Bible Study: Deuteronomy And Virgins
EDITOR'S NOTE: ABQReport columnist Dan Klein called this morning and urged me to take some of his Facebook posts and publish them as mini-columns. He claimed that his FB writing is better than when he tries to write an actual column. When I responded that I would do that, but that I would also let readers know that he appears to be too damn lazy to put together an actual 750-word column, he went into a rage. When he finally calmed down three hours later he agreed that the public embarrassment I'm heaping upon here might motivate him to finally write another real column. So there. - Dennis Domrzalski
Here's Klein's FB snippet:
In honor of our bible friends in Alabama, I have decided to post a bible quote. I'll try to do one each day. It's important that we reflect on the book of faith that so many say they believe in. Here is the first one Deuteronomy chapter 22 versus 13-21. The takeaway here is if a husband talks trash about his wife (saying she isn't a virgin when she is) he gets fined 100 shekels and gets his ass beat by her family. Of course she still has to remain married to him. Now if she is found not to be a virgin, she gets stoned to death in front of her parents. That is certainly equal treatment, eh?
So here are these wonderful verses from Deuteronomy at Biblegateway:
13 If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her
14 and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,”
15 then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin.
16 Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her.
17 Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, 18 and the elders shall take the man and punish him.
19 They shall fine him a hundred shekels[b] of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.
20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.
22 If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.
23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
