Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Deuteronomy 24:1 - 24:9

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Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Deuteronomy 24:1 - 24:9


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:



Chiefly of Divorce, Pledges, and Leprosy

v. 1. When a man hath taken a wife, by the contract which constituted a valid betrothal, and married her, as her husband assumed the position of headship in the house, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her, some shameful, loathsome, lascivious thing, probably in the form of self-pollution, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, a letter severing the marriage-tie, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.

v. 2. And when she is departed out of his house,
after such summary dismissal, she may go and be another man's wife, she had her freedom to act thus.

v. 3. And if the latter husband,
the second husband, hate her, also finding something objectionable in her person or in her deportment, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house, or if the latter husband die which took her to be his wife,

v. 4. her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife after that she is defiled,
for that is what her second marriage amounted to, so far as her first husband was concerned; it was implicitly equal to adultery; for that is abomination before the Lord; and thou shalt not cause the land to sin which the Lord, thy God, giveth thee for an inheritance, since such frivolous disregard of the sanctity of the marriage-tie was equivalent to unnatural sins of immorality and to incest, Lev_18:25. While divorce was thus permitted to the Jews, as the Lord says, on account of the hardness of their hearts, Mat_19:8-9, yet remarriage, in the circumstances as noted, brought defilement upon the woman, and a remarriage of the first husband to the divorced woman was not permitted.

v. 5. When a man hath taken a new wife,
when he has but recently been married, he shall not go out to war, not even be mustered, as one who was merely engaged to be married, Deu_20:7, neither shall he be charged with any business, with any public burden or political business; but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken, Pro_5:18, instead of burdening her with care and anxiety through the exposure of his life or through his continual absence from home on civil business.

v. 6. No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge,
neither the entire hand mill, with its lower, stationary stone, nor the upper, movable stone, the grinder alone; for he taketh a man's life to pledge, since the daily grinding of the grain and therefore the preparation of the bread for daily consumption depended upon this mill. Such an act would have been an inexcusable harshness.

v. 7. If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him,
namely, into slavery, then that thief shall die, and thou shalt put evil away from among you.

v. 8. Take need in the plague of leprosy,
Leviticus 13, 14, that thou observe diligently and do according to all that the priests, the Levites, the sons of Levi, shall teach you; as I commanded them, so ye shall observe to do.

v. 9. Remember what the Lord, thy God, did unto Miriam by the way, after that ye were come forth out of Egypt.
The point of the warning is that the children of Israel were carefully to guard against such sins as would bring the plague of leprosy upon them, for that this sickness was sometimes inflicted by the Lord as a direct punishment they had seen in the case of Miriam, Num_12:10. Deliberate disobedience of the Lord, also in disregarding the laws of sane living which nature teaches. may to this day result in bad diseases and bitter self-accusations.