| Deuteronomy 24:4
| The former husband cannot take her again to wife: because she is defiled, and is become abominable before the Lord: lest thou cause thy land to sin, which the Lord thy God shall give thee to possess.
| Defiled. This insinuates that the second marriage was a real adultery, (Calmet) and only tolerated by the law to prevent greater evils. (Haydock) --- It might be said indeed that the woman was defiled, with regard to her former husband, who could not take her back without condemning his former proceeding (Calmet); as he would seem to have only lent her for some mean consideration. (Menochius) --- Domitian took the privilege of a judge from a Roman knight, who had resumed his wife after he had divorced her for adultery. (Suetonius, viii.) But how then is the woman abominable before the Lord? Some say the thing itself is extremely dishonourable, as the Hebrew intimates, though the woman have done nothing but what the law allows. Grotius believes that the man might take back his wife, at any time, before she was married to another. But the Rabbins limit this privilege to three months after the date of separation. God forbids his priests to marry with those who had been divorced, as it is to be presumed that they have not been rejected by their former husbands without good reason, Leviticus 21:7. The man who cohabits with an adulteress, is deemed a fool; (Proverbs 18:22,) and some have believed, that it was necessary to put such away. But St. Paul advises a reconciliation, 1 Corinthians 7:11. --- To sin, or to incur the punishment due to it. (Calmet) --- If the state connived at the transgression of the law, the judgments of God would fall upon the people.
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