Skip to main content

Deuteronomy 21-24



From our twenty-first century perspective, there are many strange laws in this section of Deuteronomy. In fact, there are many laws that are offensive to us, especially regarding the treatment of women. However, one thing we must keep in mind is that some of these laws probably represented an improvement in the treatment of women generally from what was then current in surrounding cultures.
For example, Friedman has this comment on Deuteronomy 21:11,
But what pervades the elements of the law is an extraordinary sensitivity to the humanity of a captured woman. Contrary to one of the most common practices of war, the Israelite soldier is not permitted to rape her…. Again Israel learns from its experience of enslavement. Israel not only celebrates its own release, but it learns to have compassion for others as well.[1]
Deuteronomy 22 contains a complex mixture of moral and ritual laws. This makes it difficult if not impossible to distinguish such laws from one another as is commonly attempted in Protestant theology. Protestant theologians for the past five hundred years have tended to say that the ritual laws of the Old Testament are not binding on Christians, but the moral laws are. This is a difficult position to follow consistently and I doubt whether it has ever been done.
Many of these laws follow the general principle of not mixing unlike things. Friedman explains:
Why does mixing different seeds in a vineyard make the resulting crop holy? Several of the laws regarding mixtures have possible explanations having to do with the realm of the holy. The law against cooking a kid in its mother’s milk may be because that was regarded as a food for a deity, since a Ugaritic text pictures the chief god, El, having kid cooked in milk…. The law against wearing wool and linen together may be because they were both used in the Tabernacle…. (Even the law against men wearing clothes of the opposite sex may have to do with pagan myths in which the gods and goddesses do that.) [This, by the way, shows the danger of trying to apply these texts to various sexual minorities in our own day.] And so it may be in the case of mixed seeds, as well: the prohibition of mixing them may not be because the mixing is bad in some way but rather because some mixtures are regarded as divine. This is only a speculation, since the meaning of this law (and of other laws concerning mixtures) has stymied scholars for centuries. But this speculation at least has the advantage of coming to terms with the word “holy” in this law.[2]
Another curious practice is referred to in Deuteronomy 22:17, namely, demonstrating a daughter’s virginity by a cloth. What is this all about? Again, Friedman helpfully explains, “It is either the clothing she wore on the wedding night or the cloth or sheet beneath the couple that night, on which a bloodstain would be evidence of her virginity.”[3]
Yet another curiosity appears in Deuteronomy 22:19. Most Christians in generations past were taught that premarital sex is forbidden by the Bible. However, as Friedman notes regarding this verse: “Premarital sex is not forbidden elsewhere in the Torah, and men marry women who are not virgins. Only the high priest is absolutely required to marry a virgin (Lev 21:13-14).”[4]
Laws concerning sexual relations are also covered in Deuteronomy 23. In 23:1 we read, “A man shall not take his father’s wife, so he will not expose his father’s hem.” Friedman explains that this applies:
Before or after his father’s death. This law appears as part of the list of prohibited sexual mates in Leviticus (18:8; 20:11), but here it stands alone. Its apparent special significance is that this issue comes up several times in Israel’s royal family….expose his father’s hem. Meaning: the son would have contact with the woman to whom the father has been exposed. “Exposing nudity” is the euphemism for prohibited sexual unions (see Leviticus 18).[5]
Deuteronomy 23:3 says that “A bastard shall not come into YHWH’s community.” However, Friedman provides this important clarification: “This has not been understood to mean someone born out of wedlock, but rather someone born from one of the forbidden sexual relationships.”[6]
Moabites and Ammonites are also forbidden from coming into YHWH’s community in 23:4. Yet, as Friedman notes, “Ruth, a Moabite woman, marries an Israelite, and their descendant is King David—and all the royal line of Judah! Elsewhere, however, we have seen that biblically a woman automatically takes on her husband’s religion. Therefore, it is only a Moabite or Ammonite man who is prohibited from marrying an Israelite woman. A Moabite or Ammonite woman may marry an Israelite man.”[7]
Friedman makes another interesting point regarding the laws concerning sexual relations in the Hebrew Scriptures. While sacred prostitution (Temple prostitution) is forbidden, “Regular prostitution is not necessarily prohibited by law in the Tanak, but it is disdained. The symbolism of the prophet Hosea’s marriage to a prostitute indicates this (Hosea 1-3).”[8]
Deuteronomy 23 also introduces another law that is almost universally disregarded today. Israelites were forbidden from charging one another interest. They could charge interest on a loan to a foreigner but not to a fellow Israelite.
C. S. Lewis comments on this in Mere Christianity,
There is one bit of advice given to us by the ancient heathen Greeks, and by the Jews in the Old Testament, and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed. All these people told us not to lend money at interest: and lending money at interest—what we call investment—is the basis of our whole system. Now it may not follow that we are wrong. Some people say that when Moses and Aristotle and the Christians agreed in forbidding interest (or “usury” as they called it), they could not foresee the joint stock company, and were only thinking of the private moneylender, and that, therefore, we need not bother about what they said. That is a question I cannot decide on. I am not an economist and I simply do not know whether the investment system is responsible for the state we are in or not. This is where we want the Christian economist. But I should not have been honest if I had not told you that three great civilisations had agreed (or so it seems at first sight) in condemning the very thing on which we have based our whole life.[9]
I think this reveals just how selective we are in following the laws of the Bible. We teach others to follow these laws when the laws are convenient or acceptable to our particular group, and we ignore these laws when they are especially inconvenient.
Deuteronomy 24 deals, among other things, with laws regarding marriage and divorce. Friedman comments:
…there is no law in the Torah telling how to get married and no law telling how to get divorced. Here, the divorce procedure appears to be assumed, as a known practice.
The absence of marriage and divorce procedures has been used as a proof of the existence of oral law that was given along with the law that is written in the Torah. But the case may be rather that these ceremonies were not regarded as having been given in detail by God—as few ceremonies outside of the sacrifices at the Tabernacle are so given. The divine interest is in the marriage relationship rather than in the ceremony…[10]
The same holds true for the New Testament. We are never presented with a marriage ceremony. In fact, the only ceremonies we are given any instruction about in the New Testament are baptism and The Lord's Supper. Suffice to say, Deuteronomy 24 presents one more reason why it is not so easy to define “biblical marriage”.


[1] Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, 629
[2] Ibid, 632
[3] Ibid, 633
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid, 635
[6] Ibid
[7] Ibid, 635-636
[8] Ibid, 637
[9] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1984, pp. 80-81.
[10] Friedman, 639

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

C. S. Lewis on Homosexuality

Arthur Greeves In light of recent developments in the United States on the issue of gay marriage, I thought it would be interesting to revisit what C. S. Lewis thought about homosexuality. Lewis, who died in 1963, never wrote about same-sex marriage, but he did write, occasionally, about the topic of homosexuality in general. In the following I am quoting from my book, Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis . For detailed references and footnotes, you may obtain a copy from Amazon, your local library, or by clicking on the book cover at the right.... In Surprised by Joy , Lewis claimed that homosexuality was a vice to which he was never tempted and that he found opaque to the imagination. For this reason he refused to say anything too strongly against the pederasty that he encountered at Malvern College, where he attended school from the age of fifteen to sixteen. Lewis did not rate pederasty as the greatest evil of the school because he felt the cruelty displa

Fact, Faith, Feeling

"Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where to get off', you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith." Mere Christianity Many years ago, when I was a young Christian, I remember seeing the graphic illustration above of what C. S. Lewis has, here, so

C. S. Lewis Tour--London

The final two days of our C. S. Lewis Tour of Ireland & England were spent in London. Upon our arrival we enjoyed a panoramic tour of the city that included Westminster Abbey. A number of our tour participants chose to tour the inside of the Abbey where they were able to view the new C. S. Lewis plaque in Poets' Corner. Though London was not one of Lewis' favorite places to visit, there are a number of locations associated with him. One which I have noted in my new book,  In the Footsteps of C. S. Lewis , is Endsleigh Palace Hospital (25 Gordon Street, London) where Lewis recovered from his wounds received during the First World War.... Not too far away from this location is King's College, part of the University of London, located on the Strand, just off the River Thames. This is the location where Lewis gave the annual commemoration oration entitled The Inner Ring  on 14 December 1944.... C. S. Lewis occasionally attended theatrical events in London.

The Shepherds' Perspective on Christmas

On December 21, 2015, the following headline appeared in the International Business Times: “Bethlehem Christmas 2015 Cancelled”. To be fully accurate, religious celebrations of Jesus’ birth went forward last year in Bethlehem, but many of the secular celebrations of Christmas that usually surround it were toned down due to instability in the area. Looking back a decade, there was even one year when Christian Arabs canceled community celebrations of Christmas in support of the Palestinian uprising. However, the Jewish government would have no part of that, so the Israeli military sponsored its own holiday celebrations in the area. It is also interesting to note who celebrated the first Christmas and who didn’t. The first Christmas was not celebrated by the emperor Caesar Augustus, nor Quirinius, the governor of Syria, nor was it celebrated by the lowly innkeeper. But Christmas was celebrated by a few lonely shepherds along with Joseph and Mary and the angels of heaven. How

A Prayer at Ground Zero

Does the Bible mention treating animals with kindness?

When I solicited questions to be addressed in this series, a member of the congregation wrote this to me: “Animals are mentioned in the Bible as beasts of burden and sacrificial animals.  Is there any mention of treating animals with kindness?” The short answer to that question is: yes. However, it is important to note that what the Bible says about caring for animals comes in the midst of a great narrative. It is a narrative of  Creation, Fall, and Redemption.  Let’s look at these three great acts in the narrative play of world history one by one. First, let’s look at creation. Creation At the very beginning of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verses 26 through 28, we read this: Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the

Christmas Day Thought from Henri Nouwen

" I keep thinking about the Christmas scene that Anthony arranged under the altar. This probably is the most meaningful "crib" I have ever seen. Three small woodcarved figures made in India: a poor woman, a poor man, and a small child between them. The carving is simple, nearly primitive. No eyes, no ears, no mouths, just the contours of the faces. The figures are smaller than a human hand - nearly too small to attract attention at all. "But then - a beam of light shines on the three figures and projects large shadows on the wall of the sanctuary. That says it all. The light thrown on the smallness of Mary, Joseph, and the Child projects them as large, hopeful shadows against the walls of our life and our world. "While looking at the intimate scene we already see the first outlines of the majesty and glory they represent. While witnessing the most human of human events, I see the majesty of God appearing on the horizon of my existence. While

C. S. Lewis on Church Attendance

A friend's blog written yesterday ( http://wesroberts.typepad.com/ ) got me thinking about C. S. Lewis's experience of the church. I wrote this in a comment on Wes Robert's blog: It is interesting to note that C. S. Lewis attended the same small church for over thirty years. The experience was nothing spectacular on a weekly basis. For most of those years Lewis didn't care much for the sermons; he even sat behind a pillar so that the priest would not see the expression on his face. He attended the service without music because he so disliked hymns. And he left right after holy communion was served probably because he didn't like to engage in small talk with other parishioners after the service. But that life-long obedience in the same direction shaped Lewis in a way that nothing else could. Lewis was once asked, "Is attendance at a place of worship or membership with a Christian community necessary to a Christian way of life?" His answer w

Sheldon Vanauken Remembered

A good crowd gathered at the White Hart Cafe in Lynchburg, Virginia on Saturday, February 7 for a powerpoint presentation I gave on the life and work of Sheldon Vanauken. Van, as he was known to family and friends, was best known as the author of A Severe Mercy , the autobiography of his love relationship with his wife Jean "Davy" Palmer Davis. While living in Oxford, England in the early 1950's, Van and Davy came to faith in Christ through the influence of C. S. Lewis. Van was a professor of history and English literature at Lynchburg College from 1948 until his retirement around 1980. A Severe Mercy tells the story of Davy's death from a mysterious liver ailment in 1955 and Van's subsequent dealing with grief. Van himself died from cancer in 1996. It was my privilege to know Van for a brief period of time during the last year of his life. However, present at the White Hart on February 7 were some who knew Van far better than I did--Floyd Newman, one of Van&

Glenmerle

Glenmerle in the 1950s In 2013 I published a biography on one of my favorite authors, Sheldon Vanauken. If you are interested, you can learn more and/or purchase a signed copy here:  Signed Copy  or an unsigned copy here:  Amazon . One of the things that got me writing the book was my search for the location of Glenmerle, Vanauken's childhood home, so lovingly described in his book, A Severe Mercy . A visit to Van's alma mater, Staunton Military Academy, alerted me to the fact that Van grew up in Carmel, Indiana. Then, with the help of a local historian, we identified the location of Glenmerle.  Because Van had suggested, in my first conversation with him, that Glenmerle was destroyed, I naturally assumed that the house no longer existed. However, another one of Van's fans recently contacted me to let me know that she believed she had found Glenmerle still in existence. I was able to look up the house on a real estate web site and compare current interior photos o