I know that stoning for adultery requires two witnesses. Maybe same here? If so Amnon couldn't just be stoned on Tamar's words.
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Meat Common Misconceptions and Mistranslation Issues
- Thread starter Luke S
- Start date
If you come to faith while being "unlawfully" "married" would you say you would not separate? For example Abraham and Sarah.
What are they an example of that is unlawful?
I guess depending on how you view the law and when it was given vs when it applies, marrying a half sister.
[This is not a post specifically related to the most immediate comments but more to some others since my last post in this thread earlier today.]
Can we say "wishful thinking" and "confirmation bias" when it comes to thinking (a) that raping one's half-sister is just a marriage proposal or that (b) consent from the woman meant or means nothing or that (c) any of this discussion applies to real life in 2022 or any time in the past two millennia in the wake of Yeshua's 2nd commandment: treat everyone with whom one associates in a manner that one would want to be treated [Matthew 22:39; also Luke 6:31].
The logic seems to be that all one need do after raping one's half-sister is to go ask one's father for her hand in marriage and pay a virgin bride price before riding off into the incestual sunset. The absolute most charitable thing I can think of to compare this to is to assert that it's a more troublesome but analogical equivalent to shoplifting from a store and then expecting, and only if one is actually caught, that the only required justice would be having to pay the original price for the item one stole. In this case Amnon stole Tamar's entire honor -- and he was angry with her!
Sorry. That's not how things work in this real world or the one 2.5 millennia ago -- except perhaps under the 'protection' of a father who lacked moral authority in the wake of what he'd done to Uriah the Hittite and Bathsheba.
It's not just a matter of extra-biblical sources that identify the importance of humiliation in the cultural understanding of King David's time. The direct scriptural circumstances of Amnon and Tamar even address the humiliation concern [underlined emphasis added by me]: "When she brought [the heart-shaped cakes he'd requested] close to him to eat, he held her fast and said to her, Come, lie down with me, my sister. Yet she replied to him, Do not, my brother, do not humiliate me, for such a thing should not be done in Israel! Do not commit this decadent thing! And I, whither should I carry my reproach? And you, you would become like one of the decadent men in Israel. So now I pray, speak to the king [their shared father], for he will not withhold me from you. But he would not hearken to her voice; he was more unyielding than she; he humiliated her and lay with her. [II Samuel 13:11-15, Concordant Version of the Old Testament]
We know that Tamar's full brother Absalom avenged her humiliation, but we do not learn why their father looked the other way in the matter (we do know he looked the other way, because we know full well, given how much men revere virgins, that the crime of raping a virgin was already considered more heinous than adultery in all cultures of the time and even earlier: Hittite Law; Middle Assyrian; Hammurabi) other than that he loved Amnon because he was his firstborn (a hint at ruling-class exemption from full justice presaging Hunter and the Big Guy?). What we also know was that the rape in question was considered worse, more humiliating, than incest, because in the midst of being coerced, despite not wanting Amnon at all as a partner, Tamar pled with him to ask David for her -- she preferred being known as an incestuous wife to the humiliation of having been raped.
I've become a strong advocate for full-throated patriarchy, but I'm dismayed if what I'm hearing is the assertion that being a patriarch includes the freedom to rape a woman into marriage. I was going to go to some significant effort to research exactly where I learned that, circa 1000 BC, the accepted understanding of adultery included other forms of sexual humiliation (including, by the way, husbands bragging in public about specific sex acts performed on them by their wives in order to embarrass them), but at the moment I'm really wondering what the point is if the perspective I'm debating with holds that a woman should be expected to be a virgin before marriage but can legitimately be forced without even her father's consent to enter into a sexual relationship just because some other man doesn't feel like following proper protocol.
Here's what I'm also wondering: how many of us are praying for a world in which the rules of 1000 BC regarding when TTWCM begins would return to being in place? How many desire a return to women being treated as chattel? How many want the reinstitutionalization of entirely-arranged marriages or being able to sell our daughters? Is anything that has changed since 60 AD qualified to be considered progress, or are we forbidden from finding any substantive value in any writing aside from Scripture? In the chronologically-final book of The Bible, Paul asserts in II Timothy that, "All scripture is inspired by God, and is beneficial for teaching, for exposure, for correction, for discipline in righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped, fitted out for every good act." [II Timothy 3:16-17, CLNT] But Paul also earlier asserted in the same letter [2:15] that one should rightly divide, or accurately handle, the Word. He also warned of coming false teachers in this letter to Timothy, and I believe we, myself included, should always be on alert for inadvertently falling into that particular snare. Context is, of course, primarily scriptural, but to attempt to entirely separate Scripture from its own context is bound to violate all manner of the Wisdom found in Proverbs and elsewhere.
Can we say "wishful thinking" and "confirmation bias" when it comes to thinking (a) that raping one's half-sister is just a marriage proposal or that (b) consent from the woman meant or means nothing or that (c) any of this discussion applies to real life in 2022 or any time in the past two millennia in the wake of Yeshua's 2nd commandment: treat everyone with whom one associates in a manner that one would want to be treated [Matthew 22:39; also Luke 6:31].
The logic seems to be that all one need do after raping one's half-sister is to go ask one's father for her hand in marriage and pay a virgin bride price before riding off into the incestual sunset. The absolute most charitable thing I can think of to compare this to is to assert that it's a more troublesome but analogical equivalent to shoplifting from a store and then expecting, and only if one is actually caught, that the only required justice would be having to pay the original price for the item one stole. In this case Amnon stole Tamar's entire honor -- and he was angry with her!
Sorry. That's not how things work in this real world or the one 2.5 millennia ago -- except perhaps under the 'protection' of a father who lacked moral authority in the wake of what he'd done to Uriah the Hittite and Bathsheba.
It's not just a matter of extra-biblical sources that identify the importance of humiliation in the cultural understanding of King David's time. The direct scriptural circumstances of Amnon and Tamar even address the humiliation concern [underlined emphasis added by me]: "When she brought [the heart-shaped cakes he'd requested] close to him to eat, he held her fast and said to her, Come, lie down with me, my sister. Yet she replied to him, Do not, my brother, do not humiliate me, for such a thing should not be done in Israel! Do not commit this decadent thing! And I, whither should I carry my reproach? And you, you would become like one of the decadent men in Israel. So now I pray, speak to the king [their shared father], for he will not withhold me from you. But he would not hearken to her voice; he was more unyielding than she; he humiliated her and lay with her. [II Samuel 13:11-15, Concordant Version of the Old Testament]
We know that Tamar's full brother Absalom avenged her humiliation, but we do not learn why their father looked the other way in the matter (we do know he looked the other way, because we know full well, given how much men revere virgins, that the crime of raping a virgin was already considered more heinous than adultery in all cultures of the time and even earlier: Hittite Law; Middle Assyrian; Hammurabi) other than that he loved Amnon because he was his firstborn (a hint at ruling-class exemption from full justice presaging Hunter and the Big Guy?). What we also know was that the rape in question was considered worse, more humiliating, than incest, because in the midst of being coerced, despite not wanting Amnon at all as a partner, Tamar pled with him to ask David for her -- she preferred being known as an incestuous wife to the humiliation of having been raped.
I've become a strong advocate for full-throated patriarchy, but I'm dismayed if what I'm hearing is the assertion that being a patriarch includes the freedom to rape a woman into marriage. I was going to go to some significant effort to research exactly where I learned that, circa 1000 BC, the accepted understanding of adultery included other forms of sexual humiliation (including, by the way, husbands bragging in public about specific sex acts performed on them by their wives in order to embarrass them), but at the moment I'm really wondering what the point is if the perspective I'm debating with holds that a woman should be expected to be a virgin before marriage but can legitimately be forced without even her father's consent to enter into a sexual relationship just because some other man doesn't feel like following proper protocol.
Here's what I'm also wondering: how many of us are praying for a world in which the rules of 1000 BC regarding when TTWCM begins would return to being in place? How many desire a return to women being treated as chattel? How many want the reinstitutionalization of entirely-arranged marriages or being able to sell our daughters? Is anything that has changed since 60 AD qualified to be considered progress, or are we forbidden from finding any substantive value in any writing aside from Scripture? In the chronologically-final book of The Bible, Paul asserts in II Timothy that, "All scripture is inspired by God, and is beneficial for teaching, for exposure, for correction, for discipline in righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped, fitted out for every good act." [II Timothy 3:16-17, CLNT] But Paul also earlier asserted in the same letter [2:15] that one should rightly divide, or accurately handle, the Word. He also warned of coming false teachers in this letter to Timothy, and I believe we, myself included, should always be on alert for inadvertently falling into that particular snare. Context is, of course, primarily scriptural, but to attempt to entirely separate Scripture from its own context is bound to violate all manner of the Wisdom found in Proverbs and elsewhere.
My opinion is rape=bad. Plain and simple, don't do it.
There are reasons that we should know how to deal with these situations though. If you are the leader of your family or tribe, you are held accountable to know Yah's perfect law and act accordingly.
OK; I'll bite: imagine, everyone, that you are the husband of two wives, that you have children by each wife, and that your son from one wife rapes the virgin daughter of your other wife. As the leader of your family, how would you ensure justice according to Yah's perfect law?
Well, I wouldn't be stoning him. But he'd have a pretty harsh punishment that was somewhere short of death.
Which is what scripture prescribes. Pay the bride-price (not cheap), but (probably) get nothing for your money. That massive fine is a serious penalty for rape that should be sufficient to deter rapists. Not to mention the "rough treatment" that you might receive from the family debt collector coming around to collect the cash, especially if you tried not to pay it.
But not death. I'd be absolutely furious to be sure, but furious enough to kill my own son? No.
Read my previous post in that light. Trying to find the right punishment for a heinous crime, not justification of it.
The law could not apply until it was given. Because Adam's children all had to marry their siblings, so all humanity would have started in sin if these laws were timeless. It had to not be in effect initially.
OK; who does he pay the bride price to?
And, isn't it the case that it's a lot easier to come up with that answer when one unconsciously knows one is answering it in the context of (a) getting to exact the Torah punishment on your son while (b) knowing that your daughter wouldn't really have to suffer Torah-era consequences for no longer being a virgin. That is, in our time, your daughter would still get to find men with great desirability who would accept her having been deflowered by her own brother and still be willing to marry her.
What if, in addition to making your son pay a fine and sending him away, you also had to keep your daughter with you in hiding for the rest of her due to the shame of no longer being a virgin? What if you were basically required by your immediate and surrounding cultures to declare her uncleanness and support her as a defeated woman for the rest of your days?
Maybe you could sell her to a sojourner?
Absolutely, such a situation would be a horrible mess. I'm not sure what your point is though @Keith Martin. I'm just reading the scripture, not making up the rules.
Agreed
So I guess for a better rendering what would we recommend someone do if he was a pagan worshipper who married his sister but then came to faith. I would say that he remains married, what do you guys think?
At bare minimum he has to be exiled. That seems like a command. Considering that a father can kill his sin for rebelliousness, I’m fairly certain he can kill him for raping his sister. Maybe he doesn’t have to but it’s certainly an option.
Good point
That is an interesting question. Exodus only says to pay money "according to the dowry of virgins", which could vary, but Deuteronomy says "50 shekels of silver". I expect that precisely how this applies to a kings daughter would be a matter of "case law" developed by judges who have seen many complex cases within the circumstances of their culture, including some which related to the price for the daughter of a nobleman.