Marriage 103To The Death, orThe Doctrine of the Sanctityof the Undefiled Woman

Cultures have had varying degrees of regard for virginity, but regardless the standing that the condition enjoys, it is irrefutable that it is impossible to restore it after having been lost; virginity is a state of pre-coital experience. Further, it should be noted that there does not appear to be any built-in species resistance to promiscuity; the level of behavior associated with recognition of chastity seems to be controlled more by social expectations than anything else. Interestingly, that may be just another way of saying that sin is a universal human trait.

In cultures where strict patrilineal inheritance is the rule, there seems to be a stricter standard with respect to the importance of virginity. That, however, is often selective. It is also generally one-sided, in that female virginity is prized, guarded, and infractions severely punished — often with death as the punishment for an unmarried woman who is found to no longer be virgin — whereas loss of male virginity in those same societies is seen as something celebratory, or at very least not a matter to be concerned about.

Such double standards color even the so-called Christian societies, where men who “sow their wild oats” are viewed as doing what just comes naturally, whereas a woman doing the same thing is viewed as “loose” or unfit for decent company. While there are varying degrees of acceptance or condemnation of such behaviors from one social group to the next, for the Christian, there must be a single standard, and that is total chastity, i.e., sexual intercourse is reserved for (and delineates) the confines of marriage.

From our previous discussion, we demonstrated that Biblical teaching shows that sexual intercourse joins the partners as a single relational unit, “one flesh”, which is then the operational definition of marriage. Further, within the Commonwealth of Israel, law and tradition strove to maintain purity of lineage.

A number of laws dealt with the treatment of unmarried women. Some appear at face to simply objectify the woman, as Deuteronomy 22:13-20:

“If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, and lay shameful things to her charge, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came nigh to her, I found not in her the tokens of virginity; then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate; and the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; and, lo, he hath laid shameful things to her charge , saying, I found not in thy daughter the tokens of virginity; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city.

And the elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him; and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.

But if this thing be true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the damsel; then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the harlot in her father's house: so shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee.”

Human society has not gotten any better through the ages at dealing with dissatisfaction and jealousy. The Hebrew requirement in the above situation is far more considerate than that found in a neighboring culture, where a man can simply pronounce the words, “I divorce thee”, and his wife is cast out of his home. God’s requirement in this situation was justice; if the woman was innocent, the man was punished and forever forbidden to divorce her. If she was guilty, then because she was committing adultery — her previous intercourse had linked her to a different man — her death was a necessity to free the man who had innocently entered into marriage with another man’s wife from the adulterous relationship.

There is additional New Testament insight to be gained from the statement of Paul in Romans 7:2-3:

”For the woman that hath a husband is bound by law to the husband while he liveth; but if the husband die, she is discharged from the law of the husband. So then if, while the husband liveth, she be joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if the husband die, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be joined to another man.”

Paul’s understanding of this undoubtedly came from his discipleship under Gamaliel. We know that many of Jesus’ teachings were also part of the teachings of Hillel, and further explorations of the Talmud might disclose the Pharisaic basis of his position. While the passage only speaks of the dying of the husband freeing the wife, it is patently obvious that the husband’s relationship would also end if the wife died. Freedom from the relationship, via death, provided avoidance of adultery if the survivor remarried.

Similarly, the very next verses deal with an all-too-common occurrence today (Deuteronomy 22:22):

”If a man be found lying with a woman married to a husband, then they shall both of them die, the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away the evil from Israel.”

and Leviticus 20:10,

”And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”

God was not about to be playing favorites; the adulterous man was as guilty as the adulterous woman. The purpose — to eliminate evil from society.

The woman was to be protected as much as possible from predacious men. In the first article of this series the Talmud was cited, “Kiddushin 1,1 specifies that a woman is acquired (i.e., to be a wife) in three ways: through money, a contract, and sexual intercourse. Ordinarily, all three of these conditions are satisfied, although only one is necessary to effect a binding marriage.” The contract (ketubah) was often drawn to ally families through their children, and could be made years prior to the actual physical consummation of the wedding (see the account of Joseph and Mary in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke). Thus the statements of Deuteronomy 22:23-27:

”If there be a damsel that is a virgin betrothed unto a husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them to death with stones; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbor's wife: so thou shalt put away the evil from the midst of thee.”

It was assumed that if the woman was honorable she would fight her attacker. It was also assumed that as the wife (betrothed) of her husband, she would be careful the she did not dress to incite other men, and that she would take care to avoid compromising situations such as being alone with a man or getting drunk in a mixed group. The claim of date rape would not hold up in such a situation; dating as practiced in contemporary Western culture would have been considered scandalously promiscuous behavior. One of the most serious problems, especially in the Christian culture, is a lack of understanding by each unmarried man and woman that, if it is God’s will that they marry at all, they are the the predestined mate of the person they will marry, and they should conduct themselves as already betrothed until such time that the actual betrothal occurs.

For this reason, and this reason alone, dating by Christian youth should be severely discouraged, since such encounters desensitize people to the fact that, in the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:28, “whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” A man should lust only after his own wife, and a woman should lust only after her own husband, and within the context of “dating”, adulterous thoughts, as defined by Jesus, toward someone whom a person will not actually marry, are impossible to avoid.

”But if the man find the damsel that is betrothed in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her; then the man only that lay with her shall die: but unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbor, and slayeth him, even so is this matter; for he found her in the field, the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.”

Once again, the death penalty was to be applied to the man committing adultery with another man’s (betrothed under the ketubah) wife. The purpose — to put away evil from Israel, but also to free the woman from the unwanted relationship.

Then, in Deuteronomy 22:28-29 we find a situation that seems to approximate the dating culture:

”If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, that is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he hath humbled her; he may not put her away all his days.”

An objection to this has been the idea that the woman is being forced to marry the man against her will. However, close examination of the context does not support that. First, if the episode occurred in a place where help would be available (in the city) and she did not cry out or attempt to fight him off, the presumption is that the episode was consensual, and under the Talmudic citation above, they had willingly married. Secondly, the phrase “and they be found” implies that they jointly tried to conceal it, and that it was consensual, whether in the city or in the countryside.

Finally, we have the situation described in Exodus 22:16-17:

”And if a man entice a virgin that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely pay a dowry for her to be his wife. If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins.”

This is a bit more difficult, but may be associated with the divorce process as discussed in Deuteronomy 24:1-4:

”When a man taketh a wife, and marrieth her, then it shall be, if she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some unseemly thing in her, that he shall write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife . And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, who took her to be his wife; her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before Jehovah: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”

It is important to understand the divorce process as outlined above. Remember the citation from the Talmud; usually all three elements were present in a marriage: the agreement, money, and sex. The divorce document basically rescinded the agreement and returned the money (nothing could be done to nullify the sex). In the case of the father not giving up his daughter, it could be either for her protection or because of his own greed and hard-heartedness due to pride. In both cases, the dowry was returned to the father so that a second marriage could be arranged and the woman would be able to bring something to the bargaining table. The statement of Jesus addresses both situations in Matthew 19:3-9:

”And there came unto him Pharisees, trying him, and saying, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

And he answered and said, ‘Have ye not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

They say unto him, Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorcement, and to put her away?

He saith unto them, Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it hath not been so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery.”

(In Luke 16:18 and Mark 10:11 the qualifier “except for fornication [porneias, generally adultery or incest]” is missing, but it is present in Matthew 5:32.)

In the view of Jesus, there was no action that could end a marriage aside from death — man-made regulations could not overturn the decree of God, and divorce had been provided because of the inevitability of human sin and the need to make sure that the woman who was put away from her husband would have the wherewithall to continue her life. The permission to remarry in Deuteronomy 24 did not, in the teaching of Jesus, eliminate the sinfulness of that second union while her first husband still lived.

Even today, among the Orthodox Jews, the descendants of a woman who obtains a civil divorce but not a religious divorce (in which the terms of the ketubah are nullified) are considered mamzer, unable to fully function in Orthodox Jewish society and synagogue worship. The writing of divorce was needed to bestow a semblance of decency to the lives of those innocently affected by a man unable to live up to his commitments. (Remember : divorce often happened to women who fell out of favor with their husbands and not because of adultery, in which case they would have been executed instead of divorced. Within the constraints of the written Torah, a woman did not have the right to divorce her husband.)

Some Christians have argued that Paul taught that divorce was permitted in certain instances in I Corinthians 7:12-15. However, he prefaces his statement in verse 12 by saying that what follows is his own private advice, not the Lord’s teaching. In the 15th verse, where he states “if the unbelieving depart, let him depart” he is not advocating for divorce but simply saying that an unbeliever determined to commit adultery will do so regardless of the believing spouse’s efforts and the believer should not allow his or her peace with God to be disturbed by the other’s actions. That Paul is NOT permitting divorce is evident from his words in verses 10 and 11 immediately preceding,

”And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband, but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband, and let not the husband put away his wife.”

So, from Jesus we see that if a man divorces his wife, except for her participating in sex outside of marriage, he commits adultery, and if he divorces his wife for any other reason and then remarries, he commits adultery. If a divorced woman remarries, she commits adultery. Why? Because divorce does not end a marriage, only the death of one of the spouses ends a marriage.

From Paul, we have the teaching repeated. Wives are not to leave their husbands. If they do leave, they are not to remarry, and if possible should reconcile with their husbands. (Very realistically, there are situations where for the good of the relationship there must be a temporary separation, but it should never be the precursor to divorce.) Men are not to divorce their wives, and there are no qualifiers as to what the wife may or may not have done. If an unbelieving spouse leaves, the believing spouse is not required to compel them to stay or to divorce them.

The intent of God’s direction in these matters has always been to maintain the sanctity of His people. The rules of His kingdom often contradict the rules of human law, but those who walk in faith according to His Word will find that trading the practices and customs of this age for the truths of the Scriptures will bring peace and joy in fellowship with those who share the desire to serve the God of Israel, blessed be His Name forever in Jesus Christ our Lord.