 Prominent rabbis of the Middle Ages clarified this, stating that the husband must make any provisions required by local burial customs, potentially including the hiring of mourners and the erection of a tombstone.According to the Talmud, and later rabbinic writers, if the husband was absent, or refused to do these things, a rabbinical court should arrange the wife's funeral, selling some of the husband's property in order to defray the costs.If the wife was captured, the husband was required by the Talmud and later writers to pay the ransom demanded for her release; there is some debate whether the husband was required only to pay up to the wife's market value as a slave, or whether he must pay any ransom, even to the point of having to sell his possessions to raise the funds.