“…and remove her prison clothing. She will stay there in your house, mourning her father and mother for a full month; after which you may go in to have sexual relations with her and be her husband, and she will be your wife. In the event that you lose interest in her, you are to let her go wherever she wishes; but you may not sell her for money or treat her like a slave, because you humiliated her.“-Deuteronomy 21:13-14
We’re deep in the thick of studying the case whereby an Israelite soldier fancies one of the captured female prisoners of war and takes her into his home.
Verse 13 makes it clear that the soldier must give this woman 30 days to mourn her parents.
However, the 30-day waiting period had other practical applications as well.
It was also an important time for both parties, the Israelite soldier and the woman to become used to this new reality and decide if they really do want to spend the rest of their lives together.
If during the interim, the woman is generally miserable and is stubbornly resistant to her new situation, the soldier is probably going to have second thoughts about wanting to take this woman to be his wife and the marriage will not be consummated.
Therefore, verse 14 goes on to say, if the man changes his mind during the 30-day period and decides he doesn’t want this gentile woman to be his wife after all, we’re told he is to let her go free.
Now it is right here that the Torah takes a radical departure from the norms of this era.
The soldier is forbidden from keeping her as a servant in his house or selling her off as a slave.
Can you see the decency and compassion the Law has for women, even gentile female prisoners of war being expressed here?
I’m well aware that from our modern Western perspective, what we’re reading here hardly seems like a joyous alternative for the foreign woman who the soldier decides not to marry after taking her into his home for a full month after all.
However, in an era where society was completely male-dominated and women were considered as more or less property, the fact that God would establish a Law that would give not just women rights but even gentile female prisoners of war rights and hold them up as valuable human beings on the same level of men was nothing short of mind-blowing.
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