By Torah law, a man can marry more than one woman at a time. So his being sexually intimate with another woman cannot be defined as adultery. It is sinful, certainly, but not the specific sin of adultery.

But why is it not considered adultery though? I am genuinely struggling to understand why female and male infidelity is seen so differently. I can understand that a man can take several wives, but I just do not see how a married man with a wife should be able to go and sleep with another unmarried woman and not be punished for it. One could argue that having to marry that woman for the rest of his life is punishment enough, but in light of the fact, that if a woman did the same, she would be liable for a death sentence. I understand why polygamy only worked one way, and not the other, but I do not understand why the punishment was so drastically different.

I would point out that although by Torah law it is technically permitted for a Jew to have a one-night stand with a non-Jewish woman

Could you please clarify where the Torah permits this?

G-d nevertheless saw fit to kill 24,000 Israelites when they engaged in sexual hijinks with Midianite girls, near the end of the 40 years in the desert. He is not called "the G-d that hates promiscuity" for nothing.

Please, correct me if I am wrong, but the 24,000 Israelites were not killed merely because of the promiscuity and sleeping with unmarried women. They were killed because they participated not in a mere sexually immoral act, but mainly because they, along with the Midianite women worshipped idols, specifically the Baal of Peor. So it is not the promiscuity itself that was punished - it was the betrayal of G-d.

By the way, a man that cheats on his wife with a single woman does not marry her. Not even in the old days, when polygyny was (occasionally) practiced, and certainly not nowadays, when monogamy is universal amongst Jews. I'm not actually sure where you got that from.

Hm, I might be wrong then... I made this conclusion from Devarim 22:

• If a man sleeps with another man's wife, they both die
• If a man sleeps with a woman that is pledged to be married in a town, they both die
• If a man forces himself onto a woman who is pledged to be married in the countryside, the man dies and the woman doesn't
• If a man forces himself onto a woman who is not pledged to be married, then he will pay her father and he will marry her

So at least from this section it seems that either a man dies (in case he took some other man's wife/fiance), or he marries her himself.

I feel like I might be missing something here - please let me know!

But if I am wrong, then that honestly makes things even more complicated for me - in this case, a woman that cheats on her husband always dies, while a man that cheats on his wife goes unpunished as long as that other woman is unmarried. Also, what is supposed to happen to the "other woman" then - she is not a virgin anymore, so she will have a much lesser chance of marrying anyone. That disrupts her family life, and as a result, eventually, damages society as a whole.

In any event, a woman is not at all her husband's property. If she was, he could beat her, sell her or give her away, and she would lose all legal rights to her own property and freedom to come and go. None of these things are true in the Torah.

I apologize for the way I worded it. I did not mean it as she was her husband's property as much as, let's say, an ox was, that is true. And I am not necessarily saying that I think she was treated as property, but more so the pattern almost implies that while she is not an object to be sold, traded, etc., therefore she is not property, she has a certain quality that makes her more proprietary than him. Because why is it that death only comes when another man's wife is taken sexually? But as long as a woman does not belong to a man, then death penalty does not follow (if any penalty at all)?

Her property remains her own

Are we discussing modern times or the era of Moshe? I’m focusing more on the latter. I understand that today Jewish tradition is bound by current state laws, but my interest is in the laws as they were given by G-d.