Daily Talk
A seaman owes his wife her conjugal rights once in six months, and if he makes a vow that puts intimacy out of reach he has exactly one week before he must dissolve it or divorce her and pay. A husband who provides everything and withholds himself adds thirty six barleycorns of silver to her contract every week and violates a negative commandment the entire time. Then the Rambam asks why such a man is not given lashes, and answers that the violation does not involve a deed. What does a legal system do with a sin that consists of nothing happening?
Nobody Is Lashed for an Absence
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About This Talk
Chapter 14 fixes the frequency of conjugal rights by a man's constitution and his trade, from every night for the pampered to once in six months for a seaman, gives the wife power to block business travel and any change of trade that would lengthen the interval, permits several wives while instructing that a man take no more than four so that each comes round monthly, and voids by divorce and payment any vow that would turn the marriage into something she cannot be compelled to accept. It then rules on both rebels, releasing at once and without her contract the wife who says she is repulsed by her husband, running four weeks of announcements and a year of forfeiture against the wife who withholds in order to cause distress, and holding the husband who withholds himself while providing everything to be a continuing transgressor whose obligation grows by thirty six barleycorns of silver a week, though no lashes are given, since the violation involves no deed. It closes on what money cannot settle, the treatment of a sick wife that the Rambam permits and calls unethical, the compelled redemption of a captive wife even at ten times her contract, and a burial that must match her social standing rather than his.