Re: a code behind the bible
Thomas, you have missed finer points when drawing your own conclusions on the laws regarding rape in the book of Deuteronomy. This book is certainly one of the more daunting books in scripture thus I want you to know that I don't fault you for doing so, but should you decide to read closely, you will actually find that rape is very heavily punished and taken even more seriously than it is in today's western culture.
First, let us look at the differences in our culture today and the culture of ancient Israel. IN those days marriges were not the traditional weddings we've come to expect, even sort of feel obligated to have for the sake of society. While it was not uncommon for a huge feast to occur to show the celebration of a couple getting together, the actual marriage was the act of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman and the festivities doubled as both a party and an event by which people witnessed the couple entering the tent where they would sexually commit themselves to each other.
Dewteronomy, from 13 to 17 state, "If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin. Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town,
Obviously, since no one was allowed to go in with the couple and witness their nakedness which is again something forbidden by God there had to be some way to certify the marrige. Evidence of the woman’s virginity would be soaked onto a cloth as proof of their consummation. This showed evidence of proper moral behavior in the community. Rather than the western culture expectations where a man and woman are pronounced husband and wife before the honey moon sex, this was not the case in ancient eastern culture.
Let us now look very closely for just a bit at Exodus 22:16-17: "When a man seduces a virgin who was not promised in marriage, and he has sexual relations with her, he must certainly pay the bridal price for her to be his wife. If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must pay an amount in silver equal to the bridal price for virgins."
We find that a man who seduced a virgin who was not already promised to someone else was obligated by law to take her as his wife and pay her father immediately, even if the father refused to let him keep her, implying that this sort of seduction was completely the man's fault and his punishment would be losing quite a bit of money. The father was in complete control at that point and could refuse to allow the woman to live with the man for any reason whatsoever, even if she ended up attracted to him in the end. What made the punishment worse is that the man was not allowed to have sex with any other woman from that point on, and having done so would result in his death.
As is the case with every bit of the bible, this passage needs to be studdied to understand the significance of Dewteronomy 28 and 29, for here the same applies. The father is in complete control, and more than likely if he felt his daughter had been wronged he would never have allowed her to stay with that man, but that man was still obligated by law to be kind to her and treat her as his wife, even if she was not living with him. anything less than that, be it overt dislike or slander was a punishable offense.
If we look closely at verse 26 we find that rape is taken very seriously, stating that it is like someone murdering a neighbor. Looking at the culture we find that a woman who had lost her virginity was no longer able to marry another man, since as we have already stated above, sex itself was used to seal a marrige rather than some other certificate. This meant that if the family died there would be no one left to pay for any provisions that might be required for her to live out the rest of her life. the responsibility therefor must fall upon the rapist, who would be obligated by law to protect her at any cost because of what he did for the rest of his life. This, on top of freeing the family of stress, also provides protection for the woman for the rest of her life. She is not forced to sleep with him, have sex with him, even live with him, for such things would be absolutely ridiculous. Still, he is forced to act as a husband for her nonetheless and anything less than that results in death.
These laws are strictly cultural and social, not moral. God did not intend for them to be translated into matters by which one could say that a woman must be forced into marrige by any man even if he had wronged her. they were put in place to make men behave, to make them realize that should they give into sexual desire for a woman who clearly did not belong to them even if she was a virgin they would suffer dearly for the rest of their lives as they would then be forced by every other harsh law of the land to provide until they died. It's like a life sentence, a constant memory that would have haunted you and plagued you everywhere you decided to go in ancient Israel, and I can only imagine what sort of social scorn or hatred came along with it. if being a sex offender in today's society seems harsh to the sex offender who can relocate and try to start over to some degree, these men could not, for leaving their country, their customs, there people and everything else behind for something else was not even really something worth considering, since what in all reality could be better than living with God's chosen people? to continue to do so he would have to face his sin forever though, everyone in those small towns being acutely aware of it.
Do not, however, mistake a crime of lustful passion for a crime of hatred and brutality. Those two are completely different, and Israel knew the difference. The smut we here about today, driven by our media, of older men who take advantage of younger girls, of women who are not only sexually asaulted but beaten and shamed and humiliated beyond the ordeal of the sickening sexual experience they already have to endure of knowing that they are having sexual intercourse against their will is pure and outright brutality, hateful beyond words. Today, that sort of action in our western culture gets you jailtime. IN israel, it got you killed, as anyone who can read will clearly see in Judges 19. Is Israel relaxing its standards on rape? I think not, and neither does God, but he did have to find a way to provide for the women of his chosen people, being merciful to the point that he would willingly work with their culture and their society.
Rape is rape, plain and simple, and every Hebrew new it, which is why we probably don't see any examples of the rape law being carried out. This like many of the laws that god gave were put in place more for the sake of putting the fear of God into the hearts of men rather than to establish a moral code or anything else. The truth is that if you look at the entirety of the law you will find that it would have been easy to fall into any number of problems and that no man would ever be able to follow every single one of those laws to the letter. God knew that there was no way we could ever completely meet up to the terms of this old covenant, which is why Jesus had to come and establish a new one.
I appreciate the greatness of this topic and we have covered a lot of ground here, and I'm sure that many other questions will surface. One has to understand though, that if you're going to live by the bible, you have to live by the whole book and not just by the stuff you like and disregarding that which you dislike or which doesn't make any sense to you when you first read it, and that means studying everything in context. A skeptic, as I have proven by my previous post on this thread is not someone who won't believe, but who can't because of his skepticism, and while I as a willing tool of God will gladly and lovingly give my time for any one of you that you might be saved I cannot stress this point enough, that only God can truly place that conviction in your heart. I can dish out evidence from everything I read and the immense study I have done over the past two months, but all of that knowledge comes to nothing if you don't sincerely want to believe.
I came to Christ with my doubts, with my questions, with my past ideas of this god who made absolutely no sense, and I gave it all to him willingly, asking him to show me, to impress upon me his truth in such a way that I would not be able to defy it even if I wanted to, because I had already seen what life on the outside was like. I asked many hard questions that have probably not entered many people's minds, and the more I searched, the more answers I found. I have no doubt that the same could be said of anyone who approaches God as I did, pleading with him to make his case even though we do not deserve it, willingly opening the mind an heart and soul completely to him and his word. I don't have all of the answers, and I doubt I ever will. The main thing that matters to me though and the one thing that no man or woman or empire or institution of any kind has been able to get rid of for some 2000 years is the simple message that the early Christian church and its founder died for, that there is salvation in Christ. IN the end, this message is the real matter of importance, the reason I keep on writing, the burning passion behind all of this text I can only hope God will use to bring people to his kingdom.
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