Deuteronomy 24:4 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ver. 4. Her former husband—may not take her again— To restrain them from the abuse of this permission, the law provides, that the husband, who had once put away his wife, should, upon her being married to another, be for ever incapable of having her again. The law considered her as defiled; i.e. unclean, as to her first husband, by having been the wife of a second, and so forbidden to that first. See Acts 10:14-15. This intimates, that if she had not been married to another, but kept herself free, her husband might have taken her again to wife, if he were inclined so to do. Such, at least, is the opinion of Grotius, and several other learned interpreters. Had husbands been allowed to take their wives again, after being married to others, this might have produced the abominable practice of prostitution, by exchanging wives at pleasure, whereby the land would have been filled with pollutions, and the Lord provoked to inflict judgments upon it; and, therefore, the sacred writer adds, for that is abomination, &c. Abarbanel says, that this custom was common among the Egyptians; and Selden observes, that Mahomet permitted his followers to take their wives again, after having been divorced even three times. The Turks, however, are not the only people who were deficient in delicacy upon this point; it is well known, that the Lacedemonians were guilty of shameful pollutions in this way. A person expressing surprise that no adulterers were to be heard of among that people, was answered, that "through the prevalence of the custom now mentioned, their very marriages were rank adulteries." See Grotius on the place.