Deuteronomy 24

Deuteronomy 24:1-4

This section doesn’t deal with any reasons for divorce, or when divorce is approved. This is a specific situation when a man divorces his wife for some uncleanness. This is some impurity, something indecent, or unseemly. If she goes and marries another man and that marriage ends because of the husband’s death or him divorcing her, she cannot return to her first husband.

For the husband to accept her back as a wife is an admission that he should not have divorced her the first time. This would give the appearance of some authorized adultery. It would be as though she could go live with another man for a while and then return to her husband. The Lord called this an abomination that would bring sin to the land.

Deuteronomy 24:5

This verse relieves the newly married man from going to war for one year. He has the right to have time with his wife to father an heir and establish his home. In addition, there is the thought that the husband and wife have the right to enjoy the pleasures of marriage before he risks his life by going to war, and they both be denied those pleasures.

Deuteronomy 20:7 spoke of a similar exemption for the betrothed man.

Deuteronomy 24:6

Both stones were required to process grain. The poor would not be able to afford grain already ground. Taking a stone for collateral was considered an oppressive practice since it could prevent poor families from being able to feed themselves.

Deuteronomy 24:7

Slaves were bought and sold, as lands were conquered by kings and people put in service to other cultures or countries. Israel could buy and sell slaves humanely, within the constraints of their law. However, they could not buy and sell another Israelite. Slave traders couldn’t add stray children and unlucky adults within their land. Most folks possessed by slave traders were prisoners of war or sold by their families.

Deuteronomy 24:8-9

This reinforces the priests and Levites authority to diagnose skin diseases. “Leprosy” is a word for a category of skin ailments. Hansen disease would be included in this category. The people were instructed to honor what the priests or Levites instructed them to do.

The Lord struck Miriam with some skin ailment and she was seclude outside the camp for seven days.

Deuteronomy 24:10-13

In an effort to protect the humanitarian rights and the personal honor of the debtor, the creditor could not enter the person’s home to take the property used to secure the debt. A creditor could not take clothing for a pledge unless it was just for a short time during the day when the cloak wasn’t needed to keep warm.

We again see God establishing humane treatment of those who didn’t have the means of protecting their rights.

Deuteronomy 24:14-15

It would be oppressive towards the poor to not pay them each day for the work they performed. This prevented the Sabbath year release from being used to keep from paying a servant. God’s people were to be fair, pay their workers, without question.

If, in unfairness, the poor cry out against you, it is sin to you – the Lord will deal with you.

Deuteronomy 24:16

This conveys the idea of personal responsibility. Each person was accountable to God for their sin. This doesn’t exclude corporate responsibility, where it was the community’s responsibility to maintain ritual purity or to guard against idolatry. (Achan’s family died with him, Joshuah 7:24-26).

Succeeding generations were not punished for prior generation’s sins. However, the consequences from the sins of earlier generations could affect those generations that followed.

Deuteronomy 24:17-18

To pervert justice was to change its inherent purpose. It was to change the laws or rules to benefit some and oppress others. The vulnerable were always subject to this perversion. They were easy to abuse because they had no means of protecting or defending themselves. God protected the widows, orphans, and the alien resident.

The Israelites were to remember what it was like to be in slavery in Egypt. The Lord brought them out and protected them.

Deuteronomy 24:19-22

When the Israelites reaped the harvest, beat the olive tree, or gathered grapes, they were not to go back over and recover anything missed in the first pass. What was left was God’s provision for the impoverished. This was done so “the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.”

They were to remember the abuse of slavery and what it was like to be the impoverished.

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