LAUSR

This article continues my work in my recently published Social World of Deuteronomy: a New Feminist Commentary (2015). My thesis here is that elite males designated heirs to their land, but to exercise their rights heirs were required to marry women whom Yhwh and their tribes or states recognized as holding legal title to those rights. A better understanding of these rights contributes to a better understanding of the roles of the women in Deuteronomy on honoring both father and mother (Deut 5:7–21), on female prisoners of war (Deut 21:10–14), on terminating heirs (Deut 21:18–21), on re-marriage (Deut 24:1–4), and perhaps the significance of divorce and re-marriage policies imposed on Israel and Judah by Assyria, Babylon and Ezra-Nehemiah.