Context No. 237 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 22:20-30: in context

20But if this thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young lady, 21then they shall bring out the young lady to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done folly in Israel, to play the prostitute in her father’s house. So you shall remove the evil from among you. 22If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall both die, the man who lay with the woman and the woman. So you shall remove the evil from Israel. 23If there is a young lady who is a virgin pledged to be married to a husband, and a man finds her in the city, and lies with her, 24then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones; the lady, because she didn’t cry, being in the city; and the man, because he has humbled his neighbor’s wife. So you shall remove the evil from among you. 25But if the man finds the lady who is pledged to be married in the field, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die; 26but to the lady you shall do nothing. There is in the lady no sin worthy of death; for as when a man rises against his neighbor and kills him, even so is this matter; 27for he found her in the field, the pledged to be married lady cried, and there was no one to save her. 28If a man finds a lady who is a virgin, who is not pledged to be married, grabs her and lies with her, and they are found, 29then the man who lay with her shall give to the lady’s father fifty shekels of silver. She shall be his wife, because he has humbled her. He may not put her away all his days. 30A man shall not take his father’s wife, and shall not uncover his father’s skirt.

This is a stretch of ancient Israelite law about sex, marriage, and virginity, and it is hard to read now. It prescribes death by stoning for a bride found not to be a virgin, death for both parties in adultery, and, in its last cases, a rule that a man who rapes an unbetrothed woman must pay her father and marry her. These are laws from a world roughly three thousand years old, in which a woman's standing ran through her father and then her husband, and it does no good to pretend otherwise. This is in the Bible, stated plainly, and part of reading it honestly is not looking away from it.

Inside the harshness, though, the law makes one distinction worth seeing, because the cultures around Israel often did not. It separates the betrothed woman caught with a man inside the town from the one attacked out in the open country. In the field, the text reasons, she may have cried out and no one was there to save her, so to the woman you shall do nothing, there is no sin in her worthy of death, and only the man dies. The law reaches for the difference between consent and force, and puts the guilt where the violence was, on the man.

Both are here at once, a code that treats a woman as her household's property and a rule that refuses to blame her for being attacked. For all its distance from us, the law tried to lay the guilt where the violence actually was. Where have I been quick to blame someone who cried out, when the truth is there was no one there to save them?

Sources

Deuteronomy 22:23-27: the distinction between the betrothed woman in the city and in the field, consent and force
Deuteronomy 22:28-29: the law that a man who violates an unbetrothed woman must pay her father and marry her
These case laws set within the wider code of Deuteronomy, given as Israel prepares to enter the land