Sexual assault and seduction in scripture is a hot topic for a number of reasons. Be it that in our culture fornication has become prevalent and speaking on it is often pushed aside as being judgmental, or that there are some passages in scripture unbelievers like to attack and believers often don't understand. I hope that this following post will be able to break it down and handle this topic both with care as well as clear exegesis to the scriptural text for all believers to be stronger in defending what the Word of Elohim has to say on these topics.
Fornication and Adultery are words in scripture that are frequently tied together but are seldom then tied to rape within scripture. However all three are so closely tied within the Word of God that sometimes separating them can be a hazard and cause misunderstandings. Because of this I felt I could not separate them at all within this post and had to go through all three to then show the big picture and the full understanding.
So why are these such big issues to begin with? Because these are not just sins against God, they're not just sins against another person, but they are also ultimately sins against our own selves as well. 1 Corinthians 6:18 tells us so in saying, Run from sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body. Indeed, 1 Corinthians 6:9 uses even stronger language which states, Don’t you know that unrighteous people will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don’t delude yourselves — people who engage in sex before marriage, who worship idols, who engage in sex after marriage with someone other than their spouse, who engage in active or passive homosexuality. In the Torah sexual immorality was resolved with a death sentence, Leviticus 20:10 says, If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, that is, with the wife of a fellow countryman, both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death. So we can see how severe these sins are to Adonai, that they are such a sin that if we are unrepentant of them we will suffer eternal death, we will not be in the Kingdom of God. Yet we have grace and hope in such passages as 2 Corinthians 2:10, Anyone you forgive, I forgive too. For indeed, whatever I have forgiven, if there has been anything to forgive, has been for your sake in the presence of the Messiah. All sin has been forgiven in the atonement of Y'shua for believers! What joy we have in this truth. God's Word even tells us that we need to learn to manage our sexual impulses in a holy and righteous way in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4, and that we are to flee from sexual immorality. One of the only sins that we are told to run from so strongly.
So what is the difference between adultery and fornication? Many today wrongfully lump them as the same thing, by saying that there is no such thing as pre-marital sex and that sex is what makes someone married but sadly this idea doesn't stand the test of scripture. We can tell this when looking to passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9 which showed us that fornication is pre-marital sex while adultery is extra-marital sex, or sex outside of marriage. Proverbs 6:32 says, He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself. And Exodus 20:14 is quite blunt in saying, Do not commit adultery. Y'shua takes things even further, making the law fuller in saying You have heard that our fathers were told, ‘Do not commit adultery.’[a] 28 But I tell you that a man who even looks at a woman with the purpose of lusting after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. in Matthew 5:27-28. Showing us that even a lustful thought falls under the preview of adultery and fornication. 1 Corinthians 7:1-9 even goes into how married couples are not to deny each other for foolish reasons but to be united so as not to increase sexual struggle for either partner, and how someone unmarried should seek marriage should they be struggling with sexual purity. It says, Now to deal with the questions you wrote about: “Is it good for a man to keep away from women?” 2 Well, because of the danger of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give his wife what she is entitled to in the marriage relationship, and the wife should do the same for her husband. 4 The wife is not in charge of her own body, but her husband is; likewise, the husband is not in charge of his own body, but his wife is. 5 Do not deprive each other, except for a limited time, by mutual agreement, and then only so as to have extra time for prayer; but afterwards, come together again. Otherwise, because of your lack of self-control, you may succumb to the Adversary’s temptation. 6 I am giving you this as a suggestion, not as a command. 7 Actually, I wish everyone were like me; but each has his own gift from God, one this, another that. 8 Now to the single people and the widows I say that it is fine if they remain unmarried like me; 9 but if they can’t exercise self-control, they should get married; because it is better to get married than to keep burning with sexual desire. We have the ribbon tied on sexual purity with marriage in Hebrews 13:4, Marriage is honorable in every respect; and, in particular, sex within marriage is pure. But God will indeed punish fornicators and adulterers. Thus we are to called to sexual purity before our marriages and within them, the two parts of fornication and adultery.
So what then of cases in scripture where the marriage seems to be more a case of sexual assault, or there is outright sexual assault? Many look at such verses and don't know what to do with them or how to address them. To make this segment easier for this post I've decided to first show the laws around sexual immorality and then we will go through many of the large cases in scripture to show what happened within context. This means we must go to the Torah first and foremost, our instructions from the All Mighty.
We can start off with Deuteronomy 21:10-14, which is backed by Exodus 21:7-11. It states, When you go out to war against your enemies, and Adonai your God hands them over to you, and you take prisoners, 11 and you see among the prisoners a woman who looks good to you, and you feel attracted to her and want her as your wife; 12 you are to bring her home to your house, where she will shave her head, cut her fingernails 13 and remove her prison clothing. She will stay there in your house, mourning her father and mother for a full month; after which you may go in to have sexual relations with her and be her husband, and she will be your wife. 14 In the event that you lose interest in her, you are to let her go wherever she wishes; but you may not sell her for money or treat her like a slave, because you humiliated her. Ultimately then, if a woman was taken as a wife without her families consent she was held to the same regard as any other wife. Even given special regard in some ways such as allowing an adjustment period and being undivorceable. So while we today may balk at the idea of a marriage without the woman's consent the reality is that it was rarely up to the woman to begin with, and that a woman put in this position is held with more protections than a woman who marries under her father's blessing. We then see a case where this likely happened. I say likely because the passage doesn't outright tell us if the women were taken as wives or as slaves, but if they where taken as slaves first then Exodus 21 as referenced is all the more relevant and their status all the higher. We find this situation n Numbers 31:7-12 as it says, They fought against Midyan, as Adonai had ordered Moshe, and killed every male. 8 They killed the kings of Midyan along with the others who were slain — Evi, Rekem, Tzur, Hur and Reva, the five kings of Midyan. They also killed Bil‘am the son of B‘or with the sword. 9 The people of Isra’el took captive the women of Midyan and their little ones, and they took as booty all their cattle, flocks and other goods. 10 They set fire to all their cities in the areas where they lived and all their camps. 11 They took all the booty, all the people and animals they had captured, 12 and brought the captives, booty and spoil to Moshe, El‘azar the cohen and the community of Isra’el in the camp on the plains of Mo’av by the Yarden across from Yericho.
So let us now turn to Deuteronomy 22 to see what we can glean of sexual immorality laws from God. First we can see verses 13-21, If a man marries a woman, has sexual relations with her and then, having come to dislike her, 14 brings false charges against her and defames her character by saying, ‘I married this woman, but when I had intercourse with her I did not find evidence that she was a virgin’; 15 then the girl’s father and mother are to take the evidence of the girl’s virginity to the leaders of the town at the gate. 16 The girl’s father will say to the leaders, ‘I let my daughter marry this man, but he hates her, 17 so he has brought false charges that he didn’t find evidence of her virginity; yet here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity’ — (18 ) and they will lay the cloth before the town leaders. 18 (19) The leaders of that town are to take the man, punish him, 19 and fine him two-and-a-half pounds of silver shekels, which they will give to the girl’s father, because he has publicly defamed a virgin of Isra’el. She will remain his wife, and he is forbidden from divorcing her as long as he lives. 20 “But if the charge is substantiated that evidence for the girl’s virginity could not be found; 21 then they are to lead the girl to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her town will stone her to death, because she has committed in Isra’el the disgraceful act of being a prostitute while still in her father’s house. In this way you will put an end to such wickedness among you. Thus we can see how seriously this was taken. Not only if a man made a false allegation was the woman then protected but if it was a true one she was sentenced to death as many of these sins so deemed. The man who would have slept with her at this point would not have been provable as we saw from the Leviticus verse earlier and thus would not have succumbed to the same result as the woman. This is then reaffirmed by the next verse, 22, as it states, If a man is found sleeping with a woman who has a husband, both of them must die — the man who went to bed with the woman and the woman too. In this way you will expel such wickedness from Isra’el.
Now we can look to a segment that many unbelievers seek to attack, claiming that scripture states a woman must marry her rapist. Sadly many believers do not even review this passage enough to understand it and thus can not counter the claim or worse, begin to believe it themselves! So let's read verses 23-29 as one, If a girl who is a virgin is engaged to a man, and another man comes upon her in the town and has sexual relations with her; 24 you are to bring them both out to the gate of the city and stone them to death — the girl because she didn’t cry out for help, there in the city, and the man because he has humiliated his neighbor’s wife. In this way you will put an end to such wickedness among you. 25 “But if the man comes upon the engaged girl out in the countryside, and the man grabs her and has sexual relations with her, then only the man who had intercourse with her is to die. 26 You will do nothing to the girl, because she has done nothing deserving of death. The situation is like the case of the man who attacks his neighbor and kills him. 27 For he found her in the countryside, and the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her. 28 “If a man comes upon a girl who is a virgin but who is not engaged, and he grabs her and has sexual relations with her, and they are caught in the act, 29 then the man who had intercourse with her must give to the girl’s father one-and-a-quarter pounds of silver shekels, and she will become his wife, because he humiliated her; he may not divorce her as long as he lives. In the first section, verses 23 and 24 we see the case of a man and a woman sleeping together in a city. Now, in this case it isn't raper. The word used is Strong's Reference 7901 for the Hebrew word shakah, which is simply to lay together as man and wife within this context. The verses then stipulates that we can tell rape from her being seduced and willing in if she cries out or doesn't. Verses 25 to 27 then show us a case of rape, which may not even be rape! It again gives us the stipulation of if she cries out or doesn't to discern if she was a willful participant or assaulted, but in this case as there is nobody near to hear her cries if she does then it is taken for granted that she was forced and not willing. This protects a victim! This is a good thing! We then get to the verses which make many upset, verses 28 and 29. These passages don't go against what was just stated, so if they are caught in the act it shows indeed that she was complicit to the event and that using the word rape in English is erroneous. Otherwise it would have been deemed, had she cried out, as a rape and he'd have suffered the consequences. Thus the two, together, in these two verses are fornicating, he isn't raping her, and so he then has to make it as right as able and seek her as his wife, one he can never divorce, to make an effort to rectify the situation. This also doesn't mean she was forced into the marriage, it was then up to the father. A father who wants what is best for his daughter. In that culture it was then most likely that he would give her to the man as his wife because she would have been deemed as unable to get married any other way and this now would have been how best to take care of his daughter, providing for her future. A consequence on her for her own immorality in the situation.
So we can then look at an example that plays directly to these verses in Deuteronomy, it's found in Exodus 34. Verses 1-4 say, One time Dinah the daughter of Le’ah, whom she had borne to Ya‘akov, went out to visit the local girls; 2 and Sh’khem the son of Hamor the Hivi, the local ruler, saw her, grabbed her, raped her and humiliated her. 3 But actually he was strongly attracted to Dinah the daughter of Ya‘akov; he fell in love with the girl and tried to win her affection. 4 Sh’khem spoke with his father Hamor and said, “Get this girl for me; I want her to be my wife.” Now with this story there is a few things to note. First is that the word used is the same shakah, so this may not have been rape at all but consensual and the word rape being used may be erroneous. Yet that he also humiliated her and neither is put to death makes this look all the more complicated. We get the feel that she was complicit in the event as the offer of marriage is then an acceptance rather than her death, yet the behavior following the acceptance of course is another topic and wholly against anything scripture instructs in handling these situations. It is possible that the retaliation was in regards to the humiliation, and not the act itself. Where as if the act itself had been kept quiet a marriage could have been done with relative ease and little issue, rectifying the offense that Sh'khem presented to Ya'akov and his sons by sleeping with Dinah.
So while we have now touched into sexual assault there are definitely some cases of it happening outright within scripture. But they are never once supported or condoned by Elohim! Let us look at the two most gruesome of examples, and remember that both are historically written to show us what happened, not what should have happened.
In 2 Samuel 13 we find the story of Avshalom, Ammon and Tamar. In the story we can see that while Avshalom and Tamar are full siblings it is likely by Ammon's wording that he is only a half sibling to them and all three are children of David. Ammon fosters an unnatural desire for his half sister and uses the advice of a friend in order to get her alone and to abuse her. Adding insult to injury he then has her thrown out and humiliated. When Avshalom found out about this he told his sister to keep it quiet. Many can look at this handling of the rape as allowing Ammon to get away with it, but under the cultural context we need to be aware of a few things. Sadly Ammon was the older brother, the oldest of David's sons, making him the heir and thus giving him certain privileges to the civil standpoint. Abshalom then likely saught to keep his sisters reputation as intact as possible by keeping the offense quiet as making it well known would not have caused much recourse against his brother anyways. However, it doesn't end there. After a two year period Avshalom has the opportunity to obey the law and have the rapist killed as per Deuteronomy 22:25. While this took far longer than it should have, and didn't go through the process scripture would prescribe it does end as the Torah would command, rectifying the situation with the rapist punished.
Judges 19 then brings up another gruesome tale. Verses 22-30 say, They were relaxing, when suddenly some men from the city, good-for-nothings, surrounded the house and began beating at the door. “Send out the man who came home with you!” they demanded of the old man whose house it was. “We want to have sex with him!” 23 The man whose house it was went out and said to them, “No, my brothers, please don’t do anything as wrong as this. Look, he’s just a guest in my house; don’t do this degrading thing. 24 Here’s my daughter, who’s a virgin, and his concubine. I’ll bring them out. Mistreat them, do what you want to them, but don’t do such a degrading thing to this man.” 25 However, the men wouldn’t listen to him; so the man took hold of his concubine and brought her out to them. They raped her and abused her all night long; only at dawn did they let her go. 26 At daybreak the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her husband was, and she was still there when it grew light. 27 When her husband got up, opened the doors of the house, and went out to go on his way, he saw the woman lying there with her hands stretched out toward the door. 28 He said to her, “Get up! Let’s go!” But there was no answer. So he loaded her body on the donkey and began his trip home. 29 On arrival at his house, he got a knife, took hold of his concubine’s body, cut her up into twelve pieces, and sent them to all the regions of Isra’el. 30 Everyone who saw it said, “From the day the people of Isra’el came up from Egypt until now, never has such a thing happened or been seen. What are we going to do about it? Talk it over and decide.” So there's a number of issues in what happened here, and some are irrelevant to our point today. The focus I want us to see is the assault on this poor woman. She was handed over by an unnamed levite in order to save himself, his host and others in the house to be raped but she then was raped so brutally that she died from what was inflicted on her. While what the man did to garner the attention of all Israel is certainly shock worthy in its own right, he did so out of grief to ensure the crime that had been committed against his concubine was avenged. In result he basically sparked a war, it's possible that had he handled it in a less shock worthy fashion the result would have also been less extreme. It does however show us how strongly he felt for this concubine, to start a war over her rape and murder. This then shows us that his action in handing her over wasn't lighthearted nor casual, she wasn't disregarded as a lesser human in being given to the crowd of men. It was simply the lesser of the available evils, and sadly cost her her life.
As we can then see there is a lot to this topic, and this is still only the real tip of the iceburg in trying to elaborate and explain sexual assault and seduction in scripture but I do hope that it has helped you to hold a better understanding and to be able to address these difficult passages in the future. Let us all then remember the core to all of this, in regards to people, 1 Peter 3:7 says, You husbands, likewise, conduct your married lives with understanding. Although your wife may be weaker physically, you should respect her as a fellow-heir of the gift of Life. If you don’t, your prayers will be blocked. This goes for women as well in that we're to conduct our married lives properly. We're to come into marriage pure, or repentant of our sin, we're to keep marriage pure, and we're to treat each other with love and respect as per our roles and design by Elohim. Women are to be respected, protected, by their family and their husbands. Scripture teaches nothing contrary to these tenets. May we all grow in grace and peace. Shalom.
