What the Law Will Not Pretend

About This Talk

Chapter 3 measures adultery against the reality of the marriage it violates. A man who has relations with the wife of a minor is not liable, even where a nine year old brother had relations with a yevamah, and the same holds for the wife of a deaf-mute, of one mentally unstable, of a tumtum or androgynus, for a deaf-mute or unstable woman married to a capable man, and for a woman whose betrothal or divorce is doubtful; where they acted willfully they receive stripes for rebellious conduct. A minor girl betrothed by her father to an adult is a married woman by Torah law, so her partner is strangled while she bears no liability and is forbidden to her husband, but where she has the right of mi’un he receives only stripes and she remains permitted even to a priest. A married priest’s daughter who commits adultery is burned whether her husband is a priest or an Israelite, even a mamzer or natin, while her partner is strangled, and an Israelite married to a priest is strangled. The consecrated maiden and her partner are stoned only while she is a maiden, a virgin, betrothed and in her father’s home; once she comes of age, enters the chuppah, or is handed to the husband’s agents, the penalty is strangulation, while a betrothed minor’s partner is stoned and she is exempt, a priest’s daughter as a maiden is stoned, and a convert or freed maiden is strangled. Where a husband’s malicious report is proven true, she is stoned at her father’s door even for a transgression after leaving his home or after the chuppah. Three executions apply to adultery: strangulation, burning and stoning, and the chapter specifies the place, the father’s door, the city gate, the entrance of the court in a mostly gentile city, or the ordinary place of execution when testimony comes after she has come of age or been with her husband or when she has no father’s house, the doorway being only the preferred mitzvah. Each act incurs separate liability and one act can carry several sin offerings. The chapter closes on the shifchah charufah, half maidservant and half free, betrothed to a Hebrew servant: they are not executed because she was not freed, she is lashed and he brings a single guilt offering whether willful or inadvertent, but only for complete relations and only when she is an adult who had been with a man before and acted willingly, since he brings his offering only where she is liable to lashes, a rule that holds even for a boy of nine.