I strongly recommend that you read the passage first and then come back to the blog.
In verses 13-21 we have the situation where the following occurs: A man takes a wife and after they have sexual intercourse, he turns against her. He claims she wasn't a virgin. But the parents have proof of her virginity (clothes, covers, whatever) and they show it to the elders of the city. The elders are satisfied that she was a virgin. They take the man and "chastise him", fine him 100 shekels (for the girls' parents) "because he publicly defamed a virgin of Israel", she remains his wife and can never divorce her.
Chuck Smith adds this: "Now in those days, when you had your marriage ceremony and you went in for the nuptial rites, actually you would take a cloth and hand it back out to your parents, proving that you were a virgin, and they would save that. Then if the guy you married turned out to be a dirty dog, and he says, she wasn't a virgin when I married her, and starts spreading evil stories, your parents would bring out the tokens of your virginity."
David Guzik, explains the importance of virginity in Israel: "i. It is important to understand that in ancient Israel virginity was valued. It was seen as a great loss to give up one's virginity before marriage, and if a woman was known to have lost her virginity, it greatly reduced her chances of getting married. ii. By the same principle, if a husband believed that his wife had lied about her virginity, he felt cheated."
Now let's look a little closer at this. These two are married. There is deception on someone's part -- either hers or his. Deception is never a good thing in marriage. We also note that God and the Israelites thought very highly of Israel's virgins -- they were not to be shamed by a man.
I like what Matthew Henry points out here: "Upon his dislike of her [a man] might have divorced her if he had pleased, by the permission of the law (ch. 24:1), but then he must have given her her dowry: if therefore to save that, and to do her the greater mischief, he would thus destroy her good name, it was fit that he should be severely punished for it, and for ever after forfeit the permission to divorce her."
Let's go deeper. The man gets fined, and the greater penalty for him at least is that he has to keep his wife and can never divorce her. Boy, I wouldn't want my daughter to be that girl. We'll come back to this once we find out what happens if the girl was the deceiver (verses 20 and 21).
In that case (i.e. she was not a virgin), the girl is led to her father's doorway and the men (doesn't even say the elders) would stone her to death. That's a big consequence. Why? Because "she committed an act of folly in Israel, by playing the harlot in her father's house" and "thus shall you purge evil from among you".
So why the harsher treatment? Why does the man get off with fine and talking to, and she gets stoned to death? Is this fair? At face value, it may seem totally unfair. But then consider the crimes involved. The man's crime was a) a change of mind about his new wife, and b) lying. Granted, certainly the second crime was breaking one of the Ten Commandments, and the first was breaking God's intention for married couples that God set up way back in Genesis 2:24: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." Marriage was to be forever until one of the parties would die. And by the penalties imposed on the man, this was to be the case. That left the 'lying' to be dealt with (perhaps by the imposed chastisement and the financial fine).
Now, let's look at what the woman did in this case. By showing she wasn't a virgin, she had actually been found to have committed a sin earlier, went on pretending she had not, did it while still being part of her parents' household, and tried to get away with it. God saw this as actually equivalent to her "being the harlot" something that had no welcome in His plans for Israel or the world. The crimes are, I believe, very different. Thus the penalties are very different. Later on in this passage we will see that where equal penalties are deserved, God plays no favorite between male and female.
(I also want to point out here that there may well be other cases where the man is the one that acts out as the male prostitute or gigolo, and in those cases, the more appropriate penalties would be in order for him, in the land of Israel.)
In verse 22, if a man and a woman are found lying together and they are not married, guess what -- they both "shall die" to "purge the evil from Israel". No gender favoritism here. Both broke the commandment and both suffer the consequences. Of course, this is no longer the case in our western society. Sadly, marriage no longer seems to be the criteria for sleeping with someone else.
In verse 23, we have the case of an engaged woman who sleeps with another man, and they are found out, they both are to be stoned. The woman is stoned because she didn't cry out for help and the man is stoned because he violated his neighbor's wife. (Being betrothed to someone or engaged to them, was the same for Israelites as being married to them in terms of intentions.)
In verses 25-26, we read that if that scenario took place in a secluded area (e.g. a field) only the man should be stoned. Wait, is this reverse favoritism from God? Not at all. God considers circumstances (often more-so than we do). God looks at the sin and in this case He finds that two facts are different from the previous case in verses 23-24. Here, we have the fact that the man "forces" the girl into sex -- that is, he rapes her. We also have the fact that this is not "in the city" but rather "in the field" where the girl even if she had called out, there would be no one to hear her and save her. Those two things make a big difference. The text says "there was no sin on the girl's part worthy of death".
The lesson for us is not be too quick to judge someone else's sin unless we are one hundred percent certain of the circumstances. Even then best to leave it to God.
Verses 28 and 29 talk about two excited younger people (the girl being a virgin) who sleep together and are found out. The fine for the man is 50 shekels to be paid to the girl's father and also he had to marry the girl without being able to divorce her in the future. Why 50 and not 100 as before? Perhaps because there was no deceit involved, only action that should not have taken place, and the marriage could still be saved.
Finally, in the last verse (vs. 30) of this rather well-packed chapter we get the law that says don't sleep with your father's wife. Remember in those days men had more than one wife, so your father's wife may not have been your own biological mother -- it could have been your step-mother as we know the term today, or just one of the several wives a man had in his harem. In any case, the Israelites were told not to do it, although no penalty for doing so is recorded here. Of course, the consequences of such action would soon be made clear to all involved.
In conclusion, throughout Scripture -- both in the Old and the New Testaments, God takes marriage very seriously. If there is one area where the world has strayed far away from God's teachings, it is the area of marriage, sex, adultery, divorce, and commitment between a man and woman. Most of us don't need to look too much further from our own family or relatives, or even our closest friends these days to see the outcomes of that straying. If you are at all like me, you may want to stop for a moment and reflect how drastically different all of humanity would be today if we had all stuck to God's intentions for us with respect to these areas of life. We as individuals, can still follow God in this matter going forward, no matter what we may have done in the past.
Tell us what you think.
If you like the way we're studying Scripture, why not subscribe to our posts by providing us with your email? You can do that to the right of this column in the 'Subscribe to' section. You can also search our earlier studies in the 'Blog Archive' section below that. Finally, please encourage others to study along with us and share this with your family and friends. -- Ken.
It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment.