Theology in the Raw - 814: Does the Old Testament Dehumanize Women? Dr. Sandy Richter

Episode Date: August 27, 2020

Dr. Sandy Richter is LEGIT!! In this fascinating conversation, Sandy helps us understand the alleged "marry your rapist" law in Deuteronomy 22:28, which has been mistranslated as you'll see. She also walks us through the "marry your conquered enemy's wife" allowance in Deuteronomy 21. These texts have troubled me for YEARS and have raised questions in my own mind about whether the Old Testament dehumanizes women. Actually, it does the opposite. When you understand it in its own cultural context, you'll see that the Bible actually humanizes women much, much more than we realize. Sandy's awesome book ("The Epic of Eden") that I referenced can be found here Sandra Richter is the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College. Richter earned her PhD from Harvard University’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department and her MA in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She has taught at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY, Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, MS and Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. Due to her passion for the "real space and time" of the biblical text, she has spent many of those years directing an Israel Studies program focused on historical geography and field archaeology. Richter is best known in the Academy for her work on the “name theology” of the Deuteronomistic History and a socio-historical assessment of the economic backdrop of the Book of Deuteronomy (The Deuteronomistic History and the Name Theology: lešakken šemo šam in the Bible and the ANE [BZAW 318, 2002]; “The Place of the Name in Deuteronomy” [VT 57, 2007], “Placing the Name, Pushing the Paradigm: A Decade with the Deuteronomistic Name Formula” in Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch, Hexateuch, and the Deuteronomistic History [FAT 56; Mohr Siebeck, 2012]; “The Question of Provenance and the Economics of Deuteronomy”" JSOT [2017]; “What’s Money Got to Do With It? Economics and the Question of the Provenance of Deuteronomy in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods” in Paradigm Change in Pentateuchal Research [BZAR 22, 2019]). She has a commentary forthcoming with Eerdmans on The Book of Deuteronomy. In the Church, Richter is best known for her work, The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament (IVP 2008) and a number of DVD curriculums stemming from the project (Zondervan and Seedbed). She has just published Stewards of Eden: What the Scripture has to Say about Environmentalism and Why It Matters (IVP, 2020). Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Does the Old Testament command women to marry the rapist? Does the Old Testament allow Israelite soldiers to take wives of deceased soldiers that they have just killed as concubines or sex slaves? How does the Old Testament view women? I have been troubled, confused, sometimes annoyed at some of the statements in the Old Testament about women. For much of my Christian life as a male, I kind of breezed over these passages, didn't give them much thought. But more recently, trying to be a little more aware, a little more in tune, trying to read the text from other lenses as much as I can. I have come across several passages in

the Old Testament that have troubled me. These troubling, difficult passages in the Old Testament, especially when it comes to women. It's something I've been thinking through for a while now, which is why I am so excited about our guest today. Dr. Sandy Richter is Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont University. She has taught at Wheaton College and several other schools. She has a PhD in Semitic Studies, I believe, from Harvard University. or in Semitic studies, I believe, from Harvard University. Sandy Richter is one of the most informed and intelligent Old Testament scholars in evangelicalism today. I listened to her give a paper last year at the Evangelical Theological Society's annual meeting. And she gave a paper on the passage that we're going to look at today,

Deuteronomy 22, 28, and 29. Well, the last part of Deuteronomy 22 as a whole, which talks about various laws regarding sexual activity by, well, sexual sin, sexual activity, rape, seduction, and so on, sex outside of marriage. And she gave this paper and I was just like, my mind was blown. I was like, oh my gosh, I have to have Sandy on the show. She's brilliant. She's articulate. She's clear. She's not afraid of hard passages in the Bible. She's not going to pull the wool over your eyes. She's going to give an honest evaluation of what the text says, but she's going to be true to the original meaning of the text. And so that's what she does in this episode. She is going to help us understand the so-called

marry your rapist command in the Old Testament. If you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in raw support show for as little as five bucks a month. And if you want to check out Sandy's work, I mean, you can go to her homepage at Westmont University. I don't know. Just go to the faculty page. You'll find Sandy Richter. She wrote an amazing book called the Epic of Eden. It is a 250 page introduction to the old Testament. And it's incredibly insightful. If you just want an overview, an introduction to how to even get into the Old Testament, Sandy Richter's book, The Epic of Eden is the best, I think. I mean, when I taught Old Testament Survey, I used to assign it as a textbook. I read a bunch of textbooks and said,

this is the best of the best. And so this is what I want my students to read. And so go check it out. It's on Amazon, wherever books are sold at Epic of Eden IVP 2008. Okay, without further ado, let's get to know the one and only Dr. Sandy Richter. Okay. Hey friends, I am here with my, I'll just say my new friend from a distance, Dr. Sandy Richter. Dr. Richter is the Robert H. Gundry. You can tell I'm reading from your bio here. The Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont University. Sandy has taught at several other high-powered institutions, Wheaton University, Wheaton College, I guess, among others. I came across Sandy's work from this spectacular book called The Epic of Eden, A Christian Entry into the Old Testament. As some of you know, I've taught Old Testament survey of a few different schools. I'm always looking for like a textbook that a 19-year-old college student can read and be

engaged, like a book that would be engaging. And this book, The Epic of Eden, hands down was the best, somewhat short, 250-page entry into the Old Testament. So anyway, Sandy, thanks so much for being on, and thank you for writing such a spectacular book. Thanks for the plug. Okay, so I wanted, I invited you on because I really wanted to dig into this question of the Old Testament and women, And I would say both from critics of Christianity, okay? Critics of Christianity love to draw attention to some really, I'll say, bizarre and troubling texts in the Old Testament, but even within the church. People who love the Bible and submit to biblical authority read some of these passages in the Old Testament and say, wow, how did this make it into the Christian scripture? So why don't we begin with,

let's just begin with Deuteronomy 22. This is a classic text that seems to command women that they have to marry, and I hate even using a term, but to marry the rapist. So let me just read the text. I'll put it on the screen during editing. But if a man encounters a young woman, a virgin who is not engaged, and I don't even know this translation. You probably know it better than I do. If he takes hold of her and rapes her and they are discovered, the man who raped her must give the woman's father 50 silver shekels, and she must become his wife because he violated her. He cannot divorce her as long as he lives.

This seems to treat a woman like property. And what woman would ever want to marry her rapist? These are my modern-day sensibilities are kicking in here. So help us with this text, and we'll get the others that are kind of like it. Yeah. Yeah. I think your modern sensibilities are being triggered. And honestly, I think ancient sensibilities would be triggered as well. We're not going to name that translation, you know, to keep the guilty from being named, but I don't like that translation.

but I don't know that translation. And I'm actually, gosh, I'm on the NIV translation committee, just been appointed in the last couple of years. And this passage is coming under scrutiny in the NIV in the next year or so as well. So we've got a whole section of laws. You've just pulled one kind of out of the middle here. In Deuteronomy 22, they run from verses 22 to 29, and have to do with laws regarding adultery, seduction, and rape. And as we enter into these passages, we're dealing with a law code. Maybe some of your readers wouldn't even be aware of this. This is an actual living, breathing law code. Now, it's not an exhaustive law code. There would have been a lot of other peripheral or ancillary laws that wouldn't have necessarily made it into the text, but were still being practiced, could have been known orally, or could have been known in another document.

So that's our larger context. Let me push it out to yet a larger context, and that is that in entering Israel's world, we're entering a world that's very different from our own. We're having a cross-cultural experience. And I tell my students all the time that you have to allow these people to be real people. You have to deal with your entry into the Old Testament much the way you would with a missions trip to Uganda to build wells in the backcountry. You're going to do your best to understand their culture, not start off on that foot of judging it against your own. So as we enter into these law codes,

this would be my first caveats. And I would say that all of these laws are really difficult for the modern reader to access. And one of the reasons they're difficult is we're stepping into a very different culture. And even more specifically, we're stepping into a tribal culture. And if you're thinking indigenous Americans and the Cherokee and the Sioux and the Chumash, you're thinking right. So it's a tribal culture. It's a traditional culture. And it's a patriarchal culture. And in Epic of Eden, I'll spend a lot of time talking to the reader about the fact that God is not endorsing this culture.

But he's going to show up in real space and time. He's going to have to choose a culture somewhere. Our job is to try to hear the character of God through the lens of their culture. So those three setting the stage. Very different for the modern reader to access because they're dealing with an ancient culture, a tribal culture, a patriarchal culture, and one in which the family, the extended family, what I call the bit of, the father's house, is the core of the legal system. So in that societal context, really what we want to ask is, do Deuteronomy's legal codes, do they protect women within their societal context? And I'm going to make the argument, I've got an article coming out in Jets as soon as they get through all of their

editing processes. That makes the argument that Deuteronomy not only protects women more effectively than surrounding law codes, because Deuteronomy is not the only law code out there. We've got the Middle Assyrian laws, we've got the code of Hammurabi, we've got the code of Ashnuna. Deuteronomy, I think, actually protects women more effectively than surrounding law codes, and you could make a case better than modern law codes as well. So we want to jump right into the rape laws. Are you ready? Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So when you look at the larger pericope, what Deuteronomy is doing is it's starting off by talking about adultery. talking about adultery. And we need to understand that Deuteronomy sees this violation of marriage as a capital crime. And largely Deuteronomy sees it that way because in, honestly, I would make

the argument in our own culture, but certainly in a tribal culture and a patriarchal culture, to violate a marriage commitment violates patrilineal codes of inheritance. It violates trust. It puts a subsistence culture at risk. So adultery is a really big deal. So adultery is a really big deal. And in the ancient Near East, both a man and a woman would be executed for having treated this crime, not only on each other, but on the associated families, on the village, and on the larger society. So already we're in a world that's way different than ours, right? So that world didn't see kind of sexual relationships as, oh, this is just what two people are doing in the bedroom. Like it was tethered to the fabric of society as a whole, right? It's a very public kind of, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I like that,

tethered to the fabric of the society as a whole. In Israel's world, marriage was the organizing institution of society, period. When two families wanted to make an alliance, when they wanted to cement the well-being of a village. Marriage is everything. So as a result, adultery was a very complex offense in Israel's world. It was a crime of a wife against her husband. It was a crime of the lover against the husband. And it was a crime of both parties against both their community and against the gods. So like in Egypt, for example, it's actually named the great sin. And I challenge my Southern Californian undergrads, and this is always fun, to think about the impact of adultery on society. You know, pause over and it takes them a long time to do this. What is the impact on the economic well-being of our citizenry?

What is the impact on the emerging next generation? What is the impact on the stability of our society legally, economically, psychologically. They get very uncomfortable in this conversation. But Israel took this crime very seriously. So when you look at Deuteronomy 22, you're actually looking at an assemblage of laws. And verses 13 and 19 are going to talk about a young woman who comes to marriage, and it turns out she's actually been fooling around on the side. So her young husband finds out that his bride is not a virgin. That's the first crime. Then the second one in verses 20 through 21 is that accusation

has been made, but the bride is actually innocent. So now the young man has done great damage to her and to her family. How are we going to deal with that? Then when we get to verse 22, it's the case of a consensual tryst between a man and a married woman. They're both executed. We get to 23 and 24, and again, a consensual tryst between a man and an engaged woman. Both are executed, and we probably want to talk about what engagement looked like in the ancient world. Then we have 25 through 27, and right here is where I argue an actual rape takes place. Up until now, it's been adultery. It's been perhaps seduction.

But 25 to 27 is actual rape. And do you mind if I read it? Yeah, yeah, go for it. Yeah, I'm just, I'm flipping there myself. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. It says, but if in the field, and I'm reading from the New American Standard, Okay. It says, but if in the field, and I'm reading from the New American Standard, but if in the field a man finds a girl who's engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die.

But you shall do nothing to the girl. There is no sin in the girl worthy of death. For just as is working so hard to demonstrate that she did not consent to this sexual encounter. And notice how even in this ancient law code, this author is recognizing that this is a violent crime. It was forced. She cried out. She begged for mercy, and he refused. She cried out, she begged for mercy, and he refused. Even in this patriarchal, tribal, ancient society that is fixated on issues of virginity and proper inheritance through the patrilineal line, this woman is judged innocent off the bat.

Like, she doesn't have to prove her innocence. Right. As I make clear in my article, she is expected to report. Think about that in our modern society. She's expected to report. She doesn't risk anything by reporting. And he's executed. So that's a rape. When we get to verses 28 and 29,

which your passage read as rape, if a man finds a girl, a virgin, who's not engaged, and he seizes her or he takes her, and he lies with her and they are discovered, and then we go on about how the man has to pay the bride price. He has to marry her. He cannot divorce her. I'm going to make the argument, and the best scholars out there, I think, would make this argument as well, those who've done the linguistic work. And thinking off the top of my head, Carolyn Pressler has a famous published dissertation in the BZAW series regarding this. Gordon Hugenberger, who is at Gordon Conwell, did his dissertation on this as well. This is a seduction. This is not a rape. Now, in our world, of course, she might have been manipulated. She might be underage. The seduction, you know, could have certain aspects that pushed her toward this experience.

But this is not a violent crime. In light of that, and in light of the fact that she is not yet married, and we probably need to talk about marriage ages and all that sort of thing. But in light of the fact that she's not yet married, the fact that she's already had a sexual encounter with someone, in her world, she's already married. Once conception occurs, marriage has occurred. Not conception, sorry. There's a C word there somewhere. Once intercourse has occurred. Coitus? There it is. There's a good word there somewhere. Once intercourse has occurred. Coitus?

There it is. There's a good one. Okay. So what this law really is doing is it's protecting her from being taken advantage of. So I talk about this guy in my article is the walkaway Joe. And if you're a country music guy, you've heard about the guy who is hoping for an uncomplicated sexual encounter. He's manipulated her. He's seduced her. Maybe he's madly in love with her. We can't know.

But he said sex with her. So now what are we going to do? And the answer is that the two families are going to bring these two young people in the light of day. And both paterfamilias, in other words, the patriarchs of both families, are going to look at this young man and say, sorry, dude, no walkaway Joes in this village. You have to marry her. You have to pay the full bride price, which is not a chattel price. We need to talk about the two. Yeah, I want to come back to that.

Yeah, it's really a gift toward her future. It's kind of a personal savings account. You have to pay the bride price. You have to pay the full bride price, regardless of your financial situation. And hey, guess what? If you guys have a big falling out over who gets to drive the new car, you never get to divorce her. And again, that's embedded in their society. So we won't talk about that. All that to say, I don't think verses 28 and 29 are rape laws. I think they're corruption laws. And whereas in the middle of Syrian laws, which

we can talk about in a few minutes, a girl was required to marry her rapist. And in Islamic law, to this day, a girl is required to marry her rapist. And with middle Assyrian law, there would be honor killings and there would be revenge rape. That's a really cool idea. Wow. Guy rapes your daughter. You can take his wife or his daughter and have her raped. Wow.

That's the legal punishment in the law code. Deuteronomy has none of that. Yeah. So if you're an ancient Near East random person, you stumble upon Deuteronomy 22, given the cultural context, the climate, you would say that that person in that context would read this as, wow, this is much more elevating towards women than everything else going on in that society from what we can tell from the ancient literature. Would that be a fair thing to say? much more elevating towards women than everything else going on in that society from what we can tell from the ancient literature. Would that be a fair thing to say?

Well, and I like that you put that caveat in there too, from what we can tell. Westbrook, who is the legal expert of all legal experts, he makes the argument regularly that we don't have any exhaustive law codes. Right. It is, you need to make an argument from silence very carefully. I can say that with the entire presentation of Deuteronomy, there is none of this business of trying to save the honor, dishonored husband or father.

There's none of this business of the girl being a pawn in a larger program of preserving male honor, especially in the Middle Assyrian law codes, as I present in the article, revenge rape, not only revenge rape, but the husband who is wrong, not only does he get to execute, well, let's stick with the young, unengaged girl. If the daughter is raped, he gets to pull the wife of the rapist. He can rape her or have someone else rape her. Then he takes her into his household and keeps her as an indentured servant, as long as he wishes. The young girl is immediately put under the protection, and I'm using the air quotes, under the protection of her perpetrator's

household. Can you imagine life look like for that young woman being forced into the household, not only of a rapist, but the matriarch of the household just got pulled out and publicly abused and is living in indentured servitude? Honor killings are all over our world. That girl's life is going to be miserable. So that's Middle Assyrian. And again, you can find that in modern Islamic law in a lot of the tribal cultures, Pakistan and the right. I've got an array of ethnographic references.

You mentioned Code of Hammurabi. That's probably the most, for my audience that may not be familiar with Middle Assyrian law codes, a lot of people have heard of Hammurabi and his code, which parallels, I forget what date, when was Hammurabi? 1700s BC? Yeah, that would be about right. Pre-dated Deuteronomy, no matter how you date Deuteronomy. What do they say about, what parallel kind of instances?

Are they similarly, for lack of better terms, dehumanizing much more than the appearance of Deuteronomy are? I would argue, yes, they are. One thing that's very interesting as you pick up the law codes from the ancient world, and again, Westbrook is a great resource. Martha is a great resource. Sexual law gets tons of attention, which I find really interesting.

All these different scenarios about if there was manipulation, if there was seduction, was it rape? Was it adultery? Did the adultery happen here, there, anywhere? Who's related to who? How many gifts have changed hands? Lots and lots of detail, which lets us know that in the ancient world, like in our modern world, sexual misconduct was a real issue.

And that's one thing I am so appreciative of our biblical text is the Bible's not afraid to talk about sex. The church is afraid to talk about sex, but the Bible's not afraid to talk about it. And to set boundaries. In my conclusions in this upcoming article, I talk about how in the world of Israel, these sexual codes are designed kind of like guardrails on society. Guardrails that help society to move safely through all of the vagaries of life. And the general posture is that if indeed we run over those guardrails, then we as a society are going to careen off the highway of life in the abyss of delinquency and trauma and economic ruin. And so these biblical laws, you know, help keep us on the highway. you know, help keep us on the highway. Granted, Deuteronomy is coming out of a world in which, and this is very interesting, women don't, adult women do not have sexual agency.

And this is totally foreign to a modern reader. But even under those conditions, their sexual identity is heavily protected. Yeah, so the Code of Hammurabi emerges from a larger corpora of laws coming out of the ancient world. It's not, as you know, it's not the only law code. There are half a dozen of them, and they repeat a lot of the same laws. So I would argue, even in the silence, that I don't have every law that Israel is practicing. Even in the silence, I would make the argument that Deuteronomy, standing against Hammurabi, I would make the argument that Deuteronomy, standing against Hammurabi, Eshnunna, Lippit Ishtar, Deuteronomy has a much more elevated view of the sanctity of the society, of God's involvement in the community. And I would argue very much the sanctity of female life as well can you speak um specifically to the

language here because you said this translation is not you would disagree with this translation so um so do 22 28 if a man encounters a young woman a virgin who's not engaged and then these two words takes hold of her the esv says is it sees seizes her. And then the translation I'm reading here, the translation not to be named, kind of the Voldemort of, this one says rape. So the language in 2228 says rape. The ESV says to lie with. Can you talk to us just briefly about maybe the hebrew term here and and what how you would render these two terms seize rape yeah yeah and that's really important okay so let me lead off by saying akkadian which is the language of the code of hammurabi and the language of lipid Ishtar.

Let's take a break. I'm going to remind my family that I'm being interviewed. I hope you can edit that out. Okay. Sorry. It's fine. Okay. I have a family and we have COVID.

Okay. All right. So I'll launch back in. So let me lead by saying Akkadian, the language of Hammurabi, Lippit Ishtar, Ishnunah, these other law codes does have a word for rape. They have a v'naum, which means illicit sexual intercourse. Hebrew doesn't have a verb for rape. So that's why we're left kind of saying, uh, you know, did she, or didn't she, did he, or didn't he? So if we go back to 25 and it says, but if in the field, the man finds an engaged girl. So he finds her. That's all very innocent. And the man seizes her. That's chazak. And the man lies with her. Then the man who lay with her shall die. Okay,

chazak is a much stronger verb. It is best translated to seize. So, you know, this is being done against her will. This is the same verb that's going to show up in Leviticus, not Leviticus, Judges 19, rape of the Levites concubine. It's also going to show up in the rape of Tamar. Okay. So that says Chazak and this man is, and it's a capital crime, right? This is 2227. Yeah, I'm in 2225.

So yeah, that's the verb. But the act of lying with her is just to have sex with her. Just a generic term. It could be used in positive, negative context, the context determines the meaning. Absolutely. So, you know, a man can lie with his wife or a rapist can lie with his victim. Right. So this same collocation is used in the rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13 and in Judges 19.

13 and in Judges 19. So with the surrounding conversation, we can hear pretty clearly that this girl has not consented. When we get to the passage you're speaking of, it says, if a man finds a girl who's a virgin, so now the girl is not engaged, and literally it communicates for whom no bride price has been offered. Okay. He lays a hold of her. Now the verb is tefas. Oh, a different verb. Okay. It's a different verb. He lays hold of her, tefas, and he lies with her and they are discovered. Now, tefas is a very innocent verb. You can tefas an instrument to play it. Moses tefas tablets at the top of the mountain and carries them down. It also can be used in an arrest scenario where parents tefas their young adult son who refuses to work and is a glutton, remember that law in Deuteronomy, and brings him before the elders. But it has a very wide

semantic range. So I don't see any forceful seizing here. He lies with her and they are discovered. Then the man who lay with her shall pay the girl's father 50 shekels of silver and she shall be his wife. And now this last thing, what does your translation say right there? Violated. He violated her on the, I think that's Holman. Is that the her on the, I think that's Holman.

Is that the Holman Christian? I think it's Holman Christian. Oh, we weren't going to name it. That's actually the translation. I'm one of the few people in the world who actually uses the HCSB, even though it's kind of going out of style. I think we use it on our campus too. Who does? Yeah, I think they gave out a whole bunch of them. I typically like it, but now I'm not sure. But then the ESV says, because he violated her. So yeah, they both say violated.

So how are we supposed to understand that word? Right, and the NAS is going to say violate as well. Okay. So this is really interesting. If your listeners are patient for linguistic arguments. The word is ina. So she whom he has ina, he can never divorce. So this word gets translated to rape or to violate on a regular basis.

So your translation is not unique. Two things. So let's take this passage over to a parallel law in Exodus chapter 22. There are three law codes in the Old Testament, at least. There's the covenant code, which is in the core of the book of Exodus. There's Leviticus and Deuteronomy. So three different law codes expressing different backgrounds, different applications, but they're all biblical law. Exodus 22 has a parallel law, and it reads,

If a man patahs a virgin who is not engaged so now we've had kazakh tefas and pata and exodus 22 is the parallel to what i'm saying seduction law and pata literally means to seduce to confound to confuse if a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged we're in exodus 22 verses 15 and 16 and he lies with her he is required to pay a bride price for her to become his wife if her father absolutely refuses to give her to him he shall pay silver equivalent to the bride price for virgins so even in a case of seduction that the man the the father can say no, you're not the guy I want for my daughter. And halakha, which is not modern, but the following rabbinic law also gives the girl the right to refuse. So even in the case of seduction, she's allowed out of this situation if she wants. But let's get back to inna. Okay, lots of people translate inna as to violate. But if we do a broader study of the verb, it can't mean rape. One reason is because there are many examples of women being inod who there's no sexual encounter named.

So if we are in Genesis and dealing with the story of Jacob and Rachel and Leah. Okay, so he's already worked to pay the bride price. He worked seven years for each girl. He married each girl legitimately. He had the permission of Laban, who at that point was the patriarch of the household. So everything about the unions are legitimate, and they've already produced children, right? So we can't have a rape going on here. But in this context, when Jacob is leaving the household, and Laban is busy following her, following him and making the argument, hey, you can't leave me.

Jacob says, hey, I paid all the dues. I'm taking my family and I'm leaving. At this point in time, Laban says, okay, well, if you're going to take my daughters, you are not allowed to marry any further wives and thereby inna my daughters. Same verb. So, yeah, same verb. And very interestingly, too, when Delilah finally figures out the source of Samson's strength and she cuts his hair and delivers him over to the Philistines, that moment Samson is named as having been Innaad Delilah. So what's going on here?

There's a great word study out there. I'm trying to pull up the notes here so I can give you the biography that does a very thorough study on the word inna. And as you do the entire study, you see that to inna someone, especially a woman in the biblical text, is to lower her social standing. Ah, I found it. It's Ellen VanVold is the author. And she, as I said, has done a very thorough word study. And the title of it is Does Inna Denote Rape? That's the name of the article. And she demonstrates that no, the best translation here is that you have lowered the social standing of this woman in her society. demonstrates that no, the best translation here is that you have lowered the social standing of

this woman in her society. So for a man to manipulate a young woman into a seduction scenario, she's in a position where she is no longer an ideal candidate for marriage. And as marriage in the ancient world was a career path, it's not just, not by any stretch, just a romantic commitment. This is a career path. For a man to seduce her and then walk away is clearly reducing her social standing. So all that to say, verse 28 and 29, if a man finds a girl who's a virgin, who's not engaged, and he seduces her and lies with her and they are discovered, then that man who lay with her will pay his appropriate due to the girl's father. he'll marry her make her an not just an honest woman but a woman with economic stability and social standing because he has lowered her social standing and she shall become his wife in perpetuity so that is how i would translate those those verses wow now that thank you that that clarity i mean you're dealing with like really deep word studies and stuff,

but that's just super clear. Part of the first time I've actually fully understood kind of what's going on here. And then that parallel in Exodus 22 has really helped. I have that one on my screen too. And that one really does augment or shape or clarify what's going on in Deuteronomy 22. The question I had, I guess you already answered it was, because even if, let's just say it's a seduction, she marries him, even that still feels like, ah, it doesn't feel fair, but that's because we're reading it through

a modern romantic view of marriage. We don't understand the social context. So my question would have been, what would have happened if she didn't marry him? And that would have been in that context. I know, again, it's still hard for us to get our mind around. But in that context, that would have been socially, economically, psychologically more damaging, you're saying. Would that be fair to say? Yeah. And I have this conversation with my students all the time. And one thing that helps them a little bit is thinking about marriage as a career path.

For your patriarch to make an advantageous match for his daughter. And keep in mind that arranged marriages are still practiced all over this planet this day. marriages are still practiced all over this planet this day. And I've done a lot of field research, just interviewing folks, primarily Indians, as in Indians from India, who are still very committed to arranged marriages. I've had so much fun interviewing fathers and daughters around this social construct. And honestly, statistically, arranged marriages do way better than romantically based marriages. But in the ancient world, yes, a profitable, culturally appropriate, predictably successful marriage match is the kindest thing that a patriarch can do for his daughter. Wow.

And that, she's going to be married very young. According to Yamauchi, the standard marriage age is 13, 14 years old in the ancient world. 13, 14 years old in the ancient world. So she's going to do to Israelite culture, which again, God is not necessarily canonizing his culture. He's stepping into it. She's going to move into her husband's extended household. She's going to become a part of his family. All the beautiful poetry in Genesis chapter two, this is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Basically what the biblical author is commanding the young man is it would be way easier for you to keep all of your alliances to your own mom. But at this point in time, this young woman is your closest kin from point forward. Your first allegiance is to her. That's what Genesis 2 is telling that young

husband. But she's going to move into that household. She's going to deploy all of her skills as a homemaker, as a cook, as a mother, as a businesswoman in order to expand and further their economic unit as an extended family. I mean, she's got a job. This is not, I'm thinking of, if you've seen the movie The Help and the Junior League-wise, this is a career. So if we move this young woman's marriage choice into our thoughts of a career path, she's chosen her law firm. She's chosen as a junior partner.

Turns out that the senior partner has sexually harassed her, right? That kind of scenario. And the legal system of the day steps up to the plate and says, you over there, you can't do that ever again anymore. And on top of that, this junior partner, she just became a senior partner and can never fire her. So this might not be the easiest way to start off a marriage, but it's a very economically. And would you say, as long as we keep assuming that our modern Western romantic view of marriage, which is one movement in a cultural view of marriage among many others,

if we assume that that is the kind of quintessential um the best way to view marriage um as long as we keep having that lens on we're still going to have problems with this passage it seems like yeah and i would push back on that a little bit again i'm not saying that's worse or better all i'm saying is, I don't know if the Western world is really nailing, finally, we've nailed marriage. Yeah, we've got it. We are so sexually content. Oh, yeah. Like by making romance kind of the foundation of marriage. Yeah, it's one cultural movement. I think there's various others around the world. A lot of them have their pros and cons, but I could see somebody still saying yeah

she's still married a guy who's seductive he's a jerk um what if she doesn't love him what if they fall out and like all these categories that are just but again it's not i i feel like that's kind of unfair to place upon any ancient text um not just like oh christianity you know has really dropped the ball here or judaism um let's I was going to say making the argument that the ancient society is not modern enough. Let me throw in one other thing about this law and Hugenberger does, Westbrook does it. So here we are in this ancient context, right, where a family has to make a promising alliance through the marriage of their sons and daughters. If you go back and you read Genesis carefully, you'll hear the language that whenever one tribe is trying to establish an ongoing economic and political alliance with another

nation or another tribe, the language of, will marry our daughters to you and you will marry your daughters to us comes into play. So there's this broad structural view. So this is how we do marriage. What happens, like in Fiddler on the Roof, where this daughter who should make the most profitable alliance for the sake of the larger family falls in love with an impoverished tailor, right? That's how this goes in on the roof. Well, one response is that the patriarch, well one response is that the girl could actually have the courage to tell her

mother at least that she's in love and how in the world did you fall in love? You're not even allowed to be alone. And the mother will pass it on to the patriarch and maybe the patriarch will say, all right, I'm going to do future as a clan and I'm going to let you marry the guy and hopefully your kids won't starve. That's one response. Another one, and this is what Hugenberger and Westbrook pull out, is that the young star-crossed lovers realize that she's already promised to another man. Or she's about to be promised to another man. It's a more parallel scenario. That's interesting.

Yeah. I mean, just getting your mind around the cultural context is, well, it's not easy, but it just makes all the difference in the world. Let's go a chapter earlier to Deuteronomy 21. And I think this one might go a little quicker because in light of everything you said about Deuteronomy 22, is it 22? Yeah. So Deuteronomy, I think there might be some carryover here, but Deuteronomy 21, I won't read the whole thing, but 10 to 14, Israel goes to war, they beat their enemy. And it says, man, if you find some beautiful women among this, you know, the defeated enemy,

and you see a beautiful woman, you can take her as your wife, bring her back home. And then you have some, from a modern perspective, weird stuff like she can shave her head. And my translation here says do her nails. I don't know. And she shall remove the garment of her captivity, remain in her house, all this stuff. And you can take her as your wife. Can you help us get our cultural minds around this passage here? Yeah.

Okay. So one interesting thing is the position of this law. This law stands between the laws of war and the laws of marriage. So the author already sees it as kind of a segue, a hinge in between the two collections. All right. So the first thing we need to realize is that there is no Geneva Convention in the ancient world. There is no such thing as a prisoner of war camp or a refugee camp. or a refugee camp. So if a nation goes against another nation in war and they conquer them,

what are they going to do with the human survivors from the war? Can't put them in a POW camp. If they've actually conquered the city and they're annexing the territory, it is very dangerous to leave the military men alive for sure. So what we're looking at in an ancient military context is either someone gets killed or they become a slave. Those two options. So what's happening in this passage is that Israel has won the battle, they've defeated the military men, they've taken the city, so there's probably been a siege as well. So everyone inside the city, largely civilians, they've been starved, they have been exposed to an array of diseases, and in the pile of loot in the middle of the fire and the battle and everything is a bunch of possessions, a bunch of livestock, and a bunch of people. So in the ancient world, you pay your soldiers by allowing them to loot the city.

There isn't like a minimum wage. And so these guys are going through the pile of loot by seniority, and they're claiming their pay. And as they're claiming their pay, they're claiming people as slaves as well. So this Israelite soldier sees the pile of loot, and he sees a young woman, and he's attracted to her. He doesn't want to make her a slave. He wants to make her a wife. That's the scenario. So unlike what happened in the Rwandan genocide, unlike what is happening throughout our refugee camps right now at this

very minute, he's not allowed to simply rape her and go home. Rather, according to this law, he must bring her home intact, bring her into his household, which means he's just elevated her from captive or victim to a member of the household. 30 days, she is asked to shave her head and to trim her nails and to throw away the clothes of her captivity. We look at that and we see it as acts of humiliation. Actually, Old Testament scholars look at that and they see that as potentially mourning rituals, because that's what you would do if you had lost your entire family. Moral rituals or perhaps liminal rituals, rituals that move you from one identity to another. Rabbis love to see this as the young woman being stripped of all of her decorative features.

So our good Jewish boy will decide when the 30 days is up, hey, she's bald now, and she doesn't have fingernails, and I don't want her anymore, and put her back on the slave market. That's what the rabbis would have said. I make the argument that these rituals are both morning rituals and liminal rituals and they're hygienic rituals. Because if you're coming out of a siege, you have lice. If you're coming out of a siege, according to the medical experts, the grossest part on your whole body is what's underneath your fingernails.

Scabies and an array of other diseases. So she shaves her head and throws her hair away. She takes her nails down and throws her nails away. She takes her clothing, which if you've ever tried to delouse a child out of the public school system, what do you have to do with all their clothes? And she throws that away. So now she has cleaned herself up. She has lived in the household for 30 days, not being treated as a slave or as some sort of sex slave either. She's being transformed into a member of the family. And that 30 days also serves as an ancient pregnancy test. So we know she's not bringing someone else's heir into the family. And if he still chooses to, he can marry her.

So this is what's going on in her world. She hasn't been sold as a slave. She hasn't been rape bait on the battlefield. And she's been incorporated into a new family. Is this ideal? No, she's a victim of war. Is it abusive? Not in her ancient world. One thing that helps my students as we talk about this is, again, getting back to the sexual agency. So we really should talk about that for both sexes. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned that earlier. Yeah. In the ancient world, well, in the modern world, a woman has sexual agency. The presumption in the United States of America is that I, as a woman, get to choose my own sexual partner. So rape is that scenario when that right has been stolen from me or has been intimidated away from me.

But when do I get sexual agency? Do I have sexual agency at the age of 12? Do I have it at the age of 14? Do I have it at the age of 16? Do I have it at the age of 18? Well, the answer is it depends what state I live in. And some states I have it at 16, some states I have it at 18. But if I decide I want to get married at 14, who's going to have to show up and sign off for me? The answer is my parents, right? So as a minor in my culture, I don't have sexual agency. If I stand up in a court of law at the age of 14 and say, no, but I wanted to have sex with him, that testimony would not stand up in a court of law. It would still be identified as statutory rape. So let's move into Israel's culture and

recognize that women never have full sexual agency in this patriarchal tribal culture. And that is not unique to Israel. That's patriarchal tribal cultures. So they will gain more sexual agency as they grow older, but reality is they will never be free, fully free, to choose their own sexual partners. be free, fully free, to choose their own sexual partners. So this young captive standing outside her burning and besieged city would never have had full freedom to choose her sexual partner in her world. So legally what's happening is this Israelite soldier doesn't have a patriarch to ask for her hand in marriage. So instead, he is taking these 30 days. He has no one to pay the bride price to,

but he's taking this 30 days and all of these rituals to incorporate her into his family. And again, one thing that kind of helps my students is I say, okay, let's change this scenario. And let's make this, let's make this a child. And let's, let's get the sexual equation out of the picture. Let's say this is a 10-year-old boy. And the soldier is circling the pile of loot, deciding what he's going to take home. And he sees this kid sobbing in the corner. His parents are dead. He's alone. And he takes pity on the child. And so he says, no, instead of buying this kid or letting someone else buy him, I'm going to adopt him.

And I'm going to take him into my household, and I'm going to make him my son. And therefore, he's going to inherit with my children. We would look at that, and we would say, hey, that soldier is a hero. We have a whole lot of Vietnam vets who came home with Vietnamese children in tow that they did exactly that for. And we look at that, and we say, hero. Because we understand that a child doesn't have agency to choose their own family, especially if all their parents and relatives are dead. So that's kind of what's happening here.

Wow. That's super helpful. Gosh. Yeah, that one does seem, there's a little more on the face of it that seems less kind of jarring than the other passage. super helpful gosh um yeah that one does seem there's a little more on the face of it that that seems less kind of jarring than um than the other passage but even with the proper translation the other passage makes a lot more sense again just i guess one more reminder um we have to read especially the old testament in light of its own cultural context what i've often heard people talk about is like and let me this is maybe an oversimplified way of of framing it i've had to do this i've dealt a lot with just violence in

general in the old testament and how does that relate to the sermon on the mount it's almost like you had this genesis one and two ideal then you have a gap of time you know and then god enters in and meets israel where they're, regulates, not does away with, but regulates within their own cultural context. Some of the really kind of twisted moral codes of the day elevates like human, like gives it, you know, it's a lot more humanizing than the rest of the culture. But then that's not the occultural, autemporal ideal. Rather, he meets Israel where they're at, regulates their society,

and slowly kind of brings them to where he wants them to be, which is, you know, you could say revealed in the ethic of Christ, Sermon on the Mount, something like that. I know it's kind of

probably oversimplified, but does that sound... Should I keep saying that, Sandy? No, I'm completely on board with what you're saying. And honestly, what happens, even in Jesus' ministry, we're not back yet. And as I say in Epic of Eden all the time, the ultimate goal of redemption is to get Adam back into the garden. That's what we're doing.

And so the ideal relationship between man and woman is seen in the pre-fall garden. Man and woman stand shoulder to shoulder, soulmates, being able to face the creative task of stewarding the cosmos under the authority of their God as equals. Yeah. Face to face, eye to eye. That is not what our world looks like because we're a fallen world, but that's the ideal we're heading back to. And a little interesting scenario there, as we step into those adultery laws again,

now there's a very famous story where the woman caught in adultery is dragged out into the public square and dropped at Jesus' feet. Remember? Yeah. Everybody wants to stone her, and they want Jesus to show that he's an insider and supportive of the Mosaic Code by picking up a rock himself. So, to let you know a little bit more about adultery codes, what would be the first question you would ask those guys about dragging that woman out into the public square? She, a married woman, has been caught in the act of adultery. Well, who is she sleeping with? Who is the guy that seduced her?

Who is she sleeping with and where is he? Right. Yeah. According to Deuteronomy 22, he dies. Wow. They're both caught in adultery. They both get stoned. They're both, and it happened in the city.

So there are no excuses. Right. But the bias of the day, they drag the woman out. They don't drag the woman. Yeah. Yeah. Golly. Genesis 127, you referenced, you know, the creation ideal.

Genesis 127, male and female, he created them. In the image of God, he created them. Is there any parallel statement that not only puts men and women male and female on par with each other but describes them both as bearing god's image like that seems to be like something out of the third wave feminism or something you know like yes is it really that ahead of the culture of that day because i mean we've talked about how some of these laws are more humanizing but they're still a little jarring. But you look at what Genesis 127,

it's like, oh my gosh, like that. Do we have anything in the ancient world that parallels a statement like Genesis 127? No, we don't. And I remember many years ago when I was finishing my PhD and here I am at Harvard University where the brightest of the bright are all students.

And I was teaching two sections of, what was it, the Bible and its interpreters. Jim Kugel was the prof. And I have 20 of these bright and beautiful undergrads sitting in front of me. And my task for the day was to pull up three creation myths out of the Near East and get them to compare and contrast. And that was my assignment. I really didn't have any choice about what I was going to do. And I wasn't looking forward to it because I didn't want them comparing the Memphite theology of Ptah, who, he creates humanity, and forgive the language, but he masturbates humanity into creation, and as his sperm drops on the ground, humans, that's Egyptian creation mythology, or the Mesopotamian, where the rebel deity Kingu is slaughtered by Marduk and his blood drips on the ground and humanity springs up.

Or Genesis 1 and 2. So, you know, standard Kingfellow stuff. I put three big columns up on the blackboard. We had chalk. Yeah. And the students start comparing and contrasting. And I'm not supposed to be swinging this conversation. I'm just supposed to be facilitating it.

And these students who were, believe it or not, completely biblically illiterate, they could do anything else in the academic world but had never read the Bible, they're saying, hey, in this biblical myth, humanity is like beloved and respected. And they're not just morally compromised, you know, rebel offspring. And man and woman, they're like equal. And it was a really great moment to say that. And it was a really great moment to say that. But no, this idea that a woman is equal to a man,

that she is a co-heir of the kingdom, that she is made in the image of God, the animate representation of the creator on this planet, no way. No. This is only Bible. Let me, before we leave you, let's fast forward to, let's just jump ahead several thousand years to 21st century. I mean, this could have been how we could have began this conversation this way, but we'll end it this way. I mean, you're a female biblical scholar at an evangelical institution, and there's not a whole lot of you out there.

No, no, there aren't. What has that journey been like for you? Well, thanks for asking. And let me say that there are a lot like me now. Mm-hmm. Now, proactive hiring practices and mentoring practices have produced a lot of outstanding scholars. But in my day, I spent most of my educational career and early career literally being the only woman in the room. That is not unusual to me at all. I actually started off in ministry, and that was worse. I would sit in general conference meetings, and the ushers would come up and tap me on the shoulder and tell me that the wives were meeting across the hall.

Pastoral Appreciation Day would come, and all of the male staff would get bonuses in their paycheck and I'd get flowers. I remember a interview where my senior pastor actually sat there and reflected out loud, I don't really understand why we're paying you to do this. My wife does this stuff for free. So, yeah. That'll make you swear in Acadian at them, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the academy was more egalitarian in that it was willing to evaluate me best based on my intellectual capacity. my intellectual capacity. But, oh my gosh, I went all the way through college, seminary, and most of my doctoral education without having a single female professor.

First female professor I had was Joanne Hackett, who is the Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and Professor of Hebrew Language at Harvard University. I remember the first time I bumped into her, if she's listening, I hope this is a funny story. I was in the Semitic Museum at Harvard and I was using the restroom and Joanne came out of the stall to wash her hands and I almost dropped on the floor. I thought, I actually thought, now I'm in my late 20s, I thought that faculty had separate bathrooms because I'd never seen a faculty member in a bathroom. I start apologizing. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't, I didn't. She's like, what are you apologizing for? I didn't realize this was a faculty restroom. She's like, Sandy, this is the women's restroom. But I didn't know. So lots and lots of that. Lots of being uncomfortable in your own skin. Lots of being the last person called on. Lots of being sidestepped and introduced at conferences as beautiful as

opposed to intelligent. And perhaps one of the things that is most, okay, things that still exist. Yeah. I would love to hear it. Yeah. Yeah. Still exist and are still so frustrating. Um, when I publish stuff, especially technical stuff, uh, the Academy has quantified, I will be the last person cited. They will cite my resources, they will cite my research, but they will go back to my primary sources. I won't get cited. I work on the Deuteronomistic history and the name theology. Oh my goodness. You can find all of my material, but you will be challenged to find my name.

That really needs to change. So that in my experience, and maybe it's just my experience or maybe it's just be, be kind of blinded. Like most academics that I'm around would be very either, not aggressive, like eagerly egalitarian or even the ones that might be

on more conservative environments. Like, I mean, I told you I was on staff at Cedarville University, which is a really conservative institution. But even then we had a huge concern. of the bible faculty there which would be very conservative really were eager to have female so they're very sensitive to that it's it is so all that to say it could it be that people have on the face of it maybe some egalitarian sensitivities but there's still maybe some unexplicit or subconscious almost things they're doing would you would

would you say that that's the case because i mean even i mean i can't imagine a harvard university my gosh i mean this is the bastion of conservative ideals like um is it that is it that men in, maybe some women, have just underlying subconscious ways of relating to women in the field? Yeah, let me tell you that women are no better at this than men. The one-day clinical studies are just as uncomfortable working with other women as men are. Because honestly, we've had less experience working with women than you have. Because we're usually the representative person in the room. So, okay. Let's do teaching evaluations. It's been a big study done. I can't cite it right here. I'm afraid I didn't. I'm prepared to do it. Where

they did a longitudinal study with fictional online professors. So the course was run by the same person throughout, you know, two or three years. But every time the instructor offered the course, the instructor would change their name. So they would become, you know, Charles McCormick, and then they would become Charlotte McCormick. They would go from John Smith to Joan Smith. Same course, same material, same syllabus, same professor. A woman who is cutting edge and demanding and challenging is a witch with a capital B. a witch with a capital B. She is a tight walk to come up with nice language. She is all sorts of negative societal connotations. The is brilliant ending and hard, but worthwhile. Teaching evaluations back on a regular basis. Now, honestly, typically I'm a little bit of a rock star. Okay. I get, I get real high evals,

but there'll always be a handful of people in my classes who clearly expected me to be their mom, their big sister, or their brother. So when I said, no, I'm sorry, I cannot excuse you from two weeks of class so that you can launch a new job or visit your family in Germany, that will come back as me being cruel, unsupportive of my students, and yeah, all the time. And nothing new. And it's being quantified. That's, yeah. A lot of those are kind of underlying, again, they may not even realize they're doing that necessarily, right? Like, wow, here we are in 2021. Still have a ways to go. Yeah. And there's also, let me tag this on too, because there's been so much push for proactive hiring. Honestly, and now I'll play the other side of it, there are a lot of women who've been hired to their positions over men who are better qualified.

I've sat on plenty of search committees where I've seen a young woman with promise hired over a young man with proven competence. with proven competence, which honestly, I guess if I were to adapt a society, I'm a meritocracy kind of gal. I'm the one sitting on the committee saying, hey, that white male, he's really good. Whereas, you know, these other guys, they have potential, but it's not proven yet. So, honestly, I think we've undermined ourselves as well. Well, I want to recognize that I just said 2021, this is the year 2020. That'll be relevant in six months with it is 2021. That's it. So I appreciate that. Cause I mean, I, it's something, maybe you can say both as a female and as somebody who's hiring more than I

could say, but I mean, when I was getting done with my PhD, it was kind of a running joke, you know, Oh, you're a white male. Good luck getting a job in education. You know, maybe some. Worse you're a conservative white male. Yeah. Well, yeah. And it's like, well, I'm not going to, for various reasons, like a Southern Baptist seminary won't hire me. So like the far kind of the more conservative schools, they may not care or may be eager to hire a white male.

I'm not really hireable for them for any kind of moderate to even more progressive seminary. The assumption, and again, this wasn't true probably 20, 30 years my the the the assumption and again this wasn't true probably 20 30 years ago but the assumption is i'm gonna have a harder time and i don't know what to do with that you know it's it's um i don't know um i i do get it like even things like affirmative action and stuff you know it's like when a group of people have been ignored, maybe even oppressed or neglected, whatever, we might need to counterbalance that. So, and I'm just part of that stage in the world at the same time as on an

individual level, it is a little difficult. If you have two people side by side, one's clearly better than the other that the other might get hired for that. But yeah. It's a difficult chapter. better than the other that the other might get hired for that. But yeah. It's a, it's a difficult chapter for exactly what you're saying that there are certain affirmative action hires that simply give other faces the foothold, but yeah, but I have questions about that as well so as i've told every committee that has hired me

since i was 22 um if you think you're hiring me because i'm a woman go pick your other candidate i want to be hired because i'm good at what i do and because I and yeah the case you're not doing me any favors um by pulling me into this post I just had a Madison Pierce on I don't know if you know her she's teaches at Trinity New Testament scholar just a recent uh hire I think a couple years ago um and she said the exact exact same thing like, or when she's invited to participate in a project, if they even front load, like, you know, we're really glad to get a female scholar, like, no, no, no, no, no. Like I want to be chosen because of my, my scholarship,

not because you're trying to give me a handout or something. So yeah, that's good to know. I've been asked to participate in dozens of projects as the woman. And periodically I'll say yes because of the quality of the project, but the front loading is, yeah, not ideal. And honestly, just circling back to being a Christian, the Bible deserves better. just circling back to being a Christian, the Bible deserves better. The Bible deserves the very best people who can come around it and communicate it to a contemporary audience. And we do need, we need the body of Christ represented in our scholarship and in our classrooms.

in our scholarship and in our classrooms. But we need to bring that from the bottom up as well. Make sure that the people around the table are taking on the task. Yeah, that's good. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time, Sam. This is, I could talk to you for hours. So many other passages I want to work through

with you right now, but I'll let you go. Thanks for being on the show. Absolutely. Thanks for your time. Thanks for putting that work out there. I don't know about you, but that just got me really excited about the Old Testament. It makes me want to go back and brush up on my Hebrew. And I hope you're not exegetically exhausted from thinking so hard

and deeply about the text. I love, I love talking about, um, relevant cultural issues. And I also love to go deep, deep, deep into the text of scripture. And so I so enjoyed this conversation. Um, I hope you did too. And if you did enjoy it, why don't you go to patreon.com forward slash TheAlginNeron and consider supporting this show for as little as five bucks a month, dude. Five bucks a month, you get access to once a month Patreon only podcasts. 10 bucks a month gives you a once a month podcast and a once a month blog.

25 bucks gives you, um, two Patreon only podcasts and one, um, uh, once a month blog as well. Like there's so much content that I keep producing that is behind the paywall. So if you want to get inside of that paywall, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology and raw support to show us first little is blah, blah, blah, five bucks a month. Okay. We'll see you next time on the show. show hope you enjoyed this one