Deuteronomy 24:1-4--Laws Concerning Divorce

Deuteronomy 24:1-4
English Standard Version

Laws Concerning Divorce
24 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.

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It is important to note that the LORD is talking about "when these things happen" and that nothing here is prescriptive other than the command, "then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD." (vs. 4)

Jesus makes this quite clear when questioned about divorce later that these were permissions or allowances that were made for the people because they were weak in their faith, but divorce was never God's plan,

Matthew 19:8-9
English Standard Version8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
The best way that I can try to explain this is that if two people were married, whether they had sex with her (assumed by the phrase "and marries her" in verse because the consummation of the marriage involved sexual intercourse almost immediately after the wedding was over, and then for some reason the husband no longer wishes to be married to the woman and issues her a certificate of divorce (see the Matthew 19 passage I posted about what God thought about certificates of divorce), and then she goes to marry another man while her first husband is still living and that second husband either dies or divorces her, the first husband cannot remarry her.

When that first man divorces his wife and allows another to marry her, he has forever given up his chance to be married to her ever again.  There appears to be the opportunity for restitution and for the first man to make the woman his wife again up to the point of her marrying someone else (that is at least the way that I remember this passage being interpreted over the years).  We should encourage reconciliation when possible but should not encourage more divorce to fix the first divorce--the man may not take back the one he has divorced once she marries another.  I think that's petty clear.