Sexual Regulations

(Deuteronomy 22:13 - 22:30)
“Consider the case of a man who takes a wife and has intercourse with her, then spurns and publicly defames her, claiming, ‘When I married this woman, I found she wasn’t a virgin.’  The parents of the wife should then bring proof of her virginity to the elders when they hold court at the city gate.  The woman’s father should address the elders and say, ‘I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he spurns her.  Now he defames her by falsely claiming he did not find my daughter to be a virgin.  But I present evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ The parents should then produce the sheets from the bridal bed and spread them before the elders.  Because he has publicly defamed an Israelite virgin, the elders of the town should arrest the husband, flog him, and fine him 100 shekels of silver, which should be given to the wife’s father.  The woman will remain the man’s wife and he may never divorce her as long as he lives.  But if the husband’s accusation is true and there is no evidence that the wife was a virgin at the time of the marriage, then the woman should be brought to the door of her father’s house and there stoned to death by the men of the town -- for she has committed an egregious sin by acting promiscuously while still living in the house of her father.  In this way you must purge such evil from Israel!

“If a man is caught in the act of committing adultery, then both he and the woman involved are to be put to death, in this way purging Israel of such evil.

“Consider the case of a man who meets a virgin who is betrothed and has sexual relations with her.  If this happens in a city, they should both be taken to the city gate and stoned to death, she, because she did not cry out even though it was in the city, and he, because he violated his neighbor’s wife.  And so you will purge such evil from among you.  But if it is in the country that a man meets a virgin who is betrothed and rapes her, then only the man who has done this must be put to death.  Do nothing to the young woman, though, for she has committed no crime worthy of death.  This is like the case of a man being attacked and murdered away from town, because the woman was attacked in open country, even if she had cried out, there would have been no one to hear and rescue her.

“If a man encounters a woman who is not betrothed, rapes her, and they are found out, then he must pay the father of the girl 50 shekels of silver.  He must also marry the girl, because he has violated her.  He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

“A man must not have sexual relations with his father’s wife, for this would dishonor his father’s manhood.”

Notes
1. It has only been in recent times that the virginity of the bride has not been of crucial importance.  Since wives were not unlike a commodity that is bought or sold, the husband is being cheated if he receives used or damaged goods.  And there is the certainty the husband must have that his children are, in fact, his, and not those of another man.  The accusation that a bride has been unchaste is so damning that one who makes it falsely must suffer legal punishment, while the non-virgin bride is to suffer death, if the accusation is true.  There is a general death penalty for adulterers, male and female -- death as well for the man who has sexual relations with a betrothed woman and for the betrothed woman if it is determined that she could have successfully cried out for help.  (The woman, whether actually raped or not, is given a pass if she is ravished in the countryside where no one would hear her cries for help -- an interesting, but not unreasonable loophole.)  These draconian punishments would, one might think, reduce the incidence of adultery and premarital sex in Hebrew society to next to nothing, but subsequent history will reveal that this, sadly, would not be the case.

2. The father of the bride accused of being non-virginal is apparently expected to prove his daughter’s virginity with physical evidence, no less than the sullied sheets of the bridal bed (or possibly the bride’s clothes).  Apparently the father-in-law is supposed to call at his son-in-law’s house the morning after the wedding and collect the properly stained bed clothes, in order to preserve them in case of challenges to his daughter’s prenuptial virginity.  Really?  Was this a custom fastidiously pursued?  It seems preposterous, if not disgusting.

3. That the non-virginal bride is stoned at the door of her father’s house suggests that a measure of guilt must be shared by the father, who failed to control his daughter.  One can imagine the sadness of the parents not only loosing a daughter in so dishonorable a way, but washing her blood from the door of their house.  One would think that such “honor” killings would be unknown in the modern world, but in some conservative societies, mostly Islamic, they still occur and if not legally sanctioned, they are often tolerated.

4. A shekel is worth about half an ounce.  Therefore, 50 shekels of silver would be equal to 100 ounces, or about $1700 in today’s money.  100 shekels of silver would be worth about $3400.   Although these fines seem minimal today, they were probably significant to the average Israelite.  As is the case with all legal fines, the punishment weighs heavily on the poor, lightly upon the rich.

5. The punishment for a rapist is merely a fine and an obligation to marry his victim, desirable or undesirable as that may be for him.  This does not seem like a good deal for the girl who must not only suffer being raped, but has to spend the rest of her life married to the man who raped her.  Of course this outcome is not surprising in a society that is totally male-centric, with women generally regarded as property.