How God’s Love for Women Is Displayed in the Old Testament

Well, hello, ladies! Thank you for being brave enough to come to the session where we're going to talk about what the Bible says about periods.

Oh, you just think I'm joking. We are going there, because the truth is, all of God's Word expresses God's character—especially God's law.

My aunt is right here. I'm sorry, I just have to wait.

All right, so the story goes that there was this business group that was hosting this Chinese delegation for a major business deal. This was huge—I mean—they'd been trying to land this for months.

And so, they bring these executives from China, meet them for dinner at the best restaurant in town. The Chinese executives come to the restaurant, and the Americans look at them and just say, “Oh, just sit anywhere. Come on in, just sit wherever you want.”

They have the dinner, and it seems like everything’s going fine. They're very happy with the way the dinner went. And then the next morning, they got the call: business deal is off. They are irrevocably offended.

Well, these American executives are going, “What in the world did we do? We did everything we could! We rolled out the red carpet for them; we brought them to the best restaurant we could; we made them feel so welcome. What in the world happened?”

And then they realized that when they said, “Sit anywhere,” that was a sign of disrespect. Because, Chinese culture values hierarchy. With hierarchy, you would have had the head of that company sitting in a place of honor. You would have thought through where you are putting everybody at this table to communicate respect.

Now, if in our information digital age there can be such a miscommunication between two cultures that are existing at the same time, can you imagine how much potential miscommunication we could have understanding the culture of the Bible—that was written thousands of years ago, thousands of miles away, and with a completely different cultural value system?

See, when you and I come to the Bible, we put our cultural lenses on. We don't realize it, but we all have them. We all have a perspective we come to when we're reading the Old Testament.

Now, because of this, a lot of times we can look at the Old Testament and think that it is horrible for women, that it is oppressive to women, that it was misogynistic to women. Maybe you don't say it out loud, because that's not what good church girls do. But the truth is, we can read some of these passages, especially in the Old Testament law, and feel like, “This seems out of sync with the God that I know—especially in the New Testament. What is going on?”

So what comes to mind when we think about Old Testament law often reflects the cultural perspective that we are bringing to Scripture.

So what do we have to do? We have to take off our cultural lenses and understand the cultural lenses of the Bible. That’s what we’re going to start with today.

Now, we still need the Old Testament law. It’s so easy to think, Oh, that’s Old Testament, we don’t need to know that. Jesus saved us from all of that. Well, He saved us from the penalty of our law breaking. We no longer relate to God on the basis of how we are doing in keeping His law.

But as Romans tells us, we are saved now so that we can fulfill the law of God. And the law of God is summed up in what? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself (see Matt. 22: 37–39).

So when we’re studying these laws about women—unusual as it may seem—this is expressing the ultimate purpose of the law, which is summarized in love for God and love for one another.

Ultimately, the law of God reveals the Lawgiver.

Here’s what you need to know: any time you are talking about a law—any law, biblical law, American law—every law is grounded in a moral claim. Behind every law that has ever been passed, you trace it back to why that law was passed, and you'll find a moral claim—something that people should do or something that people shouldn't do.

Well, those “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” reflect moral claims—moral frameworks—what is right, what is wrong.

So when we encounter Old Testament law, we are encountering God’s moral framework, and that includes the laws that are specifically about women.

So let's talk about some of the cultural lenses that we have to replace. If we don't do this, we're going to jump into specific laws in the Bible and completely misunderstand what they communicate.

The first one is the difference between a collectivist culture and an individualist culture.

Now, you and I, whether or not we realize it, are part of an individualist culture. If you are influenced by Western society (think Aristotle, not cowboys West), you have a framework that values the individual.

That’s a very good thing. Actually, the value of an individual—regardless of their race, gender, or socioeconomic status—you can trace that back to the influence of the Church. But the value of an individual means that we see things through an individualist lens.

In an individualist lens, your highest good, your ultimate goal, is to fulfill your purpose, your dreams, your ambition. In fact, to an individualist, going against culture and tradition and expectations, oh, we celebrate that person! The ultimate goal for the individual is simply to protect the supreme value and sovereignty of being an individual.

Think of every Disney princess movie you have ever seen. In the individualist culture, your highest value is to determine and express your authentic self—often over and against the expectations of others.

Again, not necessarily bad. We all have a cultural framework. If we are submitting it to Scripture, we live for the Lord within our culture—which is Western individualism.

However, the Bible is written in a collectivist culture, and in a collectivist culture, that moral framework is all reversed. Your highest good is to fulfill your responsibility to your family and your community. In fact, it is something honorable to set aside what you want and pursue what is good for others.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

Imagine that someone’s parents were immigrants. They came here; they built up this huge business, and they want to give that business to their daughter so that she can take it and take care of her parents in their old age, and then also take care of her children . . . so for that third generation.

And she says, “Well, you know, that's great, but what I really want to do is go be an actress.”

Now, in the American movie version, what are we rooting for? We're rooting for her to go be an actress, right? Go fulfill your dreams!

But in a collectivist culture—oh, my goodness—that would be a horrible disgrace to abandon your family in pursuit of something as selfish as your goals.

Now, to our culture, that sounds really condemning, but that's because we have very different cultural lenses in how we relate to things like ambition, family, and the future.

Here's another example: arranged marriages. Now, to an individualist culture like ours, what do you think? What should a woman feel with an arranged marriage? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?

Generally it’s bad. You've been confined, enslaved. We assume it is a loveless marriage. This is the most horrible thing that could happen to you! In the Disney princess movie version, it's before she runs away from home and then finds her one true love that nobody else would approve of. You see how that story goes.

But see, in a collectivist culture, they see it so differently. How cruel to tell these eighteen-, twenty-, twenty-five-year-old kids who could barely tie their shoes just a few years ago, that they have it all figured out and they know who they should spend the rest of their lives with.

Don’t they know that they need the guidance of parents and people who love them to help them understand what is truly valuable in a mate?

See, it's all shifted. Some of you wouldn't mind an arranged marriage. I have long said that I would be on board with an arranged marriage if I got to pick the committee that was doing the arranging. Doesn't sound too bad, actually.

Here's another difference: we live in what's called a guilt-or-innocence culture. The Bible was written in an honor–shame culture. Now, this is a subtle thing, but it's very different.

So if we break a law . . . Let's say we run a red light. We're pulled over, and we're guilty. We ran the red light. What we have to do is make restitution. We pay a fine, and then we are restored. We have made that restitution; we're put back in right standing because we have paid a debt. The opposite of guilt is innocence. You are innocent of that wrongdoing or that particular transgression.

In the biblical culture, there are still the concepts of guilt and innocence, and certainly we see how the Lord Jesus pays our guilt and restores us to not just innocence, but His righteousness.

But in a collectivist culture, it's not guilt or innocence—it's honor and shame. The difference is your relationship to the community. So if you do what is good, you do what is right, you have honor in the community. But to transgress the expectations, to go against the commands of the Lord, to defy one’s parents—that is something that brings shame.

Shame brings exclusion. So when someone is restored to honor, they are not primarily seen as innocent, but rather they are brought back from exclusion from the community, which is a place of shame, and brought back into the community.

So like when Hebrews says that Jesus died outside the gate, He was excluded. This is part of Him taking on our shame. It’s exclusion that was considered kind of the greatest punishment—to be outside of your community. 

Because of that, individual sins have a major communal concern. Because of that, sexual integrity—especially from one person—reflects on an entire family. One person's obedience or disobedience does not just affect that one person (that’s kind of that guilt-or-innocence framework). Rather, your individual guilt, your individual obedience or disobedience, affects the whole.

So when you read in Deuteronomy about how they are to respond when they find idolatry in their neighbor or their family member, it's their responsibility. It’s not, “Oh, this is just my distant relative over here.” Oh no, it’s a communal concern. That helps us understand a lot of these laws that we're going to read and understand. 

Why in the world is everybody part of the punishment? Well, because in an honor–shame culture, morality has communal effects.

Next, this is a big one—patriarchy. Oh, I just heard a little bit of a rumble. Yeah, yeah—patriarchy. You've probably heard that word “patriarchy.” It's usually preceded by the terms “smash the patriarchy,” right? “Down with the patriarchy!”

In our post-feminist world, the idea of patriarchy is considered the root of all inequality and all women's oppression.

Patriarchy properly means “father rule”— pater (father) and archy (rule). And then patricentrism, that's the idea of a community or a family revolving around the father.

Now, I'll just be honest: patriarchy, patricentrism, father rule, father-centered; neither of those sound particularly appealing in themselves, do they? Why? Because we are individualists. We are wired to see the world through very self-centered lenses. Autonomy, self-direction—these are the things that our culture values.

Well, in a patriarchy—especially in ancient Near Eastern culture, like the Bible’s—patriarchy was simply like your local government. Patriarchy was a part of life, and the patriarch (or the eldest male of a family or a clan) ruled over the entire household and was at the center of the entire household.

Now, some of the things we mean by that are this: the patriarch was responsible for everyone under his care. I'm not just talking about his wife and children either. I'm talking about extended family, servants, people who worked on his land, people who were traveling through (they didn’t have hotels; they stayed with people locally, like someone's family home or a clan), people who were foreigners, who had been living among the Israelites—all of these people would take up residence in a household, and that household was vast and far-reaching. The patriarch was the one who was responsible for everyone in his care. If he did not take care of them well, it was a dishonor to him. It was shameful to him.

Again, you and I hear that through individualist ears, but in the biblical culture, a patriarch also represented his household.

That's why there are certain laws that require the men to come and fulfill a religious obligation. It's not because, “Oh, we don't want women.” It's because that man is the head of that particular household.

Now, we typically and oftentimes unknowingly associate authority with being the best. Part of what happens is we look at being in charge, or being the one who is responsible, and that must mean that you are superior. I mean, nobody wants to be second, right? But rather, in the biblical culture, the greater your authority, the greater your responsibility. 

Theologian Daniel Block says it's a fundamental fallacy if we don't distinguish between authority and ownership. Men had authority—this is a patriarchal culture of authority—but that's not the same thing as ownership. Women were dependent on men, but they were not slaves to men. They were not the possession of men.

And the ideal of leadership and authority all throughout the Bible is that of a servant—of a husband and father using his authority in such a way that it is for the benefit of everyone in his care.

So we can't say, “Oh, well, you know, biblical law was written in a patriarchal culture, so it was just automatically oppressive to women.” We don't know that.

Case in point: we live in a democratic republic. We can vote, we can hold office, we can own land, we can own a business, we can say whatever we want. Are women no longer mistreated? No. Why? Because the problem is not primarily the structure of our culture or our government. The problem is primarily the condition of the human heart.

Laws, cultures—they don't change behaviors. They punish bad behaviors, but laws do not make people righteous. We know that from our Bibles, don't we?

Here's one more thing to make sure you know. Within this culture, marriage is essential for a woman's life. If you're not married, you don't have a home. You don't have a stable source of food. You don't have children who will take care of you in your old age. 

So unless you are under your father's household, you are on your own. Your options are: you are the daughter of your father, or you are the wife of your husband. Again, this is a cultural difference.

So when a woman is widowed, when a woman has something happen in her life that completely affects her marriage prospects, that is devastating, because it's not just grief, not just the pain of widowhood or the pain of singleness. No, this is a socio-economic disaster.

And when we understand that, it helps us see many of the laws about marriage for women within that frame of mind is something that is actually helping women who need to be in the security of a marriage.

So God's law reveals His character. It reveals His character at a particular point in history, in a particular culture.

So with that in mind, let's talk about the biological laws. I want to just give a little bit of warning, too. After the biological laws, we're going to talk about the laws on what I call, “coerced disgrace.”

It's the passage in Deuteronomy 22 about sexual assaults. I just want to make sure that you can make space for that. We will be looking at it in terms of its legal ramifications, but it's a very heavy topic, so I just want you to be aware of that.

But let's start with the biological laws. These are pretty interesting. Has anybody read the laws on periods and childbirth and felt a few feelings about them? Yeah. Why? They make us feel like women are being excluded or punished for something that is not their fault.

I mean, God made us with periods. Why in the world would He be punishing women for them? Well, He's not. Let's look at why.

In biblical law, there are specific categories all throughout Hebrew law—and indeed Hebrew culture today, among practicing Jews—there is a value of distinction. Keeping clear categories and boundaries, making sure that those categories are not blurred and those boundaries are not crossed.

In biblical law, everything is either common or holy. Now, if you're common, that doesn't mean common is not valuable. No, no. It just means you're not holy. You're not set apart. Holy does not primarily mean righteousness. It means set apart for the Lord, consecrated, cut away for God. Everything else and everyone else is common.

So you can already think about different objects in the temple, those are holy. The priests, those are holy unto the Lord. Everyone else is common.

Now, everything that is common can also be one of two categories—kind of subcategories. If you're common, you can be clean or unclean. Now, if you are clean and common, that means that you can come into the presence of the holy things. You could go into the temple. But if you are common and unclean for some reason, then you may not go into the presence of the holy things. You may not have contact with things that are holy and set apart unto the Lord.

Now, when we hear “clean” and “unclean,” we typically hear that through the lens of “you’re guilty” or “you’re innocent.” That is one category that refers to moral cleanness and moral uncleanness.But what we're going to be talking about today is not moral or immoral — it’s simply ritual.

Ritual cleanness and uncleanness addressed how people lived, interacted with one another, and how they lived in worship unto the Lord.

So for instance, if I, just as a human being, am walking along and then come into contact with the carcass of a dead animal, I am ritually unclean. What that means is, if I were to hug you, you are now ritually unclean. It's like cooties, right? And because now we're both ritually unclean, we have to wait a full day, and then we have a wash—we have a bath—and then we are restored to being clean.

Now, up until this point, nobody's done anything wrong. However, if I were to come into contact with a dead carcass of an animal, and knowing that I am ritually unclean, and then I were to go present a sacrifice to the Lord in the temple, oh . . . line crossed. That is serious. That is profaning—treating as common, as unworthy the holy things of God.

At that point, I could expect very serious punishment, because I have chosen to come to God on my terms and not His.

All of these laws are didactic. They are teaching the people of God something. And what they have in common, whether we're talking about menstruation or childbirth, is the ritual uncleanness that occurs with the flow of blood.

Any time blood appears in the Old Testament, it is to be treated with respect, because the Lord says, “The life is in the blood.” And what do we know about the purpose of the law? The law is, as Galatians 3 says, “our tutor to Christ.”

What the Lord is doing through His law—specifically the passages related to how to treat blood, no matter where or who it comes from—is He is preparing His people to honor and revere the blood of the Lamb that would take away the sin of the world.

Can you see how this is all pointing us to the Lord Jesus?

There's something else though in these laws that you'll find as we dig into them. They also helped keep the spread of germs to a minimum. This is before antibacterial gel, wipes, antibiotics. This is before modern medicine. It’s before people even knew about things like germs. We see a lot of these laws, we find that the obedience of them helped mitigate the spread of infection and disease.

Now, that's not the primary purpose. The primary purpose is to reveal God. But like all of God's laws, those things that reveal God are also for our good. They are also for the good and the benefit and the health of humanity.

So, let's talk about the menstruation laws in Leviticus 15. I'm going to summarize this for you, just for the sake of time. This passage describes normal period, and for a normal period, you are ritually unclean for seven days.

One time, I was explaining this to a group. There were a couple of seminaries, a group of seminary students, and one of them was a very young man who raised his hand and said, “Why seven days?” Somebody else is going to have to explain that one to you. But with the menstruation laws, you're ritually unclean for seven days, and that means anyone who comes into contact with you is also ritually unclean.

Now, you have the option to self-isolate, to stay at home, but you don't have to. You're welcome to go outside of your house. You just have to let people know, “I am in my time of uncleanness,” or, as I think it was, Rachel said, “It's the way of the woman,” or “the way of women,” right? So once people knew that, they would know, “Okay, if I were to touch her or give her a hug, I would be ritually unclean as well.”

The other restriction is that her husband could not have sexual relations with her. This is total abstinence for seven days. We'll talk about why that's important in a moment.

There's also some interpreters who say that anything that she touched while she was on her period also became ritually unclean, so things like household items. That's why she has her own bed. She sleeps in her own bed. She has a separate bed. She has a separate chair. And then also, she is not permitted to go to a place of worship — anything that would be holy.

So the way this works, ladies, is that God's law is so oppressive that when you are on your period, the God of the universe wants you to go lay down. You need to take a break. You need to rest.

No, you are not allowed to walk a mile in the hot, arid sun, to go to the temple. No, your husband cannot make sexual demands on you. Instead, he has to relate to you as a person, to be considerate of your emotional needs. He has to recognize that you have cramps and bloating and who knows what else, and that you're exhausted.

Your kids need to be considerate of you. You need to be left alone. No, you cannot be all over. Mom, right now, has seven days to herself.

Did you know that there are rabbis who have said that the restriction of sexual abstinence when the woman is on her period is actually for the good of marriage? With the time of restraint of the man having to relate to her and be considerate of her, recognizing that she is not a sexual object, she is not an object of lust, he is renewing his emotional devotion to her. And with the no comes the anticipation of the yes.

Rabbis say that this actually is for the strengthening of the marriage. There is a rhythm to the intimacy. Oh, it's so fascinating.

Oppressive? Is God's law oppressive on this one? Yeah, I don't think so either.

There are modern companies that are celebrated for giving women “period days.” They're not sick. They just recognize that she just needs to work from home today, and we celebrate them. Oh, my goodness, so progressive. Say, Leviticus.

Let's talk about the childbirth laws. The childbirth law is very easily misunderstood.

So after a woman has a baby boy, she is ritually unclean. So again, she hasn't done anything wrong. She's ritually unclean for seven days. All those previous restrictions apply—abstinence in marriage, don't come into contact with the holy things. And then the uncleanness is transferred to someone else for the period of a day, then you have to have a washing, that type of thing.

But she is unclean for seven days, and then thirty-three . . . Now, why didn't God just say forty? Here's why:

What happens, if you have a baby boy, on day eight of that baby boy's life? Circumcision? Can you imagine the trauma for the entire family of the dad having to take care of the baby boy when he's being circumcised and mom is hours away? Horrible.

That also would be so bad for the mom. Not only is she missing this very important ceremony in the life of her infant son, but she's at home worrying about him.

So seven days, then it's sort of suspended on the eighth so that she can be with the family during the son’s circumcision, and then we're right back to ritual uncleanness for thirty-three days—7 + 33 = 40. How much time is it again that a woman's body needs to fully recover after giving birth? About six weeks, 42 days. Isn't that interesting?

Now, when she has a baby girl, it's all doubled. Why is it doubled? Is he punishing her? That's what a lot of people think. They think she's being punished. “Oh,she's being punished. She had a baby girl. She brought another baby girl into the world. Had she brought a baby boy, she would be unclean for half the time.”

Well, if you have a baby girl, that actually means you have another forty days of mandatory maternity leave, mandatory rest.

Do we know why God doubled it? We really don't. It's an argument from silence. Some people have said she's being punished. We know that's not true.

For one thing, the sacrifice that she brings at the end of her time of purification is exactly the same if she had a boy or a girl. If this was about punishment, you would expect this to be a different kind of sacrifice. It's not. This isn't about punishment. She certainly hasn't done anything wrong by fulfilling the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply. God knows how He made women to have babies, right?

Another theory says that she is serving another forty days of uncleanness for her baby girl, who will one day become ritually unclean. That is an interesting theory, but here's where it falls apart: one, nowhere else in Scripture do you see someone ritually unclean for something that might happen years in the future. It's always right here, right now. That also fits with the whole didactic teaching purpose of the law.

Along with that, who are the only people in the Old Testament who represent someone else in terms of cleanness or uncleanness and standing before the Lord? Who are they? The priests. So I throw that theory out too. 

The only one that makes sense, again, it’s an argument from silence. I'll give you the Cliff Notes version for the sake of time. About 100 years ago, a Jewish doctor who taught at Johns Hopkins University decided to study the biology of women who had just had a baby boy and women who had just had a baby girl. He found 100 moms of boys, 100 moms of girls, and he studied lochia—basically, the woman's discharge after you have a baby. Your body is still flushing things out.

Here's what he found: among the moms who had just had a baby girl, at the same number of weeks, they had a higher level of bacteria that their body was still flushing out. So much so that this doctor concluded this really could have been about public health. This could have been that the Lord just knew a woman's body needs more time to get back to normal, more time to flush out bacteria. Did you know?

And again, this is before modern medicine and antibiotics. Sexual activity before a woman's body is healed after childbirth, and then also sexual activity during menstruation. The pH levels are different, the dilation of the cervix is different, the vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections is different, things like pelvic inflammatory disease for which there was no medicine thousands of years ago. What if it was all about protecting women? Amazing, isn't it?

All right, laws on coercion and disgrace. You call them a pattern, and I call them a pattern, because it's a little bit like modern case law today. Do we have anybody who's studied law in here? Excellent. Modern case law is basically setting up patterns where maybe you have a situation that doesn't exactly fit this particular law, but you're supposed to take the principles in that law and apply them to the situation. Make sense?

So here we’ve got three laws that we're going to look at, and these three laws establish patterns. What I want you to know is that compared to other ancient Near Eastern legal codes, biblical law was remarkably unbiased.

So, other legal codes from around this same era of history, if a man were to assault a woman, the punishment that man received depended on how rich that woman was. It depended on the woman's socioeconomic status. It depended on whether she was a slave woman or a free woman. In biblical law, you don't see any of that. It's simply guilt or innocence: did he commit the crime, or didn't he? Was she harmed, or was she not?

So the first is what I call the encounter in the city. I'll just summarize these for you. It describes a betrothed woman who has an encounter with another man, and this man finds her in the city. And the word for “find” is like, “you found your keys. Aha, found you.” It also describes that this happened in the city. In other words, it was densely populated. And “betrothed” meant that “she was legally another man's wife.” They had not had the wedding, but she legally was, in all but ceremony and consummation, married to this other man.

So when that happens, this law says that she is guilty of unfaithfulness. She's guilty of unfaithfulness, and both of them are put to death for sexual sin.

Now, this law does not say that she was forced. It says that he “found” her. It says, you know, did he dishonor her? He did dishonor her. He treated her with dishonor, as all sexual sin is and does, but he did not force her.

So looking at the next law, the next set of verses, is a very different situation. This law doesn't happen in a city where there are people nearby, where you would have to work to kind of hide. No. This happens out where she's isolated. She's isolated in a field.

And this particular verse uses a verb that means specifically violence or force. This law is very clearly talking about a forced sexual assault.

Here is what God says to the young woman in Israel who has been sexually assaulted. He says, “do nothing to the girl.” She is like someone who was murdered. The crime of rape in the law of God is on par with the crime of murder. Thousands of years before modern law recognized this, God understood that this crime involved violence. It involved power. It involved exploiting the comparative physical weakness that women have.

And he says, do nothing to her, like the woman in the law. Right above this, this girl was also betrothed. We see that it doesn't affect the state of her marriage. It doesn't affect her reputation in the community. She did nothing wrong; he did, and he is put to death. Isn't that remarkable? No one asked her what she was wearing.

Here's something else. This law shows that the woman who is the victim of sexual assault was not expected to seek justice on her own. It was a community thing. She had people around her.

This also means that for a young woman growing up in Israel, knowing this was the law, knowing this is policy, what's the number one reason, ladies, that women don't share what happened to them? Shame.

What do they expect, or what do they fear people are going to do? Yeah, not believe them; blame them. This law preempted that. It said: “You are not the one who has shame. He's the one who has shame. He's the one who took advantage of you. He's the one who's going to be put to death.” She is protected. She is believed.

Now, in case you're wondering about cases of false accusation, there actually is a law in Deuteronomy specifically about that. We won't talk about that today. (Forgive me, the men who say, “Okay, what about false accusation?”)

Like, first of all, that is very rare. Second of all, yes, the Bible does address it. Third, I don't think we really have a clear statistic on how many women are survivors of sexual crime, because if we did, I think you'd realize just how rare it was.

Tough ones out of the way, okay.

Seduction of the unbetrothed version—that happens in verses 28 through 29. Question: how many of you have ever heard someone say, “The Bible commands a woman to marry her rapist if she's not engaged”? Have you heard that? Yes.

Thank you. Did you know, interestingly, the official Church of Satan has a Twitter account, and they tweeted this. “This verse your Bible says that God requires a woman to marry her rapist if she's not already engaged, that is wrong. That is categorically false.”

Here's why. When you look at the language of that law, remember how I said the verse on the attack in the field had that verb that meant “force.” That verb for force is nowhere in verses 28 and 29. It’s a completely different verb. The verb there means “to overwhelm, to wear down.” It's the idea of a seduction.

If you've ever watched Downton Abbey season one, you know what I'm talking about—the Turkish diplomat, Mary Crowley. Do you know what I'm talking about? Anybody? Y’all need to go watch Downton. It's like that. He's seducing her. He's overwhelming her. She's caught up in something. She's unbetrothed. She's obviously a young woman, and he seduces her.

Here's what the law also says. It says a couple of phrases. They are discovered in the crime that happened in verses 25 through 27. There is no “they.” There's just the attacker and the girl. In verses 28 and 29, it's “they.” They are discovered. There's a theyness happening. There is some type of relationship that is not coercion. She's been disgraced. She's been dishonored. He's taken advantage of her.

But from the Hebrew and the scenario of this law, this is not a rape. This was not sexual assault, just so you know. A lot of biblical translations get this wrong—a lot. I think ESV gets it wrong. NASB gets it right, but because it doesn't say rape, I'm telling you, the Hebrew does not say rape.

If Moses under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit wanted to say that this was a sexual assault, he would have used the verb that he used literally one sentence before, and he doesn't. There's a reason for that. If there’s not, then we have a whole problem with our theology of the Bible, don't we? And our theology of the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Bible, so the words actually are intentional.

Here's what this meant for a young woman in Israel: he couldn't use “you and lose you,” because the man who seduced her is obligated to make financial restitution to her family, to restore the honor that he stole, because he went about this the wrong way, and he has to marry her, and he can never divorce her.

What this means is that in God's law, if a man is going to have a sexual relationship with a woman, he better be prepared to take care of her. He better be prepared to take responsibility for her. And if he's going to have sex with her, he's not going to be able to just have a good time and then, “See ya.”

For a young woman who is an unbetrothed virgin, this means that when she got caught up in something, it was not the end of her world. It was not going to be the mistake that defined her for the rest of her life. It was not going to be something that changed whether or not someone else in the community wanted to marry her.

Rather, the Lord made sure that this girl's father—the father—gets involved. And the father makes it right. He brokers a marriage for his daughter, and then thereafter, she is restored to honor in the community and has the security of a marriage.

Keep in mind: marriage for a woman, whether or not you were marriageable, was whether or not you had a roof over your head. It is different. It is different from our culture today.

But to a young woman in Israel, this meant that a youthful mistake, getting caught up in this awakened passion that you didn't even know existed, wasn't going to be the mistake that determined the rest of your life. This was the Lord protecting girls, protecting young adolescent girls and young women. Amazing. The guy's punished. The guy's held responsible, but she's not.

All right, can we go fast? Can I go fast? I love how I ask you, “Can I talk fast?” Okay, let me try it again. Let me try to go fast.

All right, the last three I want you to know about: the “unloved woman” in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 21, verses 15 through 17, describe laws related to polygamy. This always comes up, understandably. Did God turn a blind eye to polygamy? No. He did, however, regulate laws. He did, however, regulate sins that should not have happened.

So, when a man takes on a second wife, that means that now he is responsible for that second wife. If he were to divorce her, where is she going to go?

So if a man takes on a second wife, that is not God's design, but it was happening. So now, what are a lot of laws in the Bible? Okay, here's something that should not have happened. Now, what do we do?

And what this law says is that the first wife cannot be cast aside. The husband still has obligations to her. The son of the first wife must still be honored as the firstborn. That is something that is an honor for that first wife. It also means that the firstborn son gets a double portion, which is to take care of his mother, his widowed mother.

So, in other words, if the man is going to take on a second wife, don't think that means you can transfer all of your finances along with your affections to the second wife. No, no, no, no. God still holds you accountable for the obligations you made to the first wife. Again, not supposed to happen, but it did.

And now, how does God's law mitigate, restrain the effects of sin? The “destitute woman.” This is about Levirate marriage. I'll just be honest. You read Levirate marriage after never having any context before, it’s weird.

Because what it is: this man's husband dies, she doesn't have a child, and so her brother-in-law marries her, has a baby with her, and that baby inherits the name of the dead husband. Why? Well, because that baby is going to inherit the land and the name of his deceased father. If you have your name blotted out from Israel, that is great shame on you. So what the Lord is doing is He's protecting this woman from destitution and from shame.

It means that the son that she had from her brother-in-law is actually going to be sort of like the posthumously adopted son of her dead first husband, so that her widowhood is not a death sentence on her future. This was actually for her. This was actually to take care of her and to make sure that her future was secure.

Finally, the “vulnerable woman.” Oh, if we had time, I would get into all the details with you. But let me tell you about the vulnerable woman in Deuteronomy 21, verses 10 through 14.

This is a woman who belonged to one of the conquered tribes that Israel took over and drove out of the Promised Land. This woman, her parents had died. She didn't know the language, she didn't know the culture. She dressed differently, she acted differently, and she could have been a legal non-person. She could have been a sexual slave and had no legal rights.

And do you know what the Lord does? He says, “Okay, young man, if you see a woman that is part of the foreign tribes and you want to marry her, basically, you want to sleep with her, you can do that if you bring her into your home and allow her one month to mourn the loss of her family.” That means he's going to be living alongside her, but not having a sexual relationship with her for one month.

He has to relate to her as a person. He has to be kind to her. Then she's going to shave her head, cut her nails, change her clothes. That's symbolizing a new identity. She's no longer part of the pagan tribe. She's being brought into the family of Israel.

And then, and only then, you can marry her. But if, because you're a dirty so-and-so, you decide that you're tired of her and you want to get rid of her, she can never go back to being a slave. She is thenceforth and forever an Israelite wife with all of the rights and privileges that an Israelite wife has.

You may not dishonor her. You can divorce her, but then she's free to go. She's a free agent. She has agency over her life and her future.

Do you realize how staggering this is? We're talking ancient, late Bronze Age, and a foreign woman who would have been a sexual slave in any other context—and even in a modern context would likely be as well. He can't rape her. He can't hold her against her. He can't hurt her. He has to treat her as a wife. He has to honor her. Why? Because she's part of Israel? No. Because she's in the image of God, no matter what her socioeconomic status, no matter what her culture.

The value that she had came because she was made in God's image, and God defends the most vulnerable of women, even the ones who don't know His name. Ah, it's staggering. It's absolutely staggering.

All right, let's wrap it up. Oh, we could talk all day. These laws show us that God loves and values women. He loves and values women, and in our fallen world, He knows how they are exploited. He knows how they're mistreated.

His laws set up hedges of protection to make sure that His people are going to treat women differently. His people, as they are creating a society characterized by righteousness and justice and truth, they are not going to treat women like the pagans do.

It also means that God defends exploited women. In fact, the more socially vulnerable she is, the more God cares for her and sets up those legal hedges of protection.

If we had time, I'd tell you how the early church was the only one that spoke against forced prostitution in the ancient world, when everybody else turned a blind eye.

That leads us to the last point: God calls His people to protect vulnerable women. We have a responsibility. We have a responsibility to women that have been abused, that have been exploited, that have been abandoned, that have been widowed. God does not want any woman to have to face that on her own. Scripture says He places the lonely in families.

I hope that from these perhaps unexpected places, you have seen the heart of God for women, and that you would realize that if God did this for the hidden women thousands of years ago, how much He sees you, how much He protects you, how much He cares for you.

Thank you so much for coming to this session.