עקידת יצחק — כי תצא למלחמה / וראית בשביה אשת יפת תאר

Q — Why does the Torah permit the captive woman at all? Why open the parsha with a concession to desire in the heat of war? How does this fit beside the war-laws that closed the prior parsha?

A — The Torah permitted the yefas to'ar as a concession to the yetzer — better to channel the drive within a bounded heter than to have a person fall into outright issur. Recognizing the force of desire at war, the Torah does not pretend it away but disciplines it: the prescribed waiting, the mourning, the deliberate process are designed to cool the impulse and often to dissolve it. The principle is realistic mastery of the yetzer — regulating what cannot simply be forbidden, so that permission itself becomes the instrument of restraint.