DEUT1047 Do not treat such a woman as your slave. See Deuteronomy 21:14 sell CHINUCH 345.

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DEUT1048 This teaches us that if she were sick, he must wait until she recovers -- a fortiori [is this is the case] with Jewish daughters (Sifrei)

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DEUT1053 The rabbis often times were forced to find ways of textually revising a biblical standard when it no longer met the standards of their own times. … In the "rebellious son" account of Deuteronomy 21:18-21, for example, the rebellious son is condemned to death by "the elders of the city" and is stoned to death according to the Bible. This law is paralleled in other Ancient Near Eastern accounts, such as the Code of Hammurabi. J.B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969) pp. 168-169). The implications of this law in both the Bible and Ancient Near Eastern codes seem to be similar. M. Powis-Smith, The Origin and the History of Hebrew Law, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1931) pp. 50 ff. The right of parents, especially fathers, to have children put to death (infanticide) seems to have existed in limited forms throughout the Roman Empire through the fourth century CE when it was made criminal. Early Tannaitic sources devote tens of pages to explaining, fine-tuning, defining and clearly limiting the possibility of capricious application of this law allowing infanticide in Judaism. Attempts to limit the law until it is almost effectively eliminated seems to be the intention of rabbinic legislation.

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DEUT1051 See [[DEUT645]] Deuteronomy 13:16 sword GREENBERG 183-4

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DEUT1050 In a number of instances the Rabbis fixed conditions which, to all intents and purposes, made a law inoperative. They did this in the case of the "disloyal and defiant son" (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) Sanhedrin 68b-71b, the law regarding capital punishment, Tosafot, Sanhedrin 15b on aymah liktala, and Sanhedrin chap. 5. Makkot 7a, and the law regarding the excommunicated city (Deuteronomy 13:13-19). Sanhedrin 111b-113a. Note particularly Rabbi Eliezer's opinion 113a, quoted also ibid. 71a.

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DEUT1049 [This verse and following] deals in very clear language, so we may think, with the case of a wayward and defiant son… By the time the Mishna – – the collection of oral legal tradition--was codified around 200 C.E. -- the terminus ad quem of the development-- the ethos of the community had rejected the pattern. Yet it was a given of scripture. How did the Aggadah, the ethos of the community, deal with the Halakhah? What is for us clear language is for aroused sensibility far less clear, or perhaps is far clearer than we recognize. First the word "son" is attended to. Exactly when does that term apply? Its specificity indicates exclusion. A daughter is not mentioned but only a son. Carrying the principle of exclusion further, it must mean only during the period when he is not a man, that is, when he is a child. More than that, not when he is a minor, that is, before the age of 13 years and a day, but he is not yet obligated to the commandments. Hence this commandment is effective only during the boy's puberty. It is not necessary to examine in detail the process of definition by which the limitations involved in "glutton and drunkard" are arrived at; the further requirements that both parents--as the biblical text indicates--must lodge a complaint, and must be physically capable of bringing him before the elders, nor the composition of the court, and so on. (See Mishna Sanhedrin, chap. 8, paras 1-5). All that is necessary is to indicate that Aggadah, the sense of existence, has apparently provided fertile soil in which Halakhah – – the thicket of the law, to use that admirable phrase placed in Thomas More's mouth in A Man for All Seasons--may spring up to offer a hiding place even for the wayward son.

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DEUT1052 See [[GEN721]] Genesis 9:6 shed OXFORD 475-6

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DEUT1054 I might think [that this applies] even if his father and mother told him to light a candle and he refused; it is, therefore, written [here]: "Not heeding," and, further (verse 20): "not heeding." Just as there, "not heeding" refers to his being "a glutton and a guzzler," here, too, it refers to his being a glutton and a guzzler (Sifrei).

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DEUT1055 It, therefore, must be granted to the determinist, as one of the requirements of moral agency, that there are wide areas of human conduct within which free will as a rule is not exercised and human behavior flows in its predictable course (See J. Grunlatt, "Freedom of the Will--A Traditional View," Tradition 10, no. 4.) The Talmud in general and the halakhic process in particular are replete with instances where assumptions are made as to how people will behave in certain situations. "If a person transgresses and repeats the transgression, it becomes as if permissible to him," and "If a person had the opportunity to sin once and again and resists the temptation, he is assured not to sin." Most revealing is the rabbinic discussion on the question of the law of the "rebellious son" [this verse and 19-21]. The harsh punishment ordained by the Torah was explained on the basis of a projection of this person's future. Although at the moment he is guilty of disobeying his parents and of stealing in order to satisfy his appetite, transgressions which hardly justify the death penalty, the Torah judged him according to the way he will end up. A person such as this, it said, will in the end kill people to get what he wants. There are also a number of halakhic principles based on assumptions of psychological regularity which the rabbis relied upon in establishing the law. Free will does not operate in a vacuum. It operates only within the limits and possibilities of my given wants, abilities, understanding, and environment. "Our free will is freedom within limits of a person's inborn capabilities and of the world in which he lives" (C.A. Campbell, "Is 'Free Will' a Pseudo-Problem?" in A Modern Introduction to Philosophy, ed. P. Edwards and A. Pap, Glencoe, Ill.: 1960), p. 368). Ample room can thus be provided for the social sciences and for all those activities which rely on predictability in human affairs. The one area that must be reserved for the possibility of contra–causal freedom is in the moral realm: "Situations in which the agent is aware of a conflict between strongest desire and duty," or situations where the agent believes that his essential character or integrity as a self hangs on his decision.

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DEUT1056 See [[DEUT574]] Deuteronomy 12:20 meat TELVOL2 332-3

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