Joel M Bradshaw

10When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, 11if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. 12Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails 13and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. 14If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.–Deuteronomy 21

1. In the ancient world, a conquered people many times became slaves.
2. You could only imagine what this meant regarding the women whose husbands had just been killed. They didn’t have too many options for employment.
3. In this scenario, the woman didn’t have to live as a vulnerable widow with no safety net doing whatever she could to survive. Remember, her nation had just been defeated.
4. She got to keep her dignity and was allowed to mourn.
5. She then got to have a new husband to provide for her. And if he divorced her, she couldn’t be taken advantage of by that same man.
6. You may choose to look at this situation with 21st century eyes, but I invite you instead to consider the brutal ancient world.
7. God actually made laws to care for that vulnerable foreign widow.–JMB