Deuteronomy 21: Women's Rights

Right now I'm reading through Deuteronomy, and kind of in an Old Testament frame of mind, just reading through the law, taking it all in, thinking it all over. It really is an enlightening window into the character of God and of the early nation of Israel. The commentary here isn't really much in the way of spiritual enlightenment, but I'm recording what comes to mind as I think my way through these fascinating passages. -- Justin

When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God has delivered them into your hands, and you have taken them captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire to her, that you would have her to your wife; Then you shall bring her home to your house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in your house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that you shall go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. Deuteronomy 21:10-13

It has always been, and remains to this day in the less advanced world, standard for conquering soldiers to rape the women of conquered cities. It's always been considered one of the spoils that the victorious soldiers get to enjoy by right, like money and property.

God never allowed his people to do any such thing. He laid out this part of the law to specifically address this. If you're particularly attracted to a conquered (now enslaved woman) and just have to have her, then you have to marry her and give her a wife's full rights. You may not just force her and then leave her to her slavery.

These verses dictate that if you really decide you want to marry a captured slave girl, then you have to do these things. Shaving her head and paring her nails is a symbolic gesture separating her both from her former home (and its religion) and her bondage; and then she has to be permitted a month to mourn for her lost family and home, which a slave girl is not allowed to do. And verse 14 goes on to dictate that if you decide you don't want her after all after you've married her, you may not sell her back into slavery; she is permanently a free woman. You're allowed to divorce her and send her away (God also, remember, permitted the Jews to do this with a Hebrew wife, because of the hardness of their hearts), but you can't keep her as a slave or give her to anybody else to have as a slave. Once free, forever free.

It seems odd to me that God even allowed the Jews to marry captured heathen women; after all, didn't he command them not to marry outside the nation at all? Actually, I'm not sure whether he commanded that or not; I know he forbade them from marrying women from the specific nations God ordered Israel to annihilate, but whether he forbade them from marrying a woman from one of the nations God ordered them to simply conquer (and keep the females for slaves)... I don't know. Can anyone help me out on that one?

Either way, though, this strikes me as a precept God permitted Moses to give because of the hardness of the hearts of the Jews, just like the allowance for divorce (which God never approves of and which only results in a lifetime of problems) or marriage to multiple wives (ditto).