God’s Love for Abused, Exploited, and Vulnerable Women

Dannah Gresh: Author and speaker Katie McCoy says in the Old Testament laws we see God’s heart for, not against, women.

Dr. Katie McCoy: 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.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned, for February 27, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Are you following the Revive Our Hearts Bible reading plan this year? If so, today you read (or you will read) chapters 24–26 of the book of Deuteronomy. Chapter 24 starts off with some laws about certificates of divorce. Chapter 25 has laws about what is called Levirate marriage. Basically, if a man dies without an heir, then it’s his brother’s responsibility to marry the widow and have children with her. Is that confusing? Like, why would God give these directions? How can we see God’s love in that kind of rule?

Well, I’m so glad you asked, because our guest today is going to talk about that, along with other Old Testament laws that might seem strange to us today. 

Here’s a quick note from our guest on what’s coming up today.

Katie: I want to just give a little bit of warning. 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.

Dannah: Dr. Katie McCoy speaks on women’s issues a lot. She’s the author of the award-winning book To Be a Woman: The Confusion Over Female Identity and How Christians Can Respond. We’ll hear the third part of a message she gave at True Woman not too long ago. True Woman is a large, international conference sponsored every other year or so by Revive Our Hearts. 

If you missed any of the previous programs in this series, you can always catch up by scrolling back on the Revive Our Hearts app, or by going to ReviveOurHearts.com. Here’s Katie.

Katie: All right, laws on coercion and disgrace. 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. 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? 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. 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, 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 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? A lot of laws in the Bible are, "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, it is how God's law mitigates, restrains 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: the husband dies, and she doesn't have a child. 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. Ahe 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. 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. 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.

Dannah: That’s Dr. Katie McCoy, speaking to women at a recent True Woman conference. The laws of God reveal His character and His love for women.

Katie’s book is called To Be a Woman. She wrote it to help Christians know how to respond to the confusion over female identity. There’s more information about it when you click on a link we’ve provided in the transcript of this program, at ReviveOurHearts.com. 

You know, God’s tender heart for women can be seen all through the Bible, not just in the Old Testament. 

Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth with another thought.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Jesus treated women with respect, with dignity, with kindness. He included them in his ministry, and in that era, that was radically countercultural for a rabbi, a respectable man, to treat women with kindness and worth and dignity.

We know that the Holy Spirit has been given equally to both men and women, that men and women are equally baptized into the Body of Christ, that they share equally in the privileges of redemption, including access to God. Galatians 3,

For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ [Jesus] have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (vv. 26–28)

God created man and woman equally in His image and equal in value and dignity and worth. As members of the body of Christ, we've all been given spiritual gifts. In Luke 8, in Romans 16, in other passages you see women being appreciated and valued for their contribution to ministry.

Women are called to serve the Lord. Women are called to ministry. Do I believe in women in ministry? Absolutely! Every woman is to be in ministry. Every man is to be in ministry—equal value, both created in God's image.

Dannah: Nancy went on to talk about differences in roles as men and women. But the point today is, if you’re tempted to think, The Bible is sexist and anti-woman, both Nancy Wolgemuth and Katie McCoy would challenge you to look more carefully, and be aware of how your cultural lenses affect the way you view things.

Just a quick reminder that today is the last weekday I’ll be offering our Bible study called Ruth: Experiencing a Life Restored. It’s our thank-you gift to you in appreciation for your donation of any amount. Ask about it when you give at ReviveOurHearts.com, or when you call 1-800-569-5959.

And don’t forget about our resources on relationships! The Lord has given each of us relationships to nurture and steward. Whether you desire to grow in your role as a friend, a wife, a daughter, or a mom, these resources will help you honor the Lord in each relationship in your life. Head to ReviveOurHearts.com/relationships for all the details.

How can a woman live out the beauty of the gospel? That’s something Nancy will talk about next week on this program. 

Have a wonderful weekend. Go to church and give someone a holy hug. They need it. And guess what? You do, too!

We’ll see you on Monday for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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