Deuteronomy 22:19
Condemning him besides in a hundred sicles of silver, which he shall give to the damsel's father, because he hath defamed by a very ill name a virgin of Israel: and he shall have her to wife, and may not put her away all the days of his life.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- condemnantes insuper centum siclis argenti, quos dabit patri puellæ, quoniam diffamavit nomen pessimum super virginem Israël : habebitque eam uxorem, et non poterit dimittere eam omnibus diebus vitæ suæ.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ζημιώσουσιν αὐτὸν ἑκατὸν σίκλους καὶ δώσουσιν τῷ πατρὶ τῆς νεάνιδος, ὅτι ἐξήνεγκεν ὄνομα πονηρὸν ἐπὶ παρθένον Ἰσραηλεῖτιν· καὶ αὐτοῦ ἔσται γυνή, οὐ δυνήσεται ἐξαποστεῖλαι αὐτὴν τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וְעָנְשׁ֨וּ אֹת֜וֹ מֵ֣אָה כֶ֗סֶף וְנָתְנוּ֙ לַאֲבִ֣י הַֽנַּעֲרָ֔ה כִּ֤י הוֹצִיא֙ שֵׁ֣ם רָ֔ע עַ֖ל בְּתוּלַ֣ת יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְלֽוֹ תִהְיֶ֣ה לְאִשָּׁ֔ה לֹא יוּכַ֥ל לְשַּׁלְּחָ֖הּ כָּל יָמָֽיו
Haydock's commentary
A hundred. Josephus only mentions 50. As it was presumed that the false accusation proceeded from a desire to defraud the woman of her dowry, the law obliged the husband to allow her double (Calmet) the usual sum. Yet this punishment, together with the scourging, was very inadequate to what the woman would have had to suffer if she had been condemned. (Haydock)
St. Augustine (q. 33,) is surprised at this decision, as in other cases calumny was subjected to the law of retaliation, or punished with death. This shews also that wives, among the Jews, were considered as little more than servants. (Calmet)
Where a note speaks of the Jewish people, the Church teaches that the Passion cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Tertullian On the Veiling of Virgins, Chapter XI
But it is not so; but from the time when she begins to be self-conscious, and to awake to the sense of her own nature, and to emerge from the virgin ’s (sense), and to experience that novel (sensation) which belongs to the succeeding age. For withal the founders of the race, Adam and Eve, so long as they were without intelligence, went “naked;” but after they tasted of “the tree of recognition,” they were first sensible of nothing more than of their cause for shame. Thus they each marked their intelligence of their own sex by a covering. But even if it is “on account of the angels” that she is to be veiled, doubtless the age from which the law of the veil will come into operation will be that from which “the daughters of men” were able to invite concupiscence of their persons, and to experience marriage. …