Deuteronomy 24 is a famous passage that deals with divorce. The first thing I would like to point out is that the prerequisite for divorce is that the woman is found to have been seen naked with another man. The word “uncleanness” in verse 24:1 literally means to expose her pubic area to another man. The Hebrew-Chaldean Lexicon says: (הʻervâh, er-vaw’; from nudity, literally (especially the pudenda) or figuratively (disgrace, blemish):—nakedness, shame, unclean(-ness).)
Again, only a man can issue his wife a writ of divorcement. A wife cannot divorce her husband, she was his property. If he divorced her by a written decree, she left and could marry another after a prescribed period. In that culture I believe the term of separation was four months and ten days, just as it is in the Muslim world today. If that second man also divorces her, she cannot return to the first husband.
There is a very clear point to this, and it relates to Leviticus 20:10, which says, “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” The word Adultery, Strong’s H5003, means: “Literally commit adultery: Usually of man, always with wife of another.” It is not the act of sex itself, but through the act of sex the woman turns away from her relationship with her husband.
The first point is that adultery can only be committed with a married woman; again it is the theft of another man’s property. It is her turning away from the lawful right of her husband. Similarly, the word Adultery was used when Israel turned away from God. As in Jeremiah 3: 6-8.
The second point is that the penalty is death to both parties. In the Book of Matthew, chapter 19, Jesus discusses divorce. In verse 8, he says, “He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”
The Greek word for “hardness” is: sklērokardía. It means “Destitution of spiritual perception,” Meaning that the Hebrews were refusing to obey the law, creating problems in society.
What law was it? In the event of married women having sex with another man, the husbands were refusing to kill their wives, the mothers of their children. This was an issue of inheritance, and it was clearly said in Deuteronomy 24 that once a woman had sex with another man, her husband can’t take her back because it “caused the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”
A married woman having sex with a man who wasn’t her husband was a violation of their genetic path of inheritance. Once a woman had sex with another man, the paternity of her children was in doubt, and that was a grievous issue in Hebrew culture.
I am not going to get into a debate over science or biology. Neither am I going to dive into morality of modern society and the modern roles of women versus those in history. We’re talking about a culture that was created to avoid many of the issues we face today. In another paper I will explore our modern culture and possible solutions we can apply from the lessons we learn from thousands of years of Hebrew culture.
There is another interesting word used several times in Deu 24: House, or Household. In Hebrew, this word is a proper masculine patriarchal adjective or noun. It means the place where his family dwells, especially referring to descendants. The word is inclusive and implies that there is already a family living there. The clear implication in these passages is that the man is taking these women to the place where his other wives, servants, and children live.