Incest, rape, and adultery were all considered capital offences and punishable by death in the Bible. They were viewed as a breakdown of the sanctity of marriage, the family unit, and society as a whole leading into immorality. Since they were seen as crimes primarily committed against the community or state, and not just the victim, harsh penalties were enacted.
For the purposes of this post I want to take a look at : Deuteronomy 22: 23-30
Suppose a man meets a young woman, a virgin who is engaged to be married, and he has sexual intercourse with her. If this happens within a town, you must take both of them to the gates of that town and stone them to death. The woman is guilty because she did not scream for help. The man must die because he violated another man’s wife. In this way, you will purge this evil from among you.
But if the man meets the engaged woman out in the country, and he rapes her, then only the man, must die. Do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no crime worthy of death. She is as innocent as a murder victim. Since the man raped her out in the country, it must be assumed that she screamed, but there was no one to rescue her.
Suppose a man has intercourse with a young woman who is a virgin but is not engaged to be married. If they are discovered, he must pay her father fifty pieces of silver [a bride-price or penalty]. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.
A man must not marry his father’s former wife, for this would violate his father.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the penalties in the Old Testament seem to be overly harsh. I believe quite a bit of the penalties talked about in the Old Testament have more to do with the cultures, customs, and what was widely considered acceptable or not acceptable of that time. It may also have been a way to set Israel aprart from the rest of the nations that surrounded them. Notice the difference in the wording from “intercourse” for both the engaged woman in the city and the virgin who is not engaged verses the specific word “rape” used for the woman in the country. The difference in wording could suggest that those instances where “intercourse” is used is meant to convey consent; where the instance with “rape” explicitly shows non-consent. Either way I will approach it as though these cases all refer to rape.
We all know, just because a person is raped in the city does not mean that person will scream for help. Fear plays a huge role, and may be one of many reasons a person will not scream for help. For the sake of argument, lets presume the reason why the woman raped in the city was put to death was because there wouldn’t have been a way to “prove” it was rape verse adultery since it is assumed she did not scream which leads to the assumption of consent. [Read with heavy sarcasm] After all, if she had “screamed” someone would have heard her and came to her rescue; hence “proving” consent which is the crime of adultery. Since she was already engaged to be married, and the punishment for adultery was for both the man and the woman to be put to death this then leads to the woman raped in the city being punished with her rapist.
The man having to pay the “bride-price” or penalty, and then marry the young woman he was caught having sex with could be a situation of a couple being caught having sex outside of marriage. Since this was considered extremely shameful, they could have been forced into marriage. On the other hand, it could also be considered a form of restitution to the girl and her family. Since she would be considered “damage goods” and unlikely to marry, the “bride-price” or penalty would have been a way to support the victim who would most likely have spent the rest of her life living under her father’s roof. Paying a form of restitution to the victim and her family seems fair to me. An abuser should have to pay for things the victim will need to recover. In the Old Testament days there wasn’t anything like the resources available today for victims. I believe many of the things written in these scriptures would be written differently if it were written today; with today’s culture, and understanding of the complexities of these crimes.
The lack of being able to “prove” such complexities probably led to the broad brush of punishment for many of the crimes committed listed in the Bible. It would be unreasonable to expect an outline of every possible situation with all it’s complexities, and the corresponding punishment for them. Now, I believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God. I believe God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What does change is mankind. I believe God’s grace takes into account the stages mankind has gone through and will go through. I believe God’s grace makes room for the level of understanding that mankind has at any given time. I believe this also explains why many punishments in the Old Testament may seem overly harsh to us today. It was meant to set moral boundaries with a definite definition so there would be no confusion by going into all the complexities that we would look at and consider today before trying to pass a judgement on someone. It perhaps, was meant to be a moral base for which to build off of, and improve upon as we grew in understanding of how these situations can be complex.
I wanted to post about this because it seems so rare to hear anyone addressing such topics of trauma in the Bible from the pulpit of the church. I can see why. It would be hard to explain or even justify some of these penalties…it just doesn’t make sense and doesn’t fit into today’s world. Mainly, I wanted to show that such crimes were taken very seriously in the Bible. While some of the penalties may not make sense to us today and not fit in to today’s society; back then these were very severe punishments that conveyed a message to everyone these crimes would not be tolerated.
How is it that we have come so far as a society, and yet these same crimes seem to be punished to a lesser degree? Have we moved forward in some areas, and backwards in others? Sometimes I think so. Often in the news, we can read about how someone committed rape or incest, and the punishment in no way fits the crimes for which they committed. The Old Testament may not have covered the wide array of complexities that can be found in such circumstances, but this it did convey very strongly: rape and incest would not be tolerated, and confirmed the innocence of the victims (Deuteronomy 22:26 “Do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no crime worthy of death. She is innocent as a murder victim”). I wanted to make sure to make this point clear before heading into the next post in this series about forgiveness.
Resource: Sexuality, Human
Note: The New Testament makes no commandment to punish adultery by death.
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