Deuteronomy 24: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses gives Israel a series of laws for everyday life. They cover divorce and remarriage, a year at home for a newly married man, limits on what may be taken as security for a loan, the death penalty for kidnapping an Israelite, obedience to the priests in cases of skin disease, prompt payment of a poor worker's wages, and the rule that each person is put to death only for his own sin. The chapter ends with commands to leave part of the harvest for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, tied to the reminder that Israel was once enslaved in Egypt.

Claim by Claim

1. 24:1
   • A man takes a woman and becomes her husband.
   • It may happen that she finds no favor in his eyes.
   • The reason she finds no favor is that he has found some indecency or shameful thing in her.
   • He writes her a document of cutting off, a certificate of divorce.
   • He puts the document in her hand.
   • He sends her away out of his house.
2. 24:2
   • She departs out of his house.
   • She goes and becomes another man's wife.
3. 24:3
   • The second husband may hate her.
   • The second husband writes her a certificate of divorce.
   • The second husband puts it in her hand.
   • The second husband sends her away out of his house.
   • Alternatively, the second husband who took her as his wife may die.
4. 24:4
   • Her first husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife.
   • The prohibition applies after she has been defiled.
   • Such a remarriage is an abomination before the LORD.
   • You shall not bring sin upon the land.
   • The LORD your God is giving you the land as an inheritance.
5. 24:5
   • When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out with the army.
   • No duty of any kind shall be laid upon him.
   • He shall be exempt for his household for one year.
   • He shall gladden the wife he has taken.
6. 24:6
   • No one shall take a pair of millstones, or the upper millstone alone, as a pledge.
   • Taking such a pledge is taking a life as a pledge.
7. 24:7
   • A man may be found stealing a person from among his brothers, the children of Israel.
   • The thief treats the stolen person as a slave or sells him.
   • That thief shall die.
   • You shall burn out the evil from your midst.
8. 24:8
   • Take heed in the case of the plague of a skin disease.
   • Observe diligently and act according to all that the Levitical priests teach you.
   • As I commanded the priests, so you shall observe to do.
9. 24:9
   • Remember what the LORD your God did to Miriam.
   • It happened on the way, when you came out of Egypt.
10. 24:10
    • When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, you shall not go into his house to take his pledge.
11. 24:11
    • You shall stand outside.
    • The man to whom you lend shall bring the pledge out to you outside.
12. 24:12
    • If the man is poor, you shall not sleep with his pledge in your possession.
13. 24:13
    • You shall surely return the pledge to him when the sun goes down.
    • The purpose is that he may sleep in his own garment.
    • The purpose is that he may bless you.
    • It shall be righteousness for you before the LORD your God.
14. 24:14
    • You shall not oppress a hired laborer who is poor and needy.
    • The prohibition covers a hired laborer from among your brothers.
    • The prohibition covers a foreigner residing in your land within your gates.
15. 24:15
    • You shall give him his wages on his day.
    • The sun shall not go down on the unpaid wages.
    • The reason is that he is poor.
    • He sets his life on his wages.
    • Otherwise he will cry out against you to the LORD.
    • Otherwise there will be sin in you.
16. 24:16
    • Fathers shall not be put to death for their children.
    • Children shall not be put to death for their fathers.
    • Each man shall be put to death for his own sin.
17. 24:17
    • You shall not pervert the justice due a foreigner or an orphan.
    • You shall not take a widow's garment as a pledge.
18. 24:18
    • You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt.
    • The LORD your God redeemed you from there.
    • For that reason I am commanding you to do this thing.
19. 24:19
    • When you reap your harvest in your field, you may forget a sheaf in the field.
    • You shall not go back to take the forgotten sheaf.
    • The forgotten sheaf shall belong to the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow.
    • The purpose is that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.
20. 24:20
    • When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again after yourself.
    • What remains shall belong to the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow.
21. 24:21
    • When you harvest the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward.
    • What remains shall belong to the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow.
22. 24:22
    • You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.
    • For that reason I am commanding you to do this thing.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

24:1

Verses 1-4 are a single long sentence in Hebrew: verses 1-3 set out the situation, and only verse 4 gives the actual command. The law is not authorizing or approving divorce here; it is describing a case that arises and then ruling on one point in it. The phrase translated "something indecent" (Hebrew *ervat davar*, literally "nakedness of a thing") is vague, and its meaning was already disputed in ancient times: some read it narrowly as sexual misconduct, others broadly as anything the husband found objectionable. The vagueness is in the original.

24:3

"If the latter husband hate her" sounds emotional, but the Hebrew verb behind it works in legal settings as well, closer to rejects her or repudiates her. It describes the act of putting her out, not just a feeling.

24:4

"Made unclean" is a legal and ritual status, not a statement about her character or morals: it means she now falls into a category that bars the first marriage from being resumed. "Detestable thing" (KJV "abomination") is a standard legal term for something ruled out of bounds in Israel, not an expression of disgust at the woman.

24:5

The exemption covers both military service and forced public labor, the work crews a king or community could conscript men into. For his first year of marriage the man is excused from both.

24:6

A household hand mill was a pair of stones: a heavy lower stone and a smaller upper stone that was turned by hand to grind grain into flour. Bread was ground fresh daily, so a family without its mill could not eat. Taking either stone as loan security effectively took the family's food supply.

24:7

"Treating him as property" translates a verb meaning to deal in someone as merchandise. The crime is seizing a free Israelite and turning him into a slave or a sale item, what would now be called kidnapping for enslavement.

24:8

The Hebrew word traditionally translated "leprosy" (*tsara'at*) is not modern leprosy (Hansen's disease). It covers a range of skin conditions, and the same word is used of discolorations in fabric and in the walls of houses. The priests here act as inspectors, not healers: their job was to examine, then declare a person or object clean or unclean, which determined whether he could remain in the community. The detailed procedure is set out in Leviticus 13-14. "Levite priests" means the priests drawn from the tribe of Levi, the tribe set apart for this work.

24:9

Miriam was Moses' sister. According to Numbers 12, she was struck with this skin condition after speaking against Moses and was shut outside the camp for seven days until she was declared clean. The point of the reminder is that even someone of her standing went through the required procedure.

24:10

Lending here is between neighbors, not banking. The borrower handed over an item, often a garment or a tool, as a guarantee, to be returned when the debt was paid. This law forbids the lender from walking into the house and choosing the item himself; the borrower keeps the dignity of selecting what he hands over, and the lender waits at the door.

24:11

"Abroad" in 1611 English simply means outside, out of doors. It has nothing to do with foreign countries.

24:13

An ordinary person's outer cloak was a large rectangle of cloth worn by day and used as a blanket by night; most people owned only one. That is why a cloak taken as security had to be back in the owner's hands before dark.

24:14

"Foreigner" translates *ger*, a resident outsider living permanently among Israelites. Such a person had no ancestral land and no extended family locally to defend his interests, which is why he is named alongside the poor throughout this chapter.

24:15

Day laborers were paid at the end of each working day and had no savings to fall back on; withholding a day's wage meant a night without food. "Cry out to the LORD against you" uses the language of a legal appeal: the wronged worker, having no court that will hear him, takes his case directly to God.

24:16

This concerns what a court may do, not the wider consequences of wrongdoing. Some law codes of the surrounding ancient world allowed an offender's children to be executed in his place or alongside him; this rules that out in Israel's courts.

24:17

"Fatherless" means a child whose father has died. In this society a father was the one who represented the family in legal disputes and held its land, so a fatherless child, a widow, and a resident foreigner were the three classes of person with no one to argue their case, which is why they appear together again and again in these laws.

24:18

The King James word "redeemed" translates a Hebrew term drawn from everyday commerce and family law: buying a person or piece of property back out of another's possession, as a relative might buy a family member out of debt slavery. The exodus is described using that image.

24:19

A sheaf is a bundle of cut grain stalks tied together and left standing in the field before being carried to the threshing floor. The command creates a legal right, not a suggestion: whatever is missed on the first pass belongs to the poor, and the owner forfeits his claim to it.

24:20

Olives were harvested by striking the branches with long poles so the fruit fell onto cloths spread below. A second, more thorough beating would shake loose what the first pass left; that second pass is what is forbidden.

24:21

"Gleaning" is the practice of poor people following behind the harvesters and gathering what was dropped or left. The book of Ruth turns on it: Ruth, a widow and a foreigner, feeds herself and her mother-in-law by gleaning in someone else's field.

24:22

Olives are small fruit that grow on trees. People pressed them to make oil. They used the oil for cooking and for lamps.