Deuteronomy 21: 10 – 14 “When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them captive, if you see a beautiful woman among them, and you desire her and want to take her as your wife, then you shall bring her into your house. She must shave her head, trim her nails, and put aside the clothing of her captivity.
After she has lived in your house a full month and mourned her father and mother, you may have relations with her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. And if you are not pleased with her, you are to let her go wherever she wishes. But you must not sell her for money or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.”
The realities of war! God has already ordered the Israelites to totally destroy six tribes and to bring all the other cities under their control, killing all the men in those cities. Obviously, the women and their children who are left will need husbands to care for them, so these women will become wives. Now God is laying down the way these ladies are to be treated, and those conditions are quite compassionate.
1. The woman is to shave her head, trim her nails, and lay aside the clothes she was wearing when she was captured. Presumably, the new husband will provide appropriate clothing for the woman. Shaving the head, trimming the nails and laying aside old garments all indicate that the lady is entering a totally new life. (At the same time, in case she has head lice, this will take care of those as well.)
2. The woman is to be given one month in which she can mourn her father and mother, presuming that they have been killed during the conquest. During this time, the husband is not to have sexual relations with the woman.
3. Once the month of mourning is completed, the husband may have sexual relations with the woman.
4. If for any reason the husband decides that he does not want the woman as a wife, the woman is free to go wherever she desires. But the man cannot sell the woman for money or reduce her status to that of a slave, since he was the one who took her into his house and his bed in the first place. She might have married someone else who would have cherished her.
APPLICATION: Reading these lines, we wonder how any woman can possibly have been willing to subject herself to such a marriage; however, consider the circumstances. The reality of the situation was that without a husband to support and protect her, a woman in that time was vulnerable to all kinds of assaults and had very few means of supporting herself and her children. These marriages would at least protect the woman and allow her children to also survive.
In the history of the United States there are many stories of white women who were kidnapped by Native Americans and forced into marriages. Despite the circumstances, many of these marriages proved to be happy ones. Not all the women eventually “rescued” were pleased to return to their previous way of life. And then there is the phenomenon of Stockholm Syndrome.
Several years ago, a number of people were taken hostage in Stockholm, Sweden by a group of criminals. During captivity, many of these people came to sympathize with their captors and some victims even defended these captors after their release. It is possible that this same phenomenon might have taken place in ancient times as well.
There is yet another possibility as to why these women might agree to a forced marriage. These women were coming out of cultures in which they were forced to sacrifice children to propitiate various gods. Their husbands may have been having sex with temple prostitutes and then comparing these women with the prostitutes. At the same time, the status of women in those cultures may have been so low that they were virtual slaves. Due to God’s ordinances, however, the Israelites utterly abhorred child sacrifice and cult prostitution. The Israelites treated women fairly. Once a captive wife had the opportunity to experience the Israelite culture, she might find that she was far better off than she had been in her original situation.
We live in an age when human trafficking is flourishing as never before. But God hates sexual slavery, as well as prostitution and slavery of any kind. The rules laid down in this passage were given for that particular time and place, but they by no means should be used to justify any form of forced marriage or of maltreatment of women. The proof of this lies in the affirmation that if the husband becomes dissatisfied with his captive bride, he is to let her go freely wherever she chooses.
When God was giving these commands, He already knew all the women and children who would benefit from them. God loved those women and children just as much as He did the Israelites. And God was already making provision before hand so that captives would be treated humanely and with dignity. God also wanted His people to behave in such a holy fashion that anyone who was captured would see the difference and would be attracted to worship Him instead of demons. There never was – nor is – nor shall be any limit to God’s love.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord, help us to graphically demonstrate Your love to those around us so that they will be attracted to You, the One True Living God. In the matchless Name of King Jesus. Amen.
Burunche's Blog 
December 18, 2021 at 8:50 pm
Such a good message here