Deuteronomy 24:1 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ver. 1. When a man hath taken a wife— The Hebrew nation having been accustomed to the liberty of putting away their wives from motives of dislike and aversion, and Moses being sensible that their hardness of heart, and severity of temper, would, upon an absolute restraint from such liberty, produce greater inconveniences and distractions in families; he now enacted, that when any husband laboured under an absolute dislike to his wife, either upon account of any bodily disease, or of her disagreeable temper, he should have the privilege of parting with her; yet not in a violent, hasty, and passionate method, but deliberately, by giving her, signed with his own hand, a discharge from all further relation to him; whence she obtained a full right to marry any other person. That by the phrase found some uncleanness in her, cannot be meant adultery, or any other enormous crime, as idolatry, apostacy, and the like, is evident, because those crimes were punished with death. The word uncleanness, therefore, which is used with great latitude in these books, must signify any thing creating dislike or aversion; something, either in her body or mind, which created in the husband a fixed disgust: but as he himself was sole judge what this uncleanness or turpitude was, whatever displeased him about her he might call by that name. Mr. Locke observes, in agreement to the Margin of our Bibles, that the phrase literally signifies the nakedness of any thing; and nakedness, says he, is usually referred in Scripture to the mind, as well as body. Houbigant is of opinion, that this uncleanness refers solely to some secret bodily defect, of which the husband alone could be conscious; and that such defect only could justify divorce. This, no doubt, gave husbands a great power over their wives, and must have been attended with very great inconveniencies to society. See ch. Deuteronomy 22:19; Deuteronomy 22:29 and Matthew 19:3-9. The law enjoins, that a bill of divorcement (or of cutting off, so called, as it cut off a woman from her husband) was to be written and given to the woman. A form of this divorce may be seen in Selden and Buxtorf. As we have mention of divorces in several places, (Leviticus 21:14; Leviticus 22:13.Numbers 30:9.) many judicious interpreters have been of opinion, that it was usual to put away wives before the law of Moses; that he only indulged them in an established custom, which he knew their intractable tempers would not bear to have quite abolished; and therefore he contented himself with bringing it under proper regulations and restrictions. For more on this subject, we refer to St. Matthew as above, as well as to Selden's Treatise de Uxor. Heb. lib. 3: cap. 18. J. Buxtorf de Sponsalib. & Divort. Grotius de Jure B. & P. lib. 2: cap. 5 sect. 9 and a very learned dissertation of the famous Mr. Mosheim, de Divortio.