Is Old Testament law sexist?
Facing the misogyny of the Bible honestly: Part Three
Spoiler alert: Yes, it is. Very.
Large parts of the first books of the Old Testament are given over to laying out the law that the Jews believed God had revealed to Moses. Significant parts of it don’t make pleasant reading if you’re a woman.
Purity laws
There were all kinds of things that could make a person unclean to various degrees. However, it is noticeable that women seem to be more prone to uncleanness than men.
For example, both menstruation and ejaculation cause uncleanness, according to Leviticus 15, as do bodily discharges that indicate disease.
There are definitely gender-based disparities here. A man with an abnormal discharge becomes seriously unclean. Anything he sits or lies upon becomes unclean, and so does anyone who touches these things.
A man who ejaculates becomes temporarily unclean. He needs to wash and is unclean until the evening. Anything that he gets semen on also needs to be washed. But he isn’t at risk of making other things or people unclean.
For women, there is no distinction between normal and abnormal discharges.
A healthy woman having a period becomes unclean in the same way that a man has a discharge that signifies that he is ill. So a woman is unclean for seven days from when she starts her period, and in that time, anyone who touches her will be unclean for the rest of the day and need a bath, anything that she lies on or that she sits on becomes unclean, anyone who touches her bed or anything that she sits on becomes unclean.
And any man who sleeps with her is unclean for a week. That seems extreme. Particularly given that most women don’t menstruate for anything like a week. In Leviticus 20, we read that:
If a man lies with a woman during her monthly period and has sexual relations with her… both of them must be cut off from their people. (Leviticus 20:18)
Women were also unclean after childbirth. But, surprise, surprise, they were unclean for twice as long after giving birth to a girl than to a boy. Giving birth to a boy rendered a woman unclean for seven days and ritually impure for thirty-three days. For a girl, it was two weeks and sixty-six days.
The reason for the uncleanness after birth was the blood associated with giving birth, which made it like having a period.
It was definitely far more inconvenient to be a woman. For the orthodox Jews who continue to abide by these rules, it still is. Many Jewish women find great meaning and value in these rituals. Others find them a demeaning intrusion. Either way, the central fact is that Old Testament law views women’s bodies as far more prone to impurity than men’s.
The inconvenience is the least of it. Much more concerning is the stigma. How does menstruation, a core part of being a healthy, fertile woman become such an object of stigma?
How can that possibly make sense?
And stigmatised it most certainly was. Isaiah, looking for a metaphor that will strongly convey how corrupt human beings are when compared to God, writes that in God’s eyes, even our good deeds are like ‘filthy rags’.
Apparently, the filthy rags he was referring to were menstrual cloths. So if you want a symbol of human depravity, look no further than a used tampon.
Thanks, Isaiah.
Remedies for jealous husbands
Imagine you’re an ancient Israelite who is wondering if his wife is being unfaithful. You have no proof, but you find yourself feeling jealous and suspicious. No problem. You can take your wife to the priest for a humiliating trial by ordeal. The priest will uncover her hair and give her water to drink that is contaminated by curses and dust from the floor of the temple:
If she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then when she is made to drink the water that brings a curse, it will go into her and cause bitter suffering; her abdomen will swell, and her thigh wastes away, and she will become accursed among her people. If, however, the woman has not defiled herself and is free from impurity, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children…The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin. (Numbers 5:27–31)
Of course, a side effect of this law could well have been the stigmatisation and blaming of women who don’t become pregnant regardless of whether or not they have actually been subjected to a jealousy ritual. Childlessness is what happens to wicked women.
You will not be surprised to learn that there was no equivalent for suspicious wives. The truism that when it comes to sexual ethics, there is one rule for men and a completely different set of rules for women finds its roots way further back than the double standards of the Victorians.
It’s all about ownership.
So if there is no proof that a woman is a virgin on her wedding night because there is no blood on the sheets, which is a hugely unreliable way of assessing virginity, then she should be stoned to death:
“because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house.” (Deuteronomy 22:21).
In other words, she’s brought shame on her father and his household.
How the Bible views rape
We know that rape is utterly evil. It is violence that causes immense, long term, psychological damage. You would expect, therefore, that the Bible would be pretty clear in its denunciation of rape.
Except it’s not. Nowhere is the impact of rape denounced. Nowhere does the harm caused to victims get a mention. In fact, laws about rape in the Bible have nothing whatsoever to do with the suffering and trauma that the act of rape causes.
They are all about ownership. The seriousness of the crime differs depending on how ‘owned’ a woman is. This means that the rape of a married or betrothed woman is viewed differently from the rape of a virgin. So if a man is caught having sex with “another man’s wife”, they must both die (Deuteronomy 22:22). There doesn’t seem to be any allowance for the fact that the sex might not have been consensual.
Apparently, you can’t be raped if you’re married to someone else. You can only commit adultery.
Stepping down to a lesser level of ownership, it’s a bit more complicated if the woman is betrothed (promised) to a man, but they are not yet married:
“If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death — the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help and the man because he violated another man’s wife…” (Deuteronomy 22:23–24)
The suggestion that a woman would always be in a position to resist rape and shout for help is frankly preposterous. Leaving that little consideration to one side, what is clear here is that the woman has a responsibility to prevent her own rape because of the duty she owes to the men to whom she belongs. She has a responsibility to cry for help. If she doesn’t, she becomes culpable.
Presumably, if they’re not discovered, she finds herself at risk of being stoned to death after her wedding night because she wasn’t a virgin.
If the man ‘happens to meet’ a betrothed virgin in the countryside, then the assumption is that the girl would have shouted and not been heard, so only the man should be put to death.
Notice the casual repetition of the phrase ‘happens to meet’. As if coming across a woman and violently violating her is something that can be expected to just ‘happen’. As if finding yourself raping a woman is almost an accidental event that could happen to anyone.
For the virgin who is not betrothed, who belongs only to her father, the problem can be solved by transferring the ownership of the woman from her father to her rapist:
If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. (Deuteronomy 23:28–29)
Thus rape initiates a business transaction and a forced marriage. Though only if the man is caught. It’s evidently not expected that a woman might report rape, and given the consequences, why on earth would she?
There are still women across the world who suffer the trauma of being forced to marry their rapists. It’s hard enough to recover from sexual assault at the best of times.
Imagine trying to do so while living in the home of the perpetrator. Many countries have had, until recently, or continue to have, laws that exempt men from prosecution if they marry the woman they raped. The woman in question, of course, doesn’t get a choice in the matter. The horror of being condemned to a life of marriage to a man who has raped you and now effectively has carte blanche to do what he likes just doesn’t bear thinking about.
But this is the kind of abuse that is written into law in the Old Testament.
Spoils of war
If you are already horrified and enraged by the way the mosaic law treats women (and if you’re not, can I suggest you go back and read the last few paragraphs again a bit more carefully?) I have to tell you, it gets worse. You might not have wanted to be an iron age Israelite woman, but you definitely didn’t want to live in one of the towns the Israelites conquered in battle:
“But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the plunder from your enemies that the Lord your God has given you.” (Deuteronomy 20:14 NLT)
The word ‘enjoy’ here literally means to ‘eat’. To consume. So the women of conquered foreign cities were a gift from God? With the same status as ‘livestock and other plunder’? A gift to be enjoyed?
God was giving the Israelite soldiers divine licence to enjoy raping the women they captured in war? To do what they want with them? Really? This is enshrined in God’s law. How are we meant to respond to a verse like that?
In summary…
The mosaic law was not good for women.
It reads exactly as you would expect the law of a nation where women are oppressed and abused to read. It reads like it was written by men in a patriarchal society where women are regarded as having the status of the property and the overriding concern is about the rights and the honour of men.
There are still countries with laws like these on their statute books. Countries where women are routinely subject to human rights violations. And we rightly view them to be unjust and abhorrent. Finding these things enshrined in scripture raises some very difficult questions indeed.
Keep reading this series:
If you’re interested in this series and would like to start at the beginning:
If you want to discover the beautiful, feminine imagery for God in the Bible, you might like to have a look at my previous series, that starts here:
If you enjoyed this, you might like my Loved Called Gifted podcast, available on most podcast platforms, or you can find it here.
I offer spiritual direction and coaching. The Loved Called Gifted course, available online and in person, will help you to discover your life calling. Discover these things and other bits and pieces on my website.
