The Man Who Cannot Leave

About This Talk

Na'arah Betulah opens on a fixed sum and then spends fourteen rulings showing how rarely it is actually owed. A man who seduces a virgin maiden pays fifty sela'im of pure silver, a k'nas whose payment is counted among the positive commandments, and the identical fifty is owed by a man who took her by force, which is the first sign that the figure measures the offense and not the girl; a seducer acts with her consent and the other against it, and where the act occurred in a field the presumption is force unless witnesses testify she was willing, while in a city the presumption is consent because she did not cry out unless witnesses testify she was overpowered, as where he drew a sword and threatened to kill her if she cried out, a ruling the Ra'avad objected to and which the Migdal Oz reads as governing witnesses who saw from a distance. Liability is narrow: no fine unless the relations were in the ordinary manner and were observed by witnesses, no prior warning needed since warnings attach only to lashes and execution, and an age window running from three years old until bagrut, with no liability of this kind below three and none after maturity because the verse specifies a virgin maiden. The center of the chapter is not the money but the marriage. After seduction the girl, her father, or the man may each refuse, and whoever refuses, he pays and departs; where all consent he pays no fine and writes her an ordinary ketubah. Where she was forced she may refuse and her father may refuse, but he may not: if the two of them want the marriage and he does not, he is compelled, pays the fine as well, is compelled even if she is lame, blind or afflicted with tzara'at, and may never initiate a divorce as long as he lives. She is granted no marriage contract, and the Rambam gives the reason outright, that the ketubah exists so a husband will not treat divorce frivolously and is unnecessary where he cannot divorce at all. He must not marry her if she was forbidden to him even by a positive or rabbinic restriction, must divorce her if adultery is established afterward, and a High Priest must not marry her since he is commanded to marry a virgin. The prohibition on divorcing is preceded by a positive commandment, so it is rectifiable: a man who divorces her is compelled to remarry her and is not lashed, but he is lashed where she has died, has been consecrated by another man first, or where he is a priest barred from a divorcee. Ten categories carry no fine, among them a bogeret, a girl who dissolved a childhood marriage by mi'un, an aylonit, one not mentally competent, one who cannot hear or speak, one of tarnished reputation about whom two witnesses testify she solicited them, one married and divorced though still a virgin, and a convert, captive or freed maidservant who was three or older when she came in, while a girl consecrated and then divorced is owed the fine and receives it herself if she was forced. The chapter closes on the pattern that explains it: karet or a plain prohibition with a warning yields lashes and no fine since a man is never punished twice over, a positive or rabbinic prohibition leaves the fine intact because lashes were never available, a capital prohibition cancels the money entirely whether he was warned or not, and if she dies before the case reaches court there is no fine, from the father of the maiden and not the father of the dead maiden.