Deuteronomy 24:1

Summary

Deuteronomy 24:1 opens a long conditional sentence describing a man who marries a woman, later finds "a nakedness of a thing" in her, and consequently writes her a document of separation, places it in her hand, and sends her from his house. The verse itself does not command divorce — it sets out the circumstances under which the subsequent divorce procedure (described in the following verses) applies.

Key words

• yiqqach ("he will take", H3947G) — qal imperfect, opens the conditional clause with ki ("if", H3588A), setting up a hypothetical scenario rather than a legal command.
• ve'alah ("he will marry [her]", H1166I) — sequential perfect built on the root related to ba'al ("master/husband"); it continues the narrative chain begun by yiqqach, marking the act of taking her as wife.
• timtza-chen ("she will find favor", H4672 + H2580) — the verb's subject is grammatically the woman ("she finds"), even though the sense concerns whether the man is pleased with her.
• ervat davar ("nakedness of a thing", H6172 + H1697L) — construct chain literally "nakedness of a matter," an idiomatic expression for some exposed or objectionable circumstance found in her.
• sefer keritut ("document of cutting off", H5612A + H3748) — construct phrase naming the written instrument that formalizes separation, from a root meaning "to cut off."

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of clauses linked by the narrative vav (H9001), moving through a series of sequential perfects (ve'alah, ve-hayah, ve-chatav, ve-natan, ve-shillechah) that read almost like consecutive steps in a single continuous action, even though they express hypothetical future events introduced by ki ("if", H3588A) and im ("if", H0518A). This creates a layered conditional structure: "if a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that if she does not find favor in his eyes because he has found in her a nakedness of a thing, then he will write... give... and send her away."

A notable grammatical feature is that the verb timtza ("she will find", H4672) has the woman as its grammatical subject, literally "she does not find favor in his eyes" — the Hebrew frames the lack of favor as something happening to her rather than as a judgment made by him, even though the practical sense concerns his assessment. The phrase ervat davar (H6172 + H1697L) uses a construct chain rather than a single adjective, pairing "nakedness" with "a matter/thing," an idiom whose precise scope the Hebrew leaves general rather than specifying a particular offense.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ve'alah ("he will marry her") with συνοικήσῃ ("he cohabits with her"), a term emphasizing shared dwelling rather than the marital-possession sense carried by the Hebrew root tied to ba'al. The LXX also renders "in his eyes" (be'einav, בְּעֵינָיו) as ἐναντίον αὐτοῦ ("before him"), a spatial rather than perceptual idiom. The Vulgate collapses the construct phrase ervat davar ("nakedness of a thing") into "propter aliquam foeditatem" ("because of some foulness"), rendering the two-word construct chain as a single adjectival expression and losing the literal "nakedness" imagery present in the Hebrew.