Deuteronomy/Davarim 24: Immorality defiles the land.

[First posted in 2013, reposted and updated every year thereafter.

Here’s the original Introduction:

Oy vey, as the Jews would say!  How would the Torah-Giver view the world today which has morally deteriorated in practically every possible way ?  If Hollywood is a reflection of reality, what a dismal state of affairs this world is in.  But thankfully, much of it is only on celluloid, or so we hope!  Sometimes you wonder if art imitates life, or life imitates art.  We say, it depends on the moral and ethical foundations of the society. 

In Scripture and for the chosen people of the Torah-Giver, readers would be surprised at the standards by which YHWH expects His people to live, in all levels of relationships—husband-wife, parent-child, master-slave.  For them, the land is defiled when Torah is violated particularly in the realm of relationships.

How could immorality affect the land?  Perhaps it is reflected in how a person thinks or acts:  if he places no value in human life, or mutual respect in marital relationships, parent-child, in employer-employee, he will tend to be as thoughtless toward treatment of inanimate objects — the land, the produce, nature in general.  Are we reaping the whirlwind of climate change because of our individual moment-by-moment self-centered choices? Is there a connection between super-typhoons and hurricanes and man’s lack of environmental consciousness and corporate greed when it comes to the overwhelming release of toxic emissions into the global atmosphere shared by all of the world’s populations? 

Update 2017 –  Sample:  In US,  millions of women marched in protest against the Trump Presidency which supports the conservative stance:  Pro-LIFE vs. Pro-Choice of Women’s Lib.  Do women have freedom to decide what to do with their body?  Well, yes, as long as that freedom, like ALL freedom in other aspects, are accompanied by responsibility to use freedom properly, ethically, morally and legally.  If women indulge irresponsibly in sexual behavior that results in unwanted pregnancy, taxpayers’ money should not be used to fund abortion clinics. Women’s rights, sure, no problem!  But in this particular issue, where is the right to life of an innocent fetus/potential child/future adult who was not given the choice to live or die, whose right to life is decided upon solely by the ‘carrier’ female who acted self-centeredly and irresponsibly, resulting in producing this unborn fetus’ life?  No right to live for a helpless, nameless, individual, devoid of identity and citizenship for now, who is not protected by the law of the land?! Not to be outdone, pro-life groups are marching to counteract the ‘abort-the-baby-and-protect-woman’s-right-to-rule-her-body’ movement, officially termed ‘women’s reproductive rights’.  Admittedly there are cases relegated to “exceptions” such as when two lives are at stake — mother or child —-which to allow to live at the expense of the other? We will save a more thorough discussion of this topic to another post.  For now, we go along with newly-elected VP Pence  who gladly announced to pro-lifers  that “all across the nation,  life is winning again in America!”  

As early as Bereshith — the Creator gave man the responsibility to care for this world.  How badly has man fared?  Indeed, immorality defiles the land.  

This chapter, as all the previous ones, is an eye-opener again, in terms of the Torah requirements in the treatment of fellow-human. Isn’t an unborn child in that category?  Commentary here is from the best of Jewish minds as collected in one resource book by Dr. J.H. Hertz, Pentateuch and Haftorahs; our translation of choice is EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.—Admin1.]

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Deuteronomy/Davarim  24

Image from Christian Life Church | Rantoul, IL

(f)  DIVORCE

What we have here is no law instituting or commanding divorce.  This institution is taken for granted, as in Lev. XXI,7, and Num. XXX,10.  We are merely given one regulation in regard to it; viz.  that a man who has divorced his wife may not remarry her, if her second husband divorced her or died.

Marriage and divorce in Judaism:

MARRIAGE

Its Meaning. Marriage is that relationship between man and woman under whose shadow alone there can be true reverence for the mystery, dignity, and sacredness of life. Scripture represents marriage not merely as a Mosaic ordinance, but as part of the scheme of Creation, intended for all humanity.  Its sacredness thus goes back to the very birth of man.

They do less than justice to this Divine institution who view it in no other light than a civil contract.  There is a vital difference between a marriage and a contract.  In a contract the mutual rights and obligations are the result of an agreement, and their selection and formulation may flow from the momentary whim of the parties.  In the marriage relation, however, such rights and obligations are high above the arbitrary will of both husband and wife: they are determined and imposed by Religion as well as Civil Law.  The failure of the contract view to bring out this higher sphere of duty and conscience, which is of the very essence of marriage, led a philosopher like Hegel to denounce that view as a ‘Schandlichkeit’.

Its purpose. The purpose of building a home and of rearing a family (Gen. I,28 “Be fruitful and multiply”) figures in the Rabbinic codes as the first of the 613 Mitzvoth of the Torah.  To this commandment is due the sacredness and centrality of the child in Judaism—something which even the enlightened nations of antiquity could not understand.  Tacitus deemed it a contemptible prejudice of the Jews that ‘it is a crime among them to kill any child’.  What a lurid flashlight these words throw on Graeco-Roman society!  It is in such a society that Judaism proclaimed the Biblical view that the child was the highest of human treasures.  “O Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing that I go childless?” was Abraham’s agonizing cry.Of what value were earthly possessions to him, if he was denied a child who would continue his work after him?  This attitude of the Father of the Hebrew people has remained that of his descendants throughout the ages.  A childless marriage was deemed to have failed of its main purpose; and, in ancient times, was admitted as ground for divorce after ten years.  In little children—it was taught—God gives humanity a chance to make good its mistakes.  They are ‘the Messiahs of mankind’—the perennial regenerative force in humanity.  No wonder that Jewish infant mortality is everywhere lower than the non-Jewish—often only one-half of that among the general population.

(b)  Companionship is the other primary end of the marriage institution.  Woman is to be the helpmate of man.  A wife is a man’s other self, all that man’s nature demands for its completion physically, socially, and spiritually.  In marriage alone can man’s need for physical and social companionship be directed to holy ends.  It is this idea which is expressed by the term kiddushim (‘hallowing’) applied to Jewish marriage—the hallowing of two human beings to life’s holiest purposes.  In married life man finds his truest and most lasting happiness; and only through married life does human personality reach its highest fulfillment.  ‘A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife,’ says Scripture.  Note that it is man who is to cleave to his wife, and not the woman, physically the weaker, who is to cleave to her husband; because in the higher sphere of the soul’s life, woman is the ethical and spiritual superior of man. ‘Even as the wife is’—say the Rabbis, ‘so the husband is.’  The celibate life is the unblessed life:  Judaism requires its saints to show their sanctity in the world, and amid the ties and obligations of family life.  ‘He who has no wife abides without good, help, joy, blessing or atonement.  He who has no wife cannot be considered a whole man’ (Talmud).  The satisfaction of the needs of physical and social companionship outside the sacred estate of matrimony, unhallowed by religion and unrestrained by its commandments, Judaism considers an abomination.  And such extra-marital relations are prohibited just as sternly with non-Jewish women as with Jewish. Thus, Joseph resists the advances of the heathen temptress with the words:  “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Gen. XXXIX,9); and the Book of Proverbs is clear on the attitude of Judaism to the ‘strange woman’—married or unmarried (see Chapters II,V-VII).   No less emphatically than in Scripture is purity demanded by the Rabbis.  The New Testament accepted the Jewish view on the subject in its entirety.  the whole of Gospel teaching on this subject, even Matthew V,28, is to be found in the Talmud.

The Marriage Ceremony.  The Marriage Service consists of the blessings of Betrothal, the formula of Marriage, the reading of the Kethubah, and the seven blessings of Sanctification.  In later times was added the breaking of the glass.  Originally a considerable time intervened between the Betrothal, by which the bridal couple became bound for all purposes save living together, and the Nuptials proper.  Since the 16th century however, Betrothal is always combined with the Nuptials.  The solemnization of both the Betrothal and Nuptials opens with the benediction over a cup of wine.  Wine is a symbol of joy, joyousness at a wedding being a religious duty; and in the Wedding Grace, ‘we bless our God in Whose abode is joy.’  The couple drink from both cups of wine—an indication of their resolve henceforth to share whatever destiny Providence may allot to them.

The Betrothal blessing reads:—

‘Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us by thy commandments, and hast given us command concerning forbidden marriages; who hast disallowed unto us those that are betrothed, but hast sanctioned unto us such as are wedded to us by the rite of the canopy and the sacred covenant of wedlock.  Blessed are thou, O Lord, who sanctifiest thy people Israel by the rite of the canopy and the sacred covenant of wedlock.’

The commands forbidding marriages are given in Leviticus XVIII and XX. . . .The Blessings ‘cover the whole of Israel’s history. Each new home is thus brought into relation with the story of Creation and with Israel’s Messianic Hope’ (Abrahams).  At the conclusion of the Blessings, a glass is broken by the bridegroom—a reminder of the Destruction of Jerusalem.  Another symbolization may also be mentioned: just as one step shatters the glass, so can one act of unfaithfulness for ever destroy the holiness and happiness of the Home.  The Service concludes nowadays with the pronouncement of the priestly benediction.

Monogamy. The Biblical ideal of human marriage is the monogamous one.  The Creation story and all the ethical portions of Scripture speak of the union of a man with one wife.  Whenever a Prophet alludes to marriage, he is thinking such a union—lifelong, faithful, holy.  Polygamy seems to have wellnigh disappeared in Israel after the Babylonian Exile.  Early Rabbinic literature presupposes a practically monogamic society; and out of 2,800 Teachers mentioned in the Talmudim, one only is stated to have had two wives.  In the 4th century Aramaic paraphrase (Targum) of the Book of Ruth, saying, ‘I cannot marry her , because I am already married; I have no right to take an additional wife, lest it lead to strife in my home.’ Such paraphrase would be meaningless if it did not reflect the general feeling of the people on this question.

Monogamy in Israel was thus not the result of European contact.  As a matter of fact, long before the rise of Christianity.  The New Testament does not prohibit polygamy, but only demands that a bishop or presbyter shall have but one wife (I Tim. III,2).  As late as Luther’s day, bigamy was not unknown in Western Europe; and in the 13th century, for example, monogamy was but a name, at any rate in the upper classes of society.  The Church, too, found it difficult to enforce strict monogamy among Eastern Christians.

DIVORCE

In the first pre-Christian century, there was a fundamental cleavage in the religious schools of Palestine in regard to Divorce. The dispute turned over the interpretation of Deut. XXIV,1; but as so often in theological controversy, the words of the Sacred Text were merely the pegs upon which to hang conflicting theories of life on the part of the disputants.  The School of Shammai maintained that a marriage could be dissolved only by unchastity on the part of the wife, because adultery alone sapped the foundation of marriage and made its continuance impossible.  The school fo Hillel argued that divorce should be permitted for any reason which entailed a rupture of domestic harmony resulting in a daily violation of one of the main purposes of marriage—companionship.  ‘The Jewish sectaries (the Essenes, the ‘Zadokiets’ of Damascus, the Samaritans and Jewish Christians) opposed, in addition, the marrying a second wife as long as the divorced wife was alive.  Official Judaism, throughout the ages, followed the principle of the School of Hillel; and, of course, the unnatural prohibition for the parties to marry again is quite unknown to it.  We shall see that in recent generations the civilized nations are more and more coming to adopt the Jewish attitude on this basic and vital question.

Not that Judaism ever lost sight of the fact that divorce was a calamitous necessity.  ‘I hate divorce,’ is the Divine message by the Prophet Malachi (II,16).  ‘The very altar weeps for one who divorces the wife of his youth’, says the Talmud.  Later legislation made the writing and the delivery of the Get difficult and protracted, in order to facilitate attempts at reconciliation.  The rabbi was bidden to exhaust every possible expedient to dissuade husband and wife from proceeding to divorce.  ‘If there is a doubt as to the originator of the quarrel, the husband is not believed when he asserts that the wife has commenced the dispute, as all women are presumed to be lovers of domestic ‘peace’ (Shulchan Aruch).

Image from www.chabad.org

New Testament Divorce.  It is impossible to evade reference to the New Testament position on the question of divorce.  According to Matt. XIX,3, divorce was to be permitted, albeit for the one and sole purpose of adultery.  But it is now generally recognized that the Founder of Christianity desired the prohibition of divorce to be absolute, and taught that a divorced man or woman who married again was guilty of adultery (Mark X,2-12).  The Roman Catholic Church accordingly refuses in any way to recognize divorce, though in very rare cases it grants decrees of nullity.  Outside that Church, however, the conscience of mankind has long been struggling with the problem of divorce as inherited from the Gospels.  Nearly all Protestant States and some Catholic ones, legislate today with due regard to the imperfections of human nature.  They not only recognize adultery as ground for divorce, but realize that there are other causes as well (e.g. drunkenness, disease, felony) that destroy the moral foundations of the family, interfere with the upbringing of the children, embitter the lives of two human beings, and often lead them to degradation and crime.

1 When a man takes-in-marriage a woman and espouses her, 

and it happens: if she does not find favor in his eyes 

-for he finds in her something of “nakedness”- 

he may write for her a Document of Cutoff;

he is to place (it) in her hand 

and (thus) send-her-away from his household.

some unseemly thing.  The School of Shammai translated these words by ‘a thing of indecency’, and maintained that divorce could only be allowed if the wife was guilty of unchastity; whereas the school of Hillel rendered them by ‘indecency in anything,’ implying that a wife may be divorced also for reasons other than unchastity.

bill of divorcement. lit. ‘a writing of cutting off,’ a certificate of total separation from her with whom he had hitherto lived ‘as one flesh’ (Gen. II,24).  Divorce was no longer to be at the arbitrary will and pleasure of the husband and by mere word of mouth, but upon reason given and by means of a formal document which demanded the intervention of a public authority.  The marriage bond is holy; but whilst it is inviolable, it is not indissoluble.

2 Now when she goes out from his house,

(if) she goes and becomes another man’s,
3 and should he too come-to-hate her, the latter man, (then) he (too) is to write her a Document of Cutoff,

placing it in her hand

and sending-her-away from his household; 

or if he should die, the latter man, who took her for him as a wife,
4 he may not return, her first husband who sent-her-away,

to take her to be his as a wife,

since she has made-herself-tamei;

for it is an abomination before the presence of YHVH,

that you do not bring-sin-upon the land

that YHVH your God is giving you as an inheritance!

defiled.  To her former husband only, by her marriage with another man.  The strong expression defiled is used in order to condemn the easy passage of a woman between one man and another, which must always entail some degradation of the wifely ideal, and might lead to virtual adultery though the formality of the law would be observed (Nachmanides, Sforno).  ‘Woman is a moral personality and not a thing, that a man may hand over to another, and then take back again at pleasure (Koenig).  David remarried Michal (II Sam. III,14), but she was taken from him, and not divorced by him.

cause the land to sin. Immorality defiles the land.

(g)  LAWS OF EQUITY AND HUMANITY

5.  EXEMPTION FROM WAR

Another instance of the universality of these laws of mercy—their penetrative sympathy and their superhuman impartiality, courtesy, and consideration (Welch).

5 When a man takes a new wife, 

he is not to go out to the armed-forces, 

he is not to cross over to them for any matter; 

(free-and-)clear let him remain in his house for one year, 

and let him give-joy to his wife whom he has taken.

6.  MILLSTONE NOT TO BE TAKEN IN PLEDGE

The mill consisted of two circular stones, one above the other.  The removal of one would make the other useless, and would deprive the family of its daily supply of bread.

6 There is not to be seized-for-payment a handmill or an upper-millstone,

for (one’s) life would (thus) be seized.

a man’s life.  To deprive a man of any tools indispensable for his livelihood is equivalent to depriving him of his life.  This was also forbidden among the Greeks and Romans, and in the ancient Common Law of England.

7.  MAN-STEALING

A repetition, with expansion, of the law in Exod. XXI,16.

deal with him as a salve. Or, ‘as a chattel’; the same phrase is used in XXI,4.

shall die.  The Code of Hammurabi decrees death for stealing a slave, the interest being not in human but in property rights.

8-9.  LEPROSY

7 When a man is found to have stolen a person from his brothers, from the Children of Israel,

and he deals-treacherously with him and sells him: 

die that thief shall; 

so shall you burn out the evil from your midst!
8 Be-careful regarding the affliction of tzaraat, take exceeding care to observe (the rules); according to all that the Levitical priests instruct you, as I have commanded them, you are to carefully observe.

take heed.  The laws of leprosy are to be rigorously followed.  These are laid down in Lev. XIII and XIC.  ‘Even thought he leper be a king like Uzziah, they most not honour him (by exempting him from the prescribed restrictions), but must shut him out from the camp in isolation’ (Rashbam).

Miriam. Prophetess and sister of Moses thought she was, when smitten with leprosy, she was yet separated from the camp seven days; num. XII,14.

10-13.  TAKING AND RESTORING A PLEDGE

As usury was forbidden in Israel, and there were elaborate precautions against excessive indebtedness, there were fewer possibilities of oppression in connection with debt than elsewhere.  It was permitted to give pledges, but in the taking of these, the creditor must spare the debtor’s feelings.  He may not insolently invade the debtor’s house, and select as a pledge any article that he deems fit.  The dignity, as well as the need, of the poor man must be respected.  ‘Even finer than the humanitarianism of these laws is their noble respect for human personality.  Deuteronomy strikes the note of what is finest in Hebrew ethics and one of its great contributions to the world.  Perhaps it is seen most finely, because most simply, in the direction, When thou dost lend thy neighbour any manner of loan, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch the pledge.  For every Israelite, however poor, hast he right to invite into or to execute from the four walls of the cabin he calls his home’ (Welch).

10 When you lend to your neighbor, a loan of anything,

you are not to enter his house to take-his-pledge as a pledge.
11 Outside you are to stand, 

and the man to whom you have lent is to bring out the pledge to you, outside.

thou shalt stand without. Unless he invites thee to enter.  Just because he requires our help, we are to remember how it deteriorates the poor to be dealt with in an unceremonious, tactless way, even by the benevolent (Harper).

12 And if he is an afflicted man, you may not lie down in his pledge;
13 you are to return, yes, return to him the pledge when the sun comes in, 

that he may lie down in his garment, 

and bless you, 

and yours will be righteous-merit, before the presence of YHVH your God.

sleep in his garment.  If the debtor be a poor man he would probably give as security some necessary article of clothing, such as the similah, worn for protection against wind and rain, and used as a covering during sleep.  In Palestine the nights are mostly cold, and the poor man has no covering save his clothes.  Hence the command that the creditor return such garment at nightfall, and not heartlessly deprive him of what is an essential of everyday life.  Such heartlessness was peculiarly offensive to Israelite feeling; Amos II,8.

and bless thee.  A generous treatment of the poor will call forth their blessing.

it shall be righteousness.  An act of kindness such as this is an act in its double sense of ‘charity’ and ‘righteous living’.

The spirit of the above law is in absolute contrast to the Greek and Roman attitude towards the poor. [Among the Romans, the idea of property took precedence over the idea of humanity.  Thus, if the debtor was unable to repay the sum advanced to him, the Roman creditor could imprison him in a private dungeon, chain him to a block, sell him into slavery, or slay him.  With such a deification of property, it is small wonder that poverty was in itself considered dishonouring; and that pity for the poor was looked upon as a sickly sentimentality unworthy of the free man.  Virgil praises one of his heroes because he never felt any sympathy with sufferers through want; Seneca thinks it unnatural to recoil in horror from a poor man; and Plautus declares feeding the hungry to be cruelty, because it merely prolongs a life of misery.]

14-15.  TREATMENT OF WORKMEN

The workman is not to be wronged by being kept waiting for his wage.  It must be punctually paid him the day he earns it; Lev. XIX,13.

14 You are not to withhold from a hired-hand, an afflicted and needy-one,

(whether) from your brothers or from your sojourner that is within your land, within your gates.

or of thy strangers. One and the same law must protect the Israelite and the non-Israelite worker.

[EF]  Timely Payment (24:14-15): “Oppression” here consists of delaying the payment of a worker’s wages. The “calling out” to YHWH recalls a similar cry of the oppressed in /ex. 22:22,26. Overall, the rhetoric of the passage far exceeds that found in a parallel text in the Holiness Code (lev. 19:13).

15 On his payday you are to give his wage, you are not to let the sun come in upon him, 

for he is afflicted, for it he lifts his life-breath-

that he not call out against you to YHVH, and there be sin upon you!

in the same day. He must receive the wages on the same day; i.e. as soon as his day’s work is over; Lev. XIX,13, ‘the wages of a hired servant shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.’

upon it. The sun must not go down whilst the wages are still unpaid.

sitteth his heart upon it.  Because he needs it to buy food for his family in the evening.  Rashi translates the Heb. words, ‘for it he risks his life his work.’

16.  INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

In ancient times the family of a criminal often suffered supreme punishment with him.  Though the family is a moral unity, and the ethical solidarity of the nation is never to be lost sight of, no judge or tribunal must assume the power of putting the parents to death for a sin committed by the children, nor of putting the children to death for a sin committed by the parents.  Ezekiel strikingly emphasized this fundamental teaching: ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father with him, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son with him’ (XVIII,4,20).

16 Fathers are not to be put-to-death for sons, 

sons are not to be put-to-death for fathers:

every-man for his own sin (alone) is to be put-to-death!

for the fathers.  Or, in addition to the fathers’ (Koenig).  In II Kings XIV,5-6, Amaziah king of Judah slays ‘his servants who had slain the king his father; but the children of the murderers he put not to death’, in obedience to this law of Deuteronomy.  Some explain the prohibition to mean: the fathers shall not be permitted to die, instead of the children, nor shall the children be permitted to die instead of the fathers.  This was actually the case in Babylonian law.  If, through faulty construction, a house collapsed and a child was killed, then it was not the jerry-builder, but the child  of the jerry-builder, that was put to death; see ‘Son for son, and daughter for daughter, in Code Hammurabi’.

17-18.  INJUSTICE TO THE STRANGER, ORPHAN, AND WIDOW

‘It is astonishing to find how many of the laws—especially in the great-hearted Book of Deuteronomy—are expressly designed to protect the interests of the impoverished and defenceless members of society’ (McFadyen).  ‘No other system of jurisprudence in any country at any period is marked by such humanity in respect to the unfortunate’ (Houghton).  The stranger, fatherless, and widow should be treated with a generous perception of the peculiar difficulties of their lot.  Care for them is characteristic of Jewish civilization generally, whether in ancient medieval, or modern times.

[EF]  Fathers and Children (24:16): An issue of deep concern to the exiles in Babylonia, this questioning of free will is raised a number of times in the Bible. In Ex. 22:23, God was to punish oppressors by making their “wives widows, and (their) children orphans”; Deuteronomy has toned this down by punishing the evildoer and not his or her children. Cf. Fishbane (1988) for discussion.

17 You are not to cast aside the case of a sojourner (or) an orphan, 

you are not to seize-for-payment the clothing of a widow.

[EF]  The Oppressed Again (24:17-22): The three classic powerless groups in Israel and elsewhere have been mentioned before, but now receive help based on a particularly Israelite rationale: the people’s historical experience of having been oppressed in Egypt. For a parallel passage, cf. Ex. 22:23-24.

18 You are to bear-in-mind that serf were you in the land of Egypt, 

19-23.  GENEROSITY TO THE LANDLESS

19 When you cut down your harvest in your field, and you forget a sheaf in the field, 

you are not to return to get it; 

for the sojourner, for the orphan and for the widow it shall be,

forgot a sheaf.  As this commandment could not be consciously observed, Rabbi Zadok grieved over the fact that he had never carried out this mitzvah.  when at last he forgot some sheaves on his fields, he rejoiced, and made a festival for himself and his household.

olive-tree.  The Rabbis declared that the law of leaving the corner of the field unreaped (Lev. XIX,9), so that the poor might come and take it, applied also to trees.  ‘In gathering olives, the fruit is brought to the ground either by shaking the boughs of beating them with a long palm branch.  At the present time, the trees are beaten on a certain day announced by a crier, after which the poor are allowed to glean what is left.  Gleaning is a beautiful and kindly custom still surviving to some extent in Palestine, but fast disappearing before the introduction of modern methods of harvesting’ (Dummelow).