolles Driver, Deuteronomy (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1909), p. 272.

Marc Zvi Brettler, personal communication.

In Matthew 5:31–32, Jesus links divorce and adultery, citing this law in the process: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (NRSV translation)

Reuven Yaron, “The Restoration of Marriage,” Journal of Jewish Studies 17 (1966): 1–6.

Although it is theoretically possible that this provision is designed to prevent the wife from murdering her second husband (Zev Farber, personal communication).

David Steinberg, personal communication.

Raymond Westbrook, “The Prohibition of the Restoration of Marriage in Deuteronomy 24:1–4,” in Studies in Bible, 1986, ed. Sara Japhet (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), pp. 387–405.

The legal concept that someone who has profited by asserting a particular set of facts cannot profit again by making an assertion to the contrary.

The Bible provides no information on divorce law outside this passage, so Westbrook’s description of Near Eastern common law is based on laws a great deal earlier and a great deal later, and these laws are not consistent. Although the Laws of Hammurabi (¶141) and the Mishnah (m. Ketub. 7:6) do require a man to compensate his divorcée, the other ancient Near Eastern laws that Westbrook cites do not support his position. The Middle Assyrian Laws, in fact, grant a husband total discretion over whether to compensate his divorcée and do not mention any misconduct on her part.

The book of Jeremiah has many affinities with Deuteronomy, in both language and content. This has led scholars to the consensus that the authors of Jeremiah had access to some version of Deuteronomy.

NJPS translates the Hebrew root חנף as “defiled,” in keeping with the Septuagint, which may have been influenced in part by the connection between this verse and Deuteronomy 24:4. However, etymology and biblical usage suggest that חנף refers to sin or corruption, not defilement. Biblical verses supporting this interpretation include Jeremiah 23:11, Isaiah 33:14, and Job 20:5. 

Another example of this can be found in Lev 21:1–4, which prohibits priests from marrying divorcées and the high priest from marrying even a widow. As I discuss in my essay “Purity of Priests: Contamination Through Marriage” (TheTorah.com [2017]), this law aims to safeguard priests’ holiness by preventing contamination by the “essence” of another man. Note also the use of purity and pollution language to describe the effect of adultery on a woman in Num 5:11–31 (the law of the sotah). 

See my discussion in “The Animal Laws Before Kashrut: A System of Purity,” TheTorah.com (2015). 

 In fact, both can be found within this parashah. The laws in Deuteronomy 22:14–29 are mostly justice based.

Pressler, View of Women, p. 61.  Pressler notes that, as it deals with purity, this law may not be possible to understand fully.