Deuteronomy 24

The Hebrew word for “disgusting” is ʽerwâ. It can refer to many kinds of complaints. The woman might be sexually unfaithful, indecent, dishonorable, sexually unsatisfying, ugly, mean, nagging. Just about any husband or wife could probably continue this list for quite a while. But we get the point. In Hebrew, the setup for that word is a phrase that lawyers in ancient times used when they drew up contracts or formal complaints. The phrase is “He finds [fill in the complaint] about her. In this case, the fill in the blank is “something indecent” or “something obnoxious” or any other similar complaint based on the original Hebrew word. In the time of Jesus, Jews were split over how to interpret this. Some taught that a man could divorce a woman for any complaint. Others taught that the “indecency” intended referred to infidelity. Jesus rocked both boats when he said God didn’t want husbands and wives to divorce for any reason (Mark 10:9). The implication is that if a marriage was in trouble, the couple needed to figure it out, forgive, and get back to living and loving. Apostle Paul later acknowledged that some marriages can’t be saved. He told women abandoned by their husband that they “should no longer feel obligated to that marriage. God wants us to live in peace” (1 Corinthians 7:15).

See Leviticus 13 for more details about the related laws. The original Hebrew word for “skin diseases,” nega, has often been translated as leprosy. But writers used that same Hebrew word to talk about a lot of different skin disorders, most of which are far less critical than leprosy, known today as Hansen’s disease. Hansen’s disease is an infection caused by bacteria, which produces light patches on the skin and numbs the nerves to pain. Lepers sometimes injure themselves and fail to get treatment because they can’t feel the pain. Infection sets in and body parts are amputated. Skin diseases reported in the Bible may often have been what we know today as a simple rash or perhaps eczema or psoriasis.

Miriam’s skin was suddenly diseased and white (Numbers 12:10).

This law is opposite from one reported in the famous Code of Hammurabi, which allowed a son to die for a father’s mistake. Law 230 of 282 says that if a builder builds a house that collapses and kills a man’s son, then “they should put to death a son of the builder.” These normally common-sense laws were popular in Bible times throughout what is now the Middle East. Hammurabi was a king in what is now Iraq. His laws are engraved into a seven-foot-high (2 meters) black stone pillar made in the 1700s BC. That’s several centuries before Moses. The stone is on display in the Louvre Museum, in Paris.