Marriageable age in Judaism

The marriageable age, in Judaism, is highly gender-specific. Although boys were regarded, by classical rabbinic literature, as sexual beings once they had reached 9 years of age, girls were regarded as sexual beings from the age of just 3. According to the Talmud, it was permissible for an adult male to have sexual intercourse with a 3 year old girl, if she was maritally single; girls could be betrothed (Hebrew: erusin) and married (Hebrew: ') at this age; for a male, the age of majority, in Judaism, is usually 13 years of age plus one day, but could be as late as 35 years plus one day, in certain circumstances, and therefore the marriageable age would be the age of maturity plus 30 days, for males.
Child marriage
Child marriage was possible in Judaism, due to the very low marriageable age for females. By age, females were categorised into three groups:
*a ketannah (literally meaning little ) was any girl between the age of 3 years and that of 12 years plus one day
A ketannah was completely subject to her father's authority, and her father could arrange a marriage for her, whether she agreed to it or not. According to the Talmud, if the marriage did end (due to divorce or the husband's death), any further marriages were optional; the ketannah had the right to annul them. If the father was dead, or missing, the brothers of the ketannah, collectively, had the right to arrange a marriage for her, as had her mother, and a ketannah who did this was not regarded by legal regulations as a divorcee, in relation to the marriage. Unlike divorce, mi'un was regarded with distaste by many rabbinic writers; in earlier classical Judaism, one major faction - the House of Shammai - argued that such annulment rights only existed during the betrothal period (erusin), and not once the actual marriage (nissu'in) had begun.
In the Talmud, there is inconclusive debate about whether the na'arah should be treated like the ketannah in relation to marriage and its annulment, or whether she should have the freedom to marry as she wished, like the bogeret.
In practice
Rather than being seen as merely a literary device to quickly describe the populating of the earth, the biblical instruction to go forth and multiply was interpreted by the classical rabbis to mean that it was the duty of every male Jew to marry as soon as possible; this duty was thought by them to end once the husband had fathered both a son and a daughter, although they also argued that no man should live without a wife, even after he has several children .
In mediaeval times, cultural pressure within Jewish communities lead to most girls being married while they were still children - before they had become a bogeret. Boys too, were under cultural pressure; several Talmudic rabbis urged that boys should be married as soon as they reach the age of majority. Indeed, anyone unmarried after the age of twenty was said to have been cursed by God; rabbinical courts frequently tried to compel an individual to marry, if they had passed the age of twenty without marriage. Nevertheless, the classical rabbis viewed study of the Torah as a valid reason for remaining unmarried, although they were only rarely willing to regard life-long celibacy favourably.
Despite the young threshold for marriage, marriages with a large age gap between the spouses (eg. between a young man and an old woman) were thoroughly opposed by the classical rabbis. In the middle ages, many rabbis tried to abolish child marriage altogether; this, however, was due to their distaste for mi'un, rather than due to any concern about paedophilia<ref name="JewEncMiu" />. Effectively, child marriage became nearly obsolete in Judaism <ref name="JewEncMiu" />; in modern times, it is an extremely rare event, as most areas with large Jewish communities have national laws against it.

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