What Does The Bible Say About Women Pt. 3 - Torah Laws
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Intro
Today, we’re going to finish out talk about how the Old Testament, and more specifically the Torah, views women. More specifically, what the Torah does or does not say about where women sit within society, what they can or cannot do or what roles they can or cannot fill. So, let’s review from last week.
Last week, we talked about how Israel was designed to be a patrilineal society where landownership, therefore familial wealth, was passed along through the man’s side of the family. This was for economic reasons and helped avoid confusion, while the sabbath and jubilee years provided a mechanism by which wealth and land could not be hoarded.
We also talked about the sacredness of Blood and how because of a woman’s menstrual cycle, the only positions within society a woman could not hold is 1) a priest, and 2) a member of Israel’s army.
Women and laws around rape
Read 22:28-29
If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
When you read this, what goes through your mind? why? Most will say, “It’s awful to marry your rapist,” and they would be correct. Or “If a man rapes a woman, the woman is forced to marry the man!” Both of these are very real, legitimate points.
No matter how it is viewed, I will just say that this situation is a bad one. It is a terrible place to be for a woman. To be raped and then be forced to marry your rapist. But let’s look at this passage and the implications of what this is trying to say.
First, look at the last part of v. 29. It says that “he can never divorce her as long as she lives.” Think this through, if a man rapes a woman, the consequence is that he is going to be married to her until the day that HE has to take care of her forever! That means he is going to have to feed her, protect her, care for her, provide for her a house to live in, and care for her in her old age.
If you are a man looking to rape a woman, would these things be an incentive or a disincentive to do the thing you are about to do to this woman? à obviously it is a huge disincentive as he cannot divorce her and get rid of her.
Second, How do you think this compares to non-Israelite cultures in the ancient world?
- Code of Hammurabi
- Law 130: If a man violates the wife (betrothed or child-wife) of another man who has never known a man and still lives in her father’s house and sleeps with her and they catch him, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless.
- Law 131: If a man’s wife is caught lying with another man, they shall be bound and thrown into the water, but the wife’s husband may pardon his wife and the king may pardon his male servant.
- Law 132: If the finger is pointed at a man’s wife because of another man, but she is not caught sleeping with the other man, she shall jump into the river for her husband.
- Assyria middle laws
- Middle Assyrian Laws, Tablet A, Law 12: If a man forcibly seizes and rapes a virgin girl in her father's house, he shall be put to death. There is no punishment for the girl.
- Middle Assyrian Laws, Tablet A, Law 55: If a man rapes a woman and it is proven, he shall be castrated. If a man rapes a woman and it is proven, he shall be castrated.
These are just some examples that provide swift and definitive punishment for the perpetrators. But notice one key thing they don’t cover that Israelite laws do.
When a woman is raped in the ancient world, do you think any other man will ever want to marry that person? Do you think that she would be a desirable bride to raise his family? Not very likely.
While the other cultures do in fact punish the perpetrator, they do nothing to help provide for the woman who has been defiled by the man. Sure the man get’s punished, but now the likelihood that the woman is going to be destitute for the rest of her life is extremely high.
Additionally, because the act of sex in the Bible is the marital act that binds a man and a woman as one flesh, the act of rape is a contorted distortion of a marriage between a man and a woman.So if a man rapes a woman, then walks away or is killed, then essentially she was “married”, then divorced, and her ability to remarry is compromised forever!.
Israelite laws go a step further would force the man to provide for the woman for the rest of his life!
This is a HUGE disincentive to rape someone!
This law is protecting her and the man must pay the marital price and can’t just walk away scot-free. And this even serves as a disincentive to a couple that is dating saying, “hey if you mess around, you are going to have to get married, so don’t do it!”
But that’s not the only safeguard
Read Exodus 22:16-17
“If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride price, and she shall be his wife. If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride price for virgins.
Similar to Deut. 22, but the Father as the final say and the man must pay out the bride price to the father. This again protects the woman as Deut. 22 is not the final option. The Bible must be read forward. There is the option that perhaps the man took advantage of the woman or the two like each other that Deut. 22 can still happen. But if she says, “dad I don’t want to be with this man, he took advantage of me or he pressured me or threatened me into doing it, don’t make me marry him,” then there is a way out. If you read Deut. 22 and Exod. 22 and say “Oh my Gosh this is a horrible law,” then you are probably reading it backward rather than forward for their time period.
This would have been a HUGE protection for women in the ancient world who otherwise would have just been thrown away or discarded.
Adultery
Numbers 5 “Law of jealousy” Summary: If a man suspects his wife is being unfaithful, they will go to the priest, he will bring some holy water in a pot, take some dust, put it in the pot, and have her drink it. If her uterus falls out/womb swells, she is guilty, if it doesn’t she is innocent.
What is your reaction to this text and why?
Let’s walk through this passage and its logical implications
Just on its face, does water and dirt cause a woman’s womb to swell or fall out? No. So according to this test, if nothing happens she is innocent correct? Yes! Obviously, it is God intervening in history to cause a miracle to happen to prove the woman’s guilt, correct? Yes
So, it is clearly a God thing because such an event can ONLY come from God, not just dirty water correct? So, the man is counting on a reality-bending, mind-boggling miracle to take place in order to prove that he is right and that his wife cheated on him correct?
Most people in Israel lived in small towns, and word got around quickly, so if a man accused his wife of adultery, and then he is proven to have been lying because her uterus fell and God knew the answer and knew he was lying, then what is going to happen to that man’s reputation? So, if this is true, is this an incentive or a disincentive to falsely accuse your wife of adultery? This is a HUGE disincentive to falsely accuse your wife! In other societies, Women can’t represent themselves in court or before a priest, so the default winner is the man automatically.
With Israel, the man is not a default winner. In fact, a sacred act has to take place to vindicate the man’s charge. This, once again, is a HUGE protection for the woman because God MUST intervene to determine the charge.
Women as Plunder
Imagine this, you are an Israelite, and you just entered the land. Lots of Canaanites all around you who are looking to shove you out. So, you are going to be fighting against a lot of people in a lot of defensive battles against the men of the other nations.
After your battles, there are going to be a lot of women and children who did not fight and are now very vulnerable because you killed all the men of that town.
Read 21:10-14
Notice how this law differs from what all of the other nations did.
First, The man must take the woman into her house, which includes food, protection, and general care. She must be cleaned up and made cleansed according to Israel’s standards.
Second, there must be a full month to allow her to mourn for her dead. Then only AFTER all of this may they have sex and be called the man’s wife. In human history and the ancient world, what would happen to those women and children when word got out that they were completely defenseless?
A high likely hood that they would be raped, killed, sold, etc. Women are considered the “plunder of war” and the men could do whatever they wanted to them, then discard them when they were done with them.
Within Israel, Is this woman an immediate sex slave from the day she is captured? No! According to this passage, what must the man do if she is dissatisfied with the woman? Sell her? Abuse her? He must set her free and leave her alone. Ladies, how does this Torah law make you feel compared to how the other ancient cultures would have made you feel if this happened to you?
Final thoughts
These are the only laws, to the best of my understanding, that have anything to do with women and their place within society. The only thing the Torah says about what functions women cannot fill is that of a priest or in the active Israelite military.
Torah Provides several laws that help protect women far beyond that of other cultures, But Torah does not provide any explicit references that “the man is the head of the wife, men own wives, men are superior to women, or that wives should have their heads veiled, or that men are in charge of everything.”
There are no negative proscriptions prohibiting women from serving as judges, queens, or prophets. Torah sees men and women as “husband and wife,” and even goes as far as to correct other cultures that treat women as objects, sex slaves, property, or objects of abuse.
You might be thinking, “well what about what the New Testament says?” Well, we will get to that in a few weeks and talk about this. But let me give you this to think about: “If we saw this second-class citizenship status in the gospels, then the fullness of the Kingdom of God would be a downgrade to Torah.” If we see that women are inferior to men in the NT, then it would be better for women to live under Torah law than it would be the New Covenant of the NT.
Luckily, in my opinion, the NT doesn’t support this line of thinking and we will talk more about this in three weeks.