Deuteronomy 21:14, commentary and pictures

Deuteronomy means repetition of the law, and this command stands in chapters 18-21 at the close of the rehearsal of the wonderful things God had done for His people and some of the chief laws connected with Israel. The laws were given by Moses before Israel crossed the Jordan into the promised land, after he had cared like a loving father for the often rebellious people during forty years of wilderness wandering. Because he had yielded in impatient hasty words in which he was glorified instead of God, he could not go over with them, but before leaving he solemnly reminded them of the lessons God had taught them during the forty years and impressed on them the sacred import of God's holy law and the necessity of keeping it. The word nephesh in the command can be translated will, so that when the woman is released to go whither she will, her own will or desire is in view.

The command belongs to the rule in Deuteronomy 21:10-14 for female captives taken in war, including the uncorrupted girls and female children kept alive, such as those spared alive in Numbers 31:18, who were kept part for servants or slaves and part for wives and were to be reared in virtue. An Israelite man might marry such a female captive only under restrictions: before she could be taken as a wife she was to become a proselyte, with a month to mourn her parents marking her separation from her former idolatrous family and with ceremonies signifying her conversion. The law forbids using the captive woman as an object of lust or for immoral use, for which her nation had been punished, and requires making her his wife. If afterward he has no delight in her, no longer desires her, or cannot get along with her, he must let her go free whither she will, wherever she wishes, with the same freedom as an Israelite woman.

He may not sell her at all for money, enslave her, treat her as property, or make merchandise of her, because he has humbled or humiliated her; the rule thus forbids enslaving a captive woman after repudiation. In this the command shows justice, condemns selling human beings, protects the captive woman far better than slavery, and requires humane treatment. It reared her to a life many times better than in her own nation, so that slaves in Israel were many times better off than free men and women in other lands, and it put Israel far ahead of and far above the surrounding and foreign nations in the treatment of women and slaves. These regulations restricted a practice permitted in that society rather than encouraging it, and they were the best God could do with Israel without destroying free will. After its long sojourn in Egypt Israel was but little removed from the heathen themselves and could not be brought to see a higher standard, so God in toleration of human weakness suffered such concessions and gave a law much more merciful than the practice around Israel, as light and salvation in darkness leading on to still greater light; He will not force men to be machines, and the merciful character of the law shows its divine origin.