In our previous chapter we learned that, when the Israelites would attack a city at a distance from them (not the cities that the Lord commanded to be completely destroyed), they were to put to death all the enemy soldiers and take as plunder the women, children, livestock, and other possessions of their enemy.
A man of Israel could marry one of these women if he chose. "When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife." (Deuteronomy 21:10-11)
This doesn't mean he can grab up a woman, throw her across his saddle so to speak, and ride off with her into the sunset. Certain procedures must be followed. The human dignity of the woman must be respected. Particular rights are granted to the woman under these conditions.
It is believed by many Christian and Jewish scholars that permission to marry foreign captive women was given by the Lord so the men would not engage in immoral sexual relations with the women. While marrying a woman from another culture was not ideal, it was better than having sex outside the bonds of matrimony and it was better than treating the foreign woman like a sex slave. That type of behavior defiled everyone involved. Our passage today seems to make it clear that if an Israelite soldier is attracted to one of the captured women from an enemy town, he may not have sexual relations with her unless he makes her his wife. He cannot make her his wife in every sense of the word until a whole month has passed, as we'll see momentarily.
A number of scholars propose that the woman is giving her consent to go home with the man to become his wife. If she consents to marry him, she will integrate into the culture and religion of Israel and will become---for all intents and purposes---an Israelite. She will have the rights of a wife; she will not be a slave.
The Israelite man evidently proposes to make her his wife, at which point she goes home with him as his espoused wife but the two of them do not sleep together until a thirty-day period of time has passed. She must first make a clean break with her past and mourn the death of her old life. This doesn't necessarily mean she's going to be unhappy with her new life, just that it's natural to grieve for her old home and old culture. She will not be returning to the place of her childhood. She will not live with her parents or siblings ever again. She may have lost loved ones in the battle. She will be giving up the customs and religion of her old life and taking on the customs and religion of the Israelites. She needs time to adjust before she begins living as a foreign man's wife. Here is what the man is to do after she agrees to go home with him: "Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured." (Deuteronomy 21:12-13a)
Shaving one's head was often a sign of mourning but it was also used as part of a cleansing ritual. For example, we saw this earlier in the Bible when we studied what a person was to do after being healed of a communicable disease. They had to shave their heads (beards too, in the case of men) and bathe and change into clean clothes. The foreign woman who agrees to be the wife of a man of Israel must, after coming into his home, shave her head and clip her nails. Then she is given new garments and told to go bathe and change into them.
She is in mourning but she is also undergoing a cleansing ritual because she is coming from an idolatrous culture. She may have worn her hair differently than the Israelite women. She may have worn a different style of clothes. She may have worn the extra long nails of a woman of status who never performed any domestic chores. If she is going to become the wife of an Israelite she must look like the wife of an Israelite and not like a pagan woman. If she is going to serve the God of Israel she must dress in a godly and modest manner that befits a woman of the Lord. She must look like a woman capable of running a home and raising children.
While she is learning how to integrate into the lifestyle of the Israelites, she is allowed to mourn her losses and make her peace with them. "After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife." (Deuteronomy 21:13b) The woman has enough to deal with during the first thirty days without having to immediately become the wife of a foreign man she's never seen before in her life. The Lord is protecting her from too much culture shock. During those thirty days in the man's house she gets to know him and become comfortable in his presence. This thirty-day period protects the man too. It keeps him from marrying a woman solely on the basis of physical attraction. Perhaps during the thirty days he realizes he dislikes her personality. Or perhaps he can tell the two of them will never get along. She may display no inclination to even try to like and respect him as her partner in life. He may decide he doesn't want to live with her and raise children with her. There may be all sorts of reasons why, when the thirty days are up, the man will feel this can never be a happy marriage.
In that case he is to let her go as a free woman. "If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her." (Deuteronomy 21:14) The man took her from her culture and integrated her into his own. Just as if she is a person from his own nation, he cannot sell her. An Israelite could not sell a fellow Israelite into slavery; we'll get to that portion of Scripture later in Deuteronomy. He also cannot use her as his own slave. He can't say, "Since I took you captive from another culture but you aren't going to be my wife, I'll make you into my servant instead. I'll put you out of my house and put you with the other captives." She has already been elevated above that status and cannot be returned to it.
Because he engaged himself to her (and an engagement in ancient Israel was a legal contract almost as binding as marriage) and now wants to break up with her, he owes it to her to let her leave and go wherever she wants. He is ending their engagement not on the basis of her having been unfaithful to him, which any man could rightfully do, but simply because he no longer wants to marry her. She has been dishonored (disrespected, shamed) by his rejection and in return for making her feel this way he must grant her freedom. He has no rights over her anymore. She can go and marry another man if she wants.
This is, in essence, a divorce. Since engagement was a legal contract, breaking an engagement was also a legal procedure. You'll recall from the New Testament that when Joseph thought his fiancee Mary had been unfaithful to him, he intended to "put her away" (divorce her). They had not actually taken their marriage vows and were not having sexual relations with each other but still there was a divorce-type of legal procedure that was necessary to sever their relationship. It wasn't simple like in modern times where a person can say, "I'm not in love with you anymore. A marriage between us would be a mistake. I'm breaking up with you." In ancient Israel the man had to legally declare their union dissolved and give her divorce papers. This allowed her to marry someone else if she chose. It also, in the case of a woman who had been taken captive, served as proof of her status as a free woman.
The Lord would have preferred Israelite men to marry only Israelite women, I'm sure, because there was always the danger that the foreign wife would cling spiritually to her old ways and perhaps entice the husband away from the Lord. But because the Lord knew some of the men would find the captive women attractive, and because He knew some of the men would give in to the temptation to sleep with these women outside the bonds of matrimony, He made allowances for the weakness of the flesh. A man could marry a foreign woman under the conditions outlined in our passage today.
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