It can be tough to read some parts of the Bible, especially parts which make it seem like God doesn’t understand justice or doesn’t care about us or our suffering.
However, if we are to believe that the Bible is the Word of God, then it is important we truly understand what it says, even if it is hard to face. And, from my experience, when these intimidating sections of the Bible are faced head on, and are studied within their proper historical, Scriptural, and cultural context, they turn out to be the opposite of what I had feared them to be.
Let’s take a look at one of these difficult topics which is in Deuteronomy 22:28-29 (NIV):
“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.”
It seems to me that women who have been raped wouldn’t want to marry their rapist. In fact, in many cases having to even be in the same room as their rapist would be a nightmare. So, why would God require them to marry their rapist?
To understand this, we need to understand what a woman who had been raped in 1400 BC (when Deuteronomy was written by Moses) would have been facing in the culture she was living in.
In their culture if a woman was raped they most likely would never get to get married because marriage was considered a transaction and, according to the men of the time, a woman who wasn’t a virgin had lost her value. Women also needed men to provide for them financially and to keep them safe. So, if a woman was raped and the man who raped her didn’t marry her, then she would most likely be destined to live under her father’s roof for the rest of his life and then a brother’s. If she ended up with neither option she would end up homeless. This is why the consequence for the rapist was to pay her father’s household and to marry her. It is the equivalent of financial restitution in our culture. The man was forced to provide for the woman’s needs for the rest of her life.
“God took rape as seriously as He took murder.”
But, to fully understand this situation, we need to understand this law within the context of other laws which the Israelites would have had in mind while adding this law to the mix. Let’s start by looking right before these verses where we will see God’s opinion on rape. He took it as seriously as murder.
Deuteronomy 22:25-27 (NIV) says:
“But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the woman; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor, for the man found the young woman out in the country, and though the betrothed woman screamed, there was no one to rescue her.”
This part of the law shows us that God views rape as a sin worthy of execution. And the only difference between the situation in these verses and the one in the next, is the fact that this woman was already betrothed to be married and had someone to provide for her, while the other wasn’t betrothed and may not have anyone to provide for her. The rapist’s life is spared in the second situation solely because the woman’s life depended on him providing for her.
As the Christian Research Institute says:
“If the woman was not engaged, the rapist was spared for the sake of the woman’s security. Having lost her virginity, she would have been deemed undesirable for marriage—and in the culture of the day, a woman without a father or husband to provide for her faced a life of abject poverty, destitution, and social ostracism. As such, the rapist was compelled to provide for the rape victim for as long as he lived. Thus, far from barbaric, the law was a cultural means of protection and provision.”
Furthermore, this law would have been understood in addition to the law in Exodus which they had already been given by God through Moses years earlier.
Exodus 22:16-17 (NIV) says:
“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.”
So, the Israelites would have understood that the woman didn’t have to marry the man who raped her. The man was legally required to marry the woman, but the woman wasn’t legally required to marry him, she had that as an option, but she could take a different path. If she had a father and he could provide for her, or if there was the potential for a different husband, then her father could refuse to have her marry the man who raped her. And the rapist still had to pay the bride price in order to make restitution and to provide for the woman’s future. So, even if her father wasn’t wealthy she could potentially stay in his household instead of getting married, but still be provided for financially.
However, if the woman had no other options for her future, no father, and no other potential husbands, then in most cases, the only way she could survive was to become the wife of the man who raped her, forcing him to provide and care for her for the rest of their lives.
“The law was not designed to force the rape victim into an unbearable marriage, but to secure her future and that of her children.”
With all of this in mind it is clear that God’s heart when it comes to these laws was with the women. His desire was to make sure the women who had been wronged wouldn’t end up dying destitute and homeless because of what had been done to them. This means that even though it wasn’t God’s desire for women to have to live completely dependent on men who had hurt them, He understood that, realistically, this was what the women in 1400 BC were facing. So, God wrote His laws accordingly, to make sure the women were provided for the best they could be within their society’s culture and that the men took responsibility for their actions.
Yes, it’s clearly not ideal. Through the context of the Bible, we see that God makes it clear that the ideal would be the sinless world He intended, but humans “muddied the waters”. And, instead of giving up on us–like God as an all-powerful being could have easily done–God decided to walk with us through the mess we create, trying to guide us to best possible outcomes amongst the mess, and then He even redeemed us through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross so that someday we can live the painless ideal reality which He desires for us.
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” - Revelation 21:4 (KJV)
This series of blog posts titled, “Holding on to Reason”, is named after Amanda’s favorite C.S. Lewis quote: “Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”