Versus 13-21, the slander passages, are scary, and I include them because they contrast interestingly with verse 29. They’re about if a married man, newlywed, accuses his wife of not being a virgin. In most Fertile Crescent societies–and still in some Shariah societies–if he accused her of cheating on him during her betrothal period, he could have her killed or sent away for any reason. From what I can read of the passage–which is hard to understand–unlike Victorian-era Christianity, which used the hymen as the ultimate proof of virginity, under this law a woman just had to bring forth proof of her recent period (simlah clothing), which I happen to know she would have had because all women were required to take a vacation away from the populace during the time of their period (which, in a nomadic society, is really good for sanitation reasons; I don’t remember the verse for this, but it’s there). This is still confusing and weird to me, this whole cloth thing, but the point is, there was debate and evidence involved, and the man’s word wasn’t enough against his wife. It’s hard for me to understand because the words don’t seem very specific, or they’re specific to things I don’t know what are (virginity-proofs, or betullim or whatever, is not something I really have a concept for in my culture).The major point here is that it was illegal for a man to falsely accuse a woman in order to shame her, and unlike in most middle eastern culture we know, the man’s word didn’t stand just because he was a man. I include this weird, very cultural passage because it ends with the whole, “if she wasn’t a virgin when she married the guy she should get stoned.” Wow. That’s scary. It’s important context for your verse, though, so I’m not hiding from it.

“And they shall spread the simlah (clothing) before the zekenim of the town. |18| And the zekenim of that town shall take that ish and punish him;|19| And they shall fine him a hundred shekels of kesef, and give them unto the avi hana’arah, because he hath brought a shem rah (bad name) upon a betulat Yisroel; and she shall be his isha; he may not put her away all his yamim. |20| But if this thing be emes, and the betulim be not found for the na’arah;|21| Then they shall bring out the na’arah to the door of her bais avi, and the anashim of her town shall stone her with avanim that she die; because she hath committed an outrage in Yisroel, to play the whore in her bais avi; so shalt thou put away the rah from among you.” The next part, verse 22, is adultery, plain and simple–both the man and the woman get stoned. Not, as some people later interpreted it, just the woman. You can accuse this passage of strictness, certainly, and that’s why we’ve got Jesus in John 8–we can’t possibly get to heaven, much less survive, under this standard, so he’s the sacrifice for our sins–but it’s never just the woman. From a gender perspective, people theorize that what Jesus wrote in the dust in John 8:6 was “where’s the man”. I don’t know, but anyway, verse 22 is equal, at least, albeit very strict.

|22| If an ish be foundlying with an isha married to a husband then they shall both of them die, both the ish that lay with the isha, and the isha; so shalt thou put away the rah from Yisroel.

So now we’re getting closer to the famous rape passages. Verses 23-26. This is possibly (I haven’t checked) the first major religious passage in history to differentiate in consequence between rape and consensual sex–which is a major step in moving women’s status away from sexual property into individuals–and from that litigious standpoint these are actually quite beautiful. (We’re still not at the 50 shekels part) If the woman is engaged, and the sex happens in a place where people can hear, and there was no resistance or unwillingness on the part of the woman, both partners died. No 50 shekel marriage, no nothing. They both died, because it’s regarded the same as adultery. If the sex happens in a place where people can’t prove consent or not, and you can’t know if it was rape or not, only the man dies. Vs 25, the man is assumed guilty, and the woman is assumed innocent, if there’s a question of rape that can’t be proven. Then, verse 26, says that what the man did is equivalent of murder. I think it’s particularly interesting how this passage differentiates between the city and the countryside–when the consequence for rape is DEATH, you want to be careful not to have false accusations (which is sometimes a problem in our context!), so the entire process is very evidence-based, so you strive to prove consent (or the lack thereof) in the city–and yet the assumption, when there is no way to gather evidence, is still that the man is guilty, and the woman is not. This creates a very interesting balance of power!

“|23| If a na’arah that is a betulah be betrothed unto a husband, and an ish find her in the town, and lie with her; |24| Then ye shall bring them both out unto the sha’ar of that town, and ye shall stone them with avanim that they die; the na’arah, because she cried not, being in the town; and the ish, because he hath humbled his neighbor’s isha; so thou shalt put away the rah from among you. |25| But if the ish find a na’arah hame’orasah (betrothed woman) in the sadeh, and the ish overpower her, and lie with her; then the ish only that lay with her shall die. |26| But unto the na’arah thou shalt do nothing; there is in the na’arah no chet mavet (sin worthy of death); for as when an ish riseth against his neighbor, and slayeth him, even so is this matter;|27| For he found her in the sadeh, and the na’arah hame’orasah cried, and there was no moshia (savior) for her .”

And now verse 28.

|28| If an ish find a na’arah that is a betulah, which is not orasah (betrothed), and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;|29| Then the ish that lay with her shall give unto the avi hana’arah fifty [shekels] of kesef, and she shall be his isha; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his yamim. THIS is that passage about an unbetrothed woman having sex with a man before marriage. Yes, maybe the passage here could be taken to be indicative of rape, because of the word taphas, which indicates seizure, put in addition to the “Lie with” (it could also just mean “to take hold of”, catch, handle, or lay–like he took hold of her). Confusingly, there is not one magic scary word for rape and another for consensual sex–the words I see here in verse 28 are taphas for seizure, coupled with shakab for sex–and instead of clear-cut scary words like “rape” we have the concrete details in those verses defining the phenomenon, so here in this passage I essentially have take-hold-of-sex. Why do I think this is not so clear-cut rape? Because the only place in the Bible where this forced-marriage-rape rule could have actually been applied is 2 Samuel 13, and there they use a different root for rape, chazaq, which is also usually used elsewhere to imply strength (so like he overpowered her). Furthermore, the root words used for the violent rape we talked about last week in Judges were alal (mistreat) coupled with yadah (to know, slang for sex)–neither of those words shows up here. WHAT IS REALLY IMPORTANT is that verse 25, the one we just talked about, where rape was defined, and equated with murder, and the man is stoned for it? THAT WORD USES THE ROOT CHAZAQ! That’s the same word used in 2 Samuel 13, and it’s translated up in verse 25 as overpower. That is clearly clearly rape. THAT WORD IS NOT USED HERE IN THIS VERSE in the context of a man paying 50 shekels to marry the woman he slept with! So this passage sets up what rape is, in verses 23-26, with chazaq force, and then equates that with murder and prescribes stoning as the remedy. And then in an entirely different situation, with different language, in verse 28 you have taphas (take hold of) sex with a non-betrothed woman. I was willing to maybe believe taphas sex might maybe be rape, because taphas can also mean surprise or to use unwarrantably, but THEN Exodus 22:16 restates this same situation, but in the context of restitution law instead of sexual law. In that passage, the word is pathah, which can also indicate sinister intent, but is translated in my Bible as seduce, and is generally considered to imply consensual sex (like seduce does).

WHY AM I DICTIONARYING all these words–I think the translators have it very tough, because you’re dealing with a language in which the word rape wasn’t around yet, and the concept had not even been invented. Literally you’re watching the concept for rape get invented. Things are fuzzy. Rapes like the one in 2 Samuel 13 are very clear. That uses the root Chazaq. I’m not so sure taphas can be interpreted as anything other than “take”–that’s its most common interpretation throughout the Bible. In Genesis 39, this word is used of Potiphar’s wife grabbing Joseph’s robe. She seizes it, or takes hold of it. It’s a sexual context, but it’s used of his coat, not of him–she doesn’t take and rape him, she grabs his coat, and taking is also used as like “taking the hill” in war situations, or as holding (like a farming implement or a sword in Ephesians or Genesis). Because the Torah was treated as a legal document I think it IS important to interpret Deut. within the context of its other rule-books, and based on Exodus 22 I don’t see a clear-cut rape situation here at all.

More importantly, Exodus 22 has extra sentences that Deut. 22 does not. It’s pretty clear that Exodus 22 isn’t, “oh I want this girl, so I’m going to rape her, and then I get to marry her”–because in the next sentence of Exodus 22, after prescribing the “pay a bride price and marry her” remedy, the passage THEN provides the penalty for the man in case she DOESN’T marry him: it explains that even if she doesn’t marry him, the man still has to pay the bride price. There are options here! She’s not required to marry him, but he’s required to pay up. This begs the question, since I’m nitpicking at words: is the seducing sex of Exodus 22 different from the “take-hold” sex of Deut. 22? I would say no, because the exact same penalty is prescribed in the exact same way describing a woman of the exact same social status, which seems to indicate that the point of Deut. 22 is that the man has to pay, and that if a guy has sex with a girl he can’t just throw her off like used goods and move on (which is what so many dudes do today). Here’s the true zinger, though, that clinches my reading: if the point in Deut. 22 were that raped women MUST marry their rapists, wouldn’t the writer have used the same word for rape he used just a few verses earlier? Wouldn’t he use the same words for rape used in the other rapes throughout the Bible? Wouldn’t he NOT write Exodus 22, which clearly muddles the issue? If the point is “marry your rapist,” why make it so damn confusing? It’s easy enough to just say “chazaq” one more time, isn’t it?

So according to all this I think the original interpretation of the law is this: sex in GENERAL with a virgin must be paid for in financial retribution, and, if the father acquiesces, with marriage. I don’t think there is room to interpret this passage any more than that, because the writer spent all this time above talking about what rape was, and here suddenly there’s just this one verse about sex with a virgin, without any further qualifications, without repetitions of the same rape terms he used earlier, and I just don’t think we can or should read into the passage more than what is there. I don’t know much, but I know for a fact that the modern definitions of rape are not worked into verse 28, that over and over the restrictions are “the man shall”, and that in context, the intent of the entire chapter of law here seems to be to protect women from common problems they would have run into in middle eastern society: first, from being challenged about their sexual status on their wedding night, then next from being told their rape was their fault, and finally, from being cast off post-virginity after sex without financial retribution for the sexual goods exchanged.

Could this law be abused in everyday use? Yes. Sure. Two people–not betrothed–could have consensual sex, get caught willingly, and then get married (unless the girl’s father said no–interestingly enough the Catholic church did away with that part, and in medieval England if you claimed you gave wedding vows or if you said you wanted to get married the church was obliged to keep that record, regardless of what your parents thought, contrary to our “arranged marriages” concept. I wrote a paper on it here http://thehownotto.blogspot.com/2010/12/good-bad-and-beautiful-of-medieval.html). Could a father use Deut. 22 to marry a girl off to someone that wasn’t good for her? Probably. Could this even possibly be used by a father to make a girl marry her rapist? Maybe. It’s never used that way in practice in the OT’s history sections, even though there are a number of stories of sexual sin in there–none of which, notably, ever resolve with forcing a woman to marry a rapist (or even with stoning an adulteress). I still think the language here is far too inappropriately unclear and broad for that very specific interpretation, but knowing human nature, and middle eastern culture, yes, I could see this passage being abused by a controlling father.

But a woman’s father would ALREADY marry her off to whomever he wished according to all middle-eastern custom, and furthermore literally every rule in the Torah can be abused–Jesus even points out how the passages about donating to the Temple were later abused by the Pharisees to mean they didn’t have to take care of their aging parents (Matthew 15) and how the passages about divorce could be used to get rid of a woman for no reason. Jesus clearly explains those evils weren’t the intent of those laws. The intent of THIS law, from what I can read in context, with a dictionary and very limited Hebrew, was to protect women in a very male-dominated society by establishing paradigms of rape as a real thing worthy of death; by establishing a father as a protector for his daughter; and by keeping a man from lying to a woman about his intentions when he slept with her. The contract-accountability and mistreatment-consequence aspects of that intent are in some ways more feminist than what’s played out in the society we have today: you know girls all the time are promised marriage and long-term relationships by guys who use them, lie, and don’t pay up. It’s just how men operate.

More to the point, you already know that women in arranged-marriage societies like Hebrew society saw marriage and children as an end financial and personal status goal beyond a romantic goal. That would make this highly-contested verse 28 incredibly important to them. We don’t tend to think that way anymore except in far Eastern rural cultures, but you can imagine why in that cultural context Tamar would pretend to be a prostitute in order to get pregnant when her husband wouldn’t hold up his end of the sexual deal, or why the 2 Samuel 13 rape victim would demand that her rapist marry her (he didn’t, by the way). Neither Exodus 22 nor Deuteronomy break the status quo the way we’d like them to–they keep that goal of marriage in sight, and they keep a middle-eastern father’s control over his daughter. Those things don’t change until the New Testament eliminates culture from the religion requirement entirely and incorporates all cultures into the faith. However, these passages certainly do not EXPAND that oppressive middle-eastern status quo to include a clear-cut rape-marriage requirement, and in context, the entire set of rules actually shakes the foundations of that middle-eastern status quo by creating man-punishing definitions of rape. I would then argue the Jesus passage here from Matthew, where Jesus says, “because of the evils of your hearts God allowed this”–there are a LOT of status quo things God did not bother to change and a lot of laws he didn’t make that he clearly would have liked to. He says elsewhere that the number one thing he hates is proud-looking eyes, and that he hates rich women lounging around drunk on couches while people are starving outside their front doors, but nowhere in the Torah do you find laws against those things. He didn’t change the status quo, because again, relationship with us is more important to him, and he knows his changes are hard enough for us already.

That’s the thing–he’s a God for all cultures, not just ours, the same God a dark-skinned middle-eastern conservative woman with a veil and a tattoo’d short-haired European butch gal can both worship, and in all of our cultures we’ve got to choose whether or not to trust that this crazy God, who does things we don’t like, and maybe even hate, this God who actually, despite all his rules, doesn’t care about morality so much as about relationship–that God, we’ve got to trust that he actually loves us. That’s really the question–the Jeremiah 29:11 question. Does he really know the plans he has for us, and are they really plans for our good, and not to harm us? Or does he plan for us to be enslaved to men forever? Is the dawn really coming, and is he bringing it, or is he opposing it?

I see in this passage the beginnings of the dawn. I also see in this passage the same God who praised the murderess Jael and the prophetess Deborah and the prostitute Rahab for taking matters into their own hands–the God who did create laws that protect women, like these and others, but also always treated women as their own protagonists, with our own agency. Ishmael’s mother, in the desert dying because of a male-dominated society that wasn’t changing fast enough, looked up in the desert and found water–God may have shown her that water, but he always treats her as her own protagonist, and she’s the one who goes to the water, she’s the one who FINDS it. The women in the Bible are like never damsels in distress. Esther saves her own people with clever intrigue, and even though she spends three days in prayer, God’s name isn’t even mentioned in that book of the Bible; the daughters of that guy with that weird Z name orchestrate their own land-grab, and so on and so forth. I think that same God, who leaves us as protagonists yet moves through us if we like, loves you and even honors you for your strength with what you’ve been through, and I don’t know if he sees you as someone who needs to be protected all the time. Is that weird to say? I don’t know, I don’t know your life like you do. I think in many ways you’re your own hero, and that’s about as feminist as life gets, and I think the OT reflects that where the NT doesn’t–the NT is all Holy Spirit driven, right. I don’t know. I’m talking outside of my nit-picky little realm now, so I should probably sign off. I just wonder, how feminist is it if God does all the changing of male-dominated society, and he identifies as male? Is it maybe more feminist that he starts the process, and leaves us to finish it?

I don’t know; I might be spouting heresy at this point. Anyway, thanks for chatting. You inspire a lot of thought.

|13| If any ish take an isha, and go in unto her, and hate her,|14| And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up a shem rah (bad name) upon her, and say, I took this isha, and when I came to her, I found her with no betulim (proofs of virginity); |15| Then shall the av of the na’arah, and her em, take and bring forth the betulim (proofs of virginity) unto the zekenim of the town in the sha’arah (gate);|16| And the avi hana’arah shall say unto the zekenim, I gave my bat unto this ish as isha (wife) and he hateth her; |17| And, hinei, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy bat with betulim; and yet these are my bat’s betulim. And they shall spread the simlah (clothing) before the zekenim of the town. |18| And the zekenim of that town shall take that ish and punish him;|19| And they shall fine him a hundred shekels of kesef, and give them unto the avi hana’arah, because he hath brought a shem rah (bad name) upon a betulat Yisroel; and she shall be his isha; he may not put her away all his yamim. |20| But if this thing be emes, and the betulim be not found for the na’arah;|21| Then they shall bring out the na’arah to the door of her bais avi, and the anashim of her town shall stone her with avanim that she die; because she hath committed an outrage in Yisroel, to play the whore in her bais avi; so shalt thou put away the rah from among you. |22| If an ish be foundlying with an isha married to a husband then they shall both of them die, both the ish that lay with the isha, and the isha; so shalt thou put away the rah from Yisroel.|23| If a na’arah that is a betulah be betrothed unto a husband, and an ish find her in the town, and lie with her; |24| Then ye shall bring them both out unto the sha’ar of that town, and ye shall stone them with avanim that they die; the na’arah, because she cried not, being in the town; and the ish, because he hath humbled his neighbor’s isha; so thou shalt put away the rah from among you. |25| But if the ish find a na’arah hame’orasah (betrothed woman) in the sadeh, and the ish overpower her, and lie with her; then the ish only that lay with her shall die. |26| But unto the na’arah thou shalt do nothing; there is in the na’arah no chet mavet (sin worthy of death); for as when an ish riseth against his neighbor, and slayeth him, even so is this matter;|27| For he found her in the sadeh, and the na’arah hame’orasah cried, and there was no moshia (savior) for her [see 2C 11:2-3 regarding Moshiach and his Kehillah Kallah and Hasatan’s evil interference with the betrothal and the above three Scriptures T.N.].|28| If an ish find a na’arah that is a betulah, which is not orasah (betrothed), and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;|29| Then the ish that lay with her shall give unto the avi hana’arah fifty [shekels] of kesef, and she shall be his isha; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his yamim.|30 (23:1)| An ish shall not take eshet aviv (his father’s wife), nor uncover hisfather’s robe.