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Issurei Biah 17 sets out which women are closed to the priesthood and then spends its last third refusing to close it on anything short of proof. Three women are forbidden to every priest by Scriptural law, a divorcee, a zonah and a challalah, with a High Priest adding a widow, and bound by the High Priest's restrictions are one anointed with the oil of anointment, one who assumed office in the additional garments, one serving, one appointed and then removed, and the priest anointed to address the nation before a war, all commanded to marry a virgin and forbidden a widow. For the three categories a priest is lashed only where he both married the woman and lived with her, since the verse says they shall not take, which the Rambam reads as requiring marriage, where the Ra'avad holds the prohibition applies without consecration; the High Priest and the widow break that pattern, because he is lashed for relations alone from the words he shall not desecrate, the other three having been disqualified before he came near them while she was acceptable until he desecrated her, and consecrating a widow and living with her carries two sets of lashes. Whenever the priest is lashed the woman is lashed, there being no difference between a man and a woman in punishment apart from a designated maidservant, and a priest who lives with a gentile woman is lashed for relations with a zonah, since she cannot be consecrated at all. Halachah 8 states a rule for the whole Torah, that one prohibition does not take effect where another is in force unless both arrive together, the later forbids additional entities, or its scope sweeps in others alongside what was forbidden, and the chapter then builds an architecture out of it: a woman widowed, then divorced, then made a challalah, then made a zonah leaves a High Priest who lives with her once liable for four separate sets of lashes, each status having closed a wider door, first ordinary priests, then terumah, then an Israelite, with an ordinary priest taking three in the same sequence and only one set where the order is altered, and several widowhoods or divorces adding nothing. The positive commandment on a High Priest is to marry a virgin maiden, which the Rambam reads as the span from twelve to twelve and a half, never two wives at once, which the Ra'avad questions from the verse about Yehoyada; a woman who lost her virginity without relations is closed to him, one who had relations earlier costs him no lashes but must be divorced with a get, a girl consecrated as a minor who reached full maturity first he may not marry because her body underwent a change though he need not divorce her if he did, and a maiden he himself forced or seduced he may not marry even though he caused the loss, and must divorce if he married her. The final rulings turn to doubt. A chalutzah is forbidden by Rabbinic tradition because she resembles a divorcee, and relations carry stripes for rebellious conduct, but a doubtful chalutzah is prevented beforehand and not divorced afterward, she and her child remaining acceptable, while a doubtful divorcee, widow, zonah or challalah brings stripes and a compelled divorce with a get, since the Maggid Mishneh explains that a Scriptural doubt is ruled stringently; a girl released by mi'un is permitted to a priest even where a get and a remarriage preceded the refusal, and a woman divorced after consecration alone is forbidden exactly as one divorced after marriage. Then the rumors: a report that a priest gave his wife a get while she lives with him and serves him does not force a divorce, a rumor following a marriage being insufficient, though a later marriage to another priest contracted while that rumor stood is dissolved; a court-substantiated rumor that she was consecrated and then divorced does make her status suspect because the prohibition is Scriptural, while one that she is a chalutzah does not because it is Rabbinic, with the Ra'avad stricter; rumors that a virgin has had relations, or that she is a maidservant, disqualify nothing, and the Maggid Mishneh draws out the principle that questionable lineage requires explicit testimony; and the chapter ends with a woman whose husband separated from her over violated practices of modesty or over witnesses to unseemly conduct and died without giving her a get, who is permitted to a priest, since a woman like her is not forbidden unless there is definite testimony or she accepts the prohibition on herself by admitting it.