Laws Concerning Unsolved Murder, 1-9
21:1 If a homicide victim should be found lying in a field in the land the LORD your God is giving you, and no one knows who killed him, 21:2 your elders and judges must go out and measure how far it is to the cities in the vicinity of the corpse. 21:3 Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked—that has never pulled with the yoke—21:4 and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. There at the wadi they are to break the heifer’s neck. 21:5 Then the Levitical priests will approach (for the LORD your God has chosen them to serve him and to pronounce blessings in his name, and to decide every judicial verdict) 21:6 and all the elders of that city nearest the corpse must wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley. 21:7 Then they must proclaim, “Our hands have not spilled this blood, nor have we witnessed the crime. 21:8 Do not blame your people Israel whom you redeemed, O LORD, and do not hold them accountable for the bloodshed of an innocent person.” Then atonement will be made for the bloodshed. 21:9 In this manner you will purge out the guilt of innocent blood from among you, for you must do what is right before the LORD.
Laws Concerning Wives, 10-14
21:10 When you go out to do battle with your enemies and the LORD your God allows you to prevail and you take prisoners, 21:11 if you should see among them an attractive woman whom you wish to take as a wife, 21:12 you may bring her back to your house. She must shave her head, trim her nails, 21:13 discard the clothing she was wearing when captured, and stay in your house, lamenting for her father and mother for a full month. After that you may have sexual relations with her and become her husband and she your wife. 21:14 If you are not pleased with her, then you must let her go where she pleases. You cannot in any case sell her; you must not take advantage of her, since you have already humiliated her.
Both Steve Wells (Skeptic’s Annotated Bible) and (the usually more sensible) The Amateur Exegete are wide of the mark when they characterise this passage as divinely sanctioned marital rape. It is (rather like the lex talionis), erecting a protective fence around vulnerable people.
Clearly, the purpose of these laws is not to encourage the taking of wives from among foreign prisoners; or having sex with such women; or divorcing them it they are found to be displeasing. Their purpose is, rather, the opposite: to place severe constraints upon such behaviour. She is allowed a period of mourning, during which time sexual relations are not to take place. She is not to be treated as a sexual plaything, but as a wife. She may not be cast off or sold as a slave; but must be set free.
Wright comments:
‘We might like to live in a world without wars and thus without prisoners of war. However, OT law recognizes such realities and seeks to mitigate their worst effects by protecting the victims as far as possible. If we ask whose interests this law serves, the answer is clearly the female captive. If we ask whose power is being restricted, the answer, equally clearly, is the victorious soldier. The law is thus a paradigm case of the OT’s concern to defend the weak against the strong, war being one of the most tragic human expressions of that situation.’
Wright adds:
‘There are four ways in which this law benefits the captured woman.
(a) She is not to be raped or to be enslaved as a concubine, but is to be accorded the full status of a wife (vv. 11, 13). The instruction in Hebrew is quite clear that only marriage is intended.
(b) She is to be given time to adjust to the traumatic new situation and to ritually mourn for the parents who are now dead as far as she is concerned. This is to take place within the security of her new home, not in some prisoner or refugee camp.
(c) The law compassionately restricts even the soldier’s “bridegroom’s rights,” by postponing any sexual intercourse with the woman until this month of mourning and adjustment is over.
(d) If the man finally changes his mind and will not undertake marital responsibility toward her, she is to leave as a free woman. He can take no further advantage over her by selling her as a slave. Thus, the physical and emotional needs of the woman in her utter vulnerability are given moral and legal priority over the desires and claims of the man in his victorious strength. The case could be written up as a matter of human rights. Deuteronomy characteristically prefers to express it as a matter of responsibilities. As such, its relevance is clearly applicable beyond the realm of war to all kinds of analogous situations of weakness and power.’
(Reformatted)
Rebecca McLoughlin (Confronting Christianity) notes:
‘In our cultural framework, where arranged marriage of any kind seems oppressive, these verses sound abhorrent. But at a time when women did not expect to choose their husbands, and where a woman’s livelihood depended on the provision of a male relative, this framework offered captive women protection and respect.’
Laws Concerning Children, 15-21
21:15 Suppose a man has two wives, one whom he loves more than the other, and they both bear him sons, with the firstborn being the child of the less loved wife. 21:16 In the day he divides his inheritance he must not appoint as firstborn the son of the favorite wife in place of the other wife’s son who is actually the firstborn. 21:17 Rather, he must acknowledge the son of the less loved wife as firstborn and give him the double portion of all he has, for that son is the beginning of his father’s procreative power—to him should go the right of the firstborn.
Merrill (NAC) comments:
‘The fact that multiple wives are referred to in vv. 15–17 does not demonstrate divine tolerance of polygamy but only guidelines about its proper regulation given its existence.’
21:18 If a person has a stubborn, rebellious son who pays no attention to his father or mother, and they discipline him to no avail, 21:19 his father and mother must seize him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his city. 21:20 They must declare to the elders of his city, “Our son is stubborn and rebellious and pays no attention to what we say—he is a glutton and drunkard.” 21:21 Then all the men of his city must stone him to death. In this way you will purge out wickedness from among you, and all Israel will hear about it and be afraid.
Thompson remarks that ‘while no example of the carrying out of this sentence occurs in the pages of the Old Testament, the prescriptions underlined the seriousness of the offence.’
Thompson adds: ‘The law seems to lie behind the words of Jesus in Mark 7:10. The context of the reference is concerned with the obligation of children towards parents. Not even a vow to present a gift to the temple should prevent a man from supporting his parents. If there was any oral tradition to the effect that vows absolved children from caring for parents, then the oral law was, in Jesus’ view, a making void of the word of God. In Jesus’ view such an attitude was a breach of the commandment ‘Honour your father and your mother’ and called forth the judgment, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die.’ This exposition of the obligation of a child to his parents is striking indeed. In the New Testament parents are exhorted not to provoke their children to wrath (Eph. 6:4). But conversely, the book of Proverbs affirms that ‘he who spares the rod hates his son’ (Prov 13:24). There is, in biblical thinking, a delicate balance in relationships between parents and children.’