Truth Unites - War R*pe in Deuteronomy 21?

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund addresses whether Deuteronomy 21 condones war rape among the ancient Israelites. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Did the ancient Israelites commit war rape? This is a concern that's raised against the Bible. Those of us who are followers of Christ will probably hear this at some point. If you haven't heard this yet, you'll probably hear this at some point. This is one of the toughest passages in the Old Testament to try to defend. Deuteronomy 21, 10 to 14, I'll read it and put it up on the screen in a moment. But first, just to explain this a little bit, this is a spinoff of a previous video I did on the conquest of Canaan, where I was trying to defend the book of Joshua.

I got to these passages that are talking about the specific concern of sexual exploitation in the context of war, which is a little different from just violence in general. And I realized this is so difficult, we need a whole separate video on this, even though this video won't be as long as that one. And just to try to provide helpful resources for people on this, the purpose of my YouTube channel is to create gospel assurance through theological depth. So this totally fits with that to try to explain some of these tough passages. is by the end of this video, I hope that you will be better equipped and better maybe have concerns

alleviated if you're a follower of Christ or if you're exploring Christianity. Maybe this is a stumbling block before you could become a Christian, you know? I hope this could remove stumbling blocks. And what I hope is that by the end of this video, you could see something, just a little bit of the compassion that is in the character of God that's ultimately revealed in the whole Bible, especially through the person of Jesus. And my argument is that this passage, though it not God's ideal in its historical context represented a protest against abuse. Now let me say right out of the gate here, we're going to talk about some brutal realities. If you're under the age of 18 or if the topic of sexual mistreatment or sexual violence

is especially sensitive for you, I would recommend maybe don't watch this video. I'm not going to be graphic or, you know, there will be no embellishments or anything, no pictures, nothing, but I am going to just try to factually explain some terrible things about human history that we have to know about the ancient world. So I hope that this video will help people. I hope that it will serve people, and I hope that it will help oppose the terrible practice of sexual violence and mistreatment of women and children. This is actually something that's a huge problem in the world today as well, especially through the influence of pornography, and just the way things are going is not good right now. So I want to give my life to try to make the world a better

place. Explaining some of these passages and talking about these tough issues is one way I try to do that, even though I know this will not be convincing to those who are really just committed to the other side, but hopefully if you're approaching this with an open mind, maybe this could help. All right, let me start by reading the passage. As I read it, you will understand why it's a difficult one. Many people call it the pretty woman text. Verse 10, when you go out to war against your enemies and the Lord your God, gives them into your hand, and you take them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, and you bring her home to your house. She shall shave her head

and pair her nails, and she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured, and shall remain in your house, and lament her father and her mother for a full month, and after that you may go into her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife, but if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave since you have humiliated her. Hoo, tough passage. Just reading it, you can feel like, whoa, how do we, what do we do with this one, right? Here's my thesis. This is not a timeless ideal, but in its historical context, it was a protest against abuse. Now, let me explain that, what I mean by not a timeless ideal. I'm not criticizing the Bible.

are saying the Bible's bad. I'm just saying, let's read the Bible the way Jesus did. In Matthew 198, note the emboldened words here. This is something I've emphasized in other recent videos on slavery and the conquest of Canaan, that Jesus basically says, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed. So that word allowed is really important. This is a regulatory law. This is something that Moses is, according to the interpretation of Christ, allowing or permitting, and it has a specific occasion, namely because of your hardness of heart. And then Jesus says, and I'll put it back up, the other emboldened part, but from the beginning, it was not so.

So Jesus is recognizing some laws in the Old Testament, law of Moses, first by books of the Bible. They didn't reflect God's timeless ideal. And they were not for all people at all times. On the contrary, they were a concession to human sin trying to regulate. human sin and hardness of heart at that time. Okay, but it's not God's creation ideal. And so this is not relativism. This is just reading the Bible in context. It's reading the Bible in relation to creation. From the beginning, it was not so. And then it's reading the Bible in relation to its unfolding development, looking at the teaching of Christ. And so Jesus is saying that, of course,

about Deuteronomy 24 and divorce laws, but divorce is not the only institution that's affected by the heartness of heart. Okay, so it's legitimate to at least ask. Could this be so in other cases as well? And I think clearly it is. Deuteronomy 21 is a passage we have to interpret in its historical context, and we have to see what is pushing against. Okay. So in my video on the conquest of Canaan, I use this metaphor of imagine you're watching the first Star Wars movie, episode four, and you get to the end when they blow up the Death Star. And all you watch is the missiles going in, the Death Star explodes, you're going to have one impression versus if you watch that in the context of the whole movie, you have a completely different impression. If that's all you watch, you might say,

why are they killing all these people? But if you watch it in the context of the whole movie, you might say, oh, good, the good guys are winning. You have completely different reactions based upon if you see it in context. If you see Deuteronomy 21 in its historical context, it's a similar thing. In the ancient world, and here's where it gets difficult. So, just talk this through. The rape of women and girls on the losing side of a military conflict was not only the standard practice. It was the celebrated standard practice. So you have artistic celebrations of sexual violence and exploitation of foreign nations placed upon coins, put on monuments, in other forms of art and commemoration. This was not only practiced pretty much ubiquitously. It was

just, it was celebrated. You know, just like today in a football game, when a player scores a touchdown, it seems like people do this more and more and more, even if you get a tackle, you celebrate. But in a football game, if you score a touchdown, a lot of times you'll spike the football and then do like a victory dance. And that's kind of a culturally accepted way of sort of the climactic celebration of what just happened. Okay. So tragically, disgustingly, in the ancient world, artistic commemoration of war rape scenes was a climactic way of celebrating the victory. This is just what people did. And so you can find lots of examples of this where, you know, it'll be of soldiers pulling women by the hair, carrying them sideways in their arm.

Sometimes the women will be only half-clothed. And the clear implication of this art is overpowering and rape and violence against them, and it was a way of commemorating the victory. Okay? So just let that sink in for a second. This not only happened, it was celebrated. It wasn't something that was shameful. You see, in the world today, you can have terrible genocidal rape that happens. For example, in the late 90s into the early 2000s, the first and second Congo War, you can have,

I mean, at points there, the conservative estimates are that there's more than a thousand rapes every day. Okay, it's really bad. The assaults on women were so horrible that the human rights watch described it as a war within the war. It's like a whole separate component of war, this terrible treatment of women. I want to stop in the middle and just say, I hope everything I say in this video reflects care and honor for the dignity of women and for the importance of being an advocate for their protection and all vulnerable parties because you get into human history and you see what people are capable of and it's terrible. So anyway, so like the first and second Congo war, there's genocidal rape happening. That was like the policy of all the different sides.

That's happening. That happens in the modern world, but in the modern world, it's not put on art. You know, it's like people tend to hide that or feel embarrassed of that. On this side of like the Geneva conventions after World War II, where we have this sort of assumed standards of what does humanitarian treatment look like of civilians, for example, in a war context. We fall short of certain standards, but at least most people know what those standards are. In the ancient world, you didn't have the standards. Sexual violence was celebrated, and people were proud. It was a way of saying, look what we were able to do to your women. And that was a way of sort of celebrating the war. Deborah's song in Judges Five, you find this reference to the rape of Israelite women and girls

by the Canaanites, and it's described as just, you know, this is just part of enjoying the spoils of military victory. And in the phrase, a womb or two for every man, you could translate that even more crudely, though I won't do that right here. But I'm just trying, unfortunately, unfortunately, we have to kind of let the hammer fall of be a little bit shattered by the brutality of this and grieve it in order just to take it in and understand how dark human history is, unfortunately. And that's the ancient world. That's how bad it was. But, but, well, not even just that bad. It's worse. Because rape in those circumstances was often conjoined with the most grotesque forms of violence against these poor people who would be defeated. And so I won't even go

into that. I've already in my last video talked about one of the books that has a whole chapter on torture during ancient warfare. Let's not go there. Just use your imagination and let's not describe it. Hopefully you get the point already. Okay, so here's how one text puts this. Speaking of Deuteronomy 21, and I've drawn a lot from this book for this video, quote, if we are to understand these biblical texts, we need to be reading ancient war documents from Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and so on. Once people do this, they discover that the ancient treatment of women in war was utterly horrendous. It often included bodily mutilation of women, cutting off their breasts and displaying them on poles, torturous deaths, multiple rapes, and a type of concubine enslavement,

where women would be required to perform perpetual sexual favors and or produce offspring for their owners. In ancient siege warfare, the fate of female captives was considered so dreadful If it looked like a city was about to fall, many times killed their own wives. What an ugly, utterly ugly world. The treatment of humanity by humanity is sometimes staggering. In our present-day context, this ancient war portrait shares some commonality with the rape camps of Rwanda. Placing the biblical text within that sort of war context of the ancient world allows us to see Deuteronomy 21, 10 to 14, in a different light. All right.

I put that quote in my notes, and I didn't, maybe it's for the good. going to leave it up. Maybe it's for the good that I didn't edit out the garish parts of that. I can reassure you no more physical descriptions. I know some of us find it hard to take in. There are times of my study of this. It is kind of nauseating. But we need to know what happened. So maybe it's good that I left that in, but we'll just move forward now. But the point is this. Israelite war practices can only fairly be appraised in that historical context rather than comparing them to, you know, after the, after World War II is over and the modern world and so forth. In that context, the ancient Israelite practices were different. There's no glorification of sexual

violence. On the contrary, there are these restrictions that are designed to curb away from those kinds of abuses. There's absolutely no battlefield rape, for example, that which was extremely common in the ancient world. Now, some scholars dispute that and they say, well, Deuteron forbids rape after the battle is over, but doesn't say anything about rape during the battle, so the Israelite soldiers were free to do that. And this is one of those readings that's just overly cynical and just wrong. That's not a good way to read the Bible. It's an argument from silence, and it runs contrary to the entire tenor of the Old Testament. Okay, this wouldn't make any sense to have this strict 30-day waiting period after the battle is over if the Israelite men had

been free to pillage and rape and so forth during the war. Now, during Israelite warfare, the Ark of the Covenant, an object of extreme holiness that mediated God's presence, would be taken from the temple onto the battlefield, carried by the priests. The understanding is the Lord is going with us into battle. And so, believe it or not, battle was considered an act of worship, a holy act unto the Lord. and from that point, the Israelite men are in a sacral state. Okay, so for example, they could eat the consecrated bread, normally given only to the priests, and they were forbidden from any kind of sexual activity. Any kind of sexual activity would require a kind of ritual cleansing, as you can see in

Deuteronomy 23, for example, and the Israelite practice of complete abstinence from all sexual activity during battle can be seen in David's comment in 1 Samuel 21, 4 to 5, where he's speaking to the priest, Ahimelech, and he says, basically, women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. You can also see this in Uriah's refusal to sleep with his own wife when David is trying to coerce him to do so on the grounds that he's in battle. It's like he's saying, we're in the middle of a battle. How could I go and do that?

So for the Israelites, sex and battle are completely separated. from one another at God's command. And then after the battle, for other nations, you know, a lot of times what would happen is female prisoners of war would be made into temple slaves, where unfortunately, sexual exploitation would be an ongoing feature of their life. So, and this is true both in ancient Mesopotamian contexts and in the ancient Egyptian sources, we see this. So like in the ancient Mesopotamian context, you have the goddess Ishtar, who's the goddess of

of war and sex, and basically a lot of prisoners of war are made into temple prostitutes to fund the temple. And I won't go into that here. In terms of, you know, I don't wanna be too lurid in this, but I'm trying to convey these horrific truths enough that you get the picture, but not go too far, which is a tricky thing. In ancient Egypt, you have these so-called houses of women

where basically women, prisoners of war were brought, and the essential purpose is kind of industrial production of slave children. So they're just basically there to produce as many offspring as possible to become slaves. Okay. So you got that kind of stuff going on in the ancient world. All of that is strictly prohibited in Israel. There's absolutely no temple prostitution.

There's no ritual sex in the temple as there was in the pagan world. Sex and worship are completely separated, just as battle and sex are completely separated. The alternative for the Israelites is Deuteronomy 21, okay? And again, you start to see when you're looking at that context and then you're looking at this passage, you're starting to see, oh, that's the kind of stuff. It's prohibiting and saying you can't do. And it's more fair to judge it in its context than like in the modern world. The first and most obvious difference here is the requirement of marriage in verse three.

Okay, that's the first coming out of our context. You might now, someone might say, oh, how terrible that, you know, you're just being forced to marry or something like that. but arranged marriages are the norm. Very few people chose who they're going to marry in the ancient world. And what I want to do here is go through the three features of this text that initially might seem to people like, oh, that's so terrible. And I want to show that there's actually a redemptive element in each of them.

The first, and this will be to finish off, first the 30-day waiting period, second, the removal of hair, cutting of nails, and changing of clothing, and third, the stipulations for divorce. And in each case, you might initially think, oh, that's so terrible. And then especially reading it in line with Matthew 98 as a regulatory law, but you see how much actually progress is being made here. We benefit today. I'm going to say this.

Some atheists watch my channels. Thank you for watching. I know you don't like to hear this. I got to say it. It's just, I think it is so true that we benefit today from the changes that were made in the nation of Israel that started dominoes falling. Okay. I've said that elsewhere. I'm not really going to get into that here. Okay, let's talk about these three things. First, the 30-day morning. Now, some people, a lot of the discussion about this. A lot of people say, how terrible? Only a month, you've just

ripped this person out of their community and now they only get one month to grieve. Another concern is, more at the scholarly level, people say, oh, well, they read it cynically and they say, the purpose isn't really to allow her to mourn. The purpose is to make sure that she's not already pregnant before you marry her. But I don't think that's right. And a lot of people actually in the scholarship as well push back against that. First of all, just the explicit statement of the verse in verse 13 is to allow for mourning. But beyond that, a time frame of one month doesn't really fit with other purposes that are commonly put forward,

like making sure that this woman is not already pregnant, that's not enough time. And you can see some of the rabbinic interpreters saying that three months. So three months is the time that would be necessary to address that concern. Okay. Now, you know, give the text the benefit of the doubt. If it's saying it's for that, it's for mourning. Now, someone's going to say, only a month, you know, that's way too short. Her husband might have just been killed and she only has a month to grieve. Okay. Again, in our context, that's a very understandable concern. But in the ancient world, a week was more of a common culturally accepted grieving time. So, and if you want more about this, by the way, take a look at this book on pages 16 to 23. It just goes through and shows how commonly is this seven days and seven nights morning

ritual, both outside of scripture, and then also in the Bible. I'll put up this example from the book of Job. The book goes through five other examples as well. So the point is, you know, again, in that historical context, it's not the way it sometimes can seem to us in our historical context. Actually, there is a recognition of a relative to that time, longer period of time allowed for mourning. Okay, but what about the shaving of head, pairing of nails, removal of clothes? Someone might initially look at this and just think, how degrading, this is horrible, you're taking away her dignity, you're taking away her beauty, you're taking away her culture, and so forth. But at that time in history, those actions served two purposes. One is a mourning ritual,

and the other is cultural assimilation. The book I've quoted from earlier, speaking of these three acts, says these three rituals fit within widely practiced mourning customs of the day and are most likely connected to the month of grieving and waiting period. Just like the month-long time of grieving is a way of acknowledging the real grief she's enduring, so this, is a process of kind of ritualized grief and transition and assimilation into a new community. Just think how opposite this is of celebratory rape, which was the common practice of the day. Okay, this is an ancient way of trying to push against that and allow for a process of entrance into a new community. Someone might say, well, why do this at all? Why not just leave her alone?

Again, I think we have to appreciate the historical context in that time to be without a family and potentially without a community, you may have had very low chances of survival. You can see this, for example, in the book of Ruth, the way Naomi reacts to her daughters-in-law when her husband dies and their husbands die, and she's trying to say to them, go away, you know, I can't have any more children. Do you want to stay unmarried? And you can feel a little bit of the sense of the desperation that you'd be in, in that context, to be without a family. Okay, thirdly and finally, what about these stupidly? relations concerning divorce. Again, a lot of, at first reading, you know, it's very easy to look at this

and just say it's absolutely barbaric. Again, in that historical context, you can actually see pushing against the powerful party and in favor of the vulnerable party in this prohibition. It's saying, if the marriage does not continue and it ends in divorce, this is a prohibition against treating her as a slave. On the contrary, so, you know, the photographic negative of that is she is a free woman and Israelite. She has all full rights of a full status of a free Israelite woman. And the rationale for that in these final words is since you have humiliated her, or some translations say since you have dishonored her. This is placing the responsibility and blame on the party with power and reflecting a concern for the dignity and the status

of this woman. And in the ancient world, that is remarkable. Chris Wright says, this, the law in the midst of the nastiness of wars trying to privilege the needs of the vulnerable, a woman, a foreigner, a captive, over the customary rights of the powerful, a man, a soldier, a victor, a husband. So yes, this is a tough passage. It does not reflect a timeless ideal. This is not what everybody should do in every place, as Jesus teaches us in Matthew 19. But can you see what it's pushing against in its historical context?

Can you see what it's trying to do, trying to say, no, don't do what all. all these other nations are doing. You can't treat women in these barbaric ways. You have to wait. You have to marry her. She becomes a full member of the community. She's never going to be a slave. And that last little phrase, for you have humiliated her. You can feel something of the character of God in that. Because as you look at Deuteronomy 21, but then you step back and you look at it in light of the entire scripture, again, like watching the entire Star Wars movie. see it all in context. What you have is a story about a God who shows remarkable compassion for the vulnerable. All throughout the scripture, God is always choosing the outcast. It's always the people in

this world that are discarded. And the world says, oh, you're no good. You'll never amount to anything. You're not important. And the world just tosses that person aside. That's the person God is drawn to. God cares about the vulnerable. I think of this with Christ and the dignity with which he treated women in his context, also a context in which women were very mistreated. And for some reason, I'll finish with this, the story of John 753 to 811, even though there's textual concerns about that story, I think it's consistent with the character of Christ reflected in the Gospels. It came to my mind, and this is where the woman is caught in adultery. She's brought forward. Of course, the man isn't. You know, there you see, again, the tendency of human sin to target and single out the vulnerable

whole person. But of course, Jesus draws attention away from her, and I've preached on this passage. I have a lot to say that I love about this passage, but I'll just put my finger on these simple words of when he says, I do not condemn you. Go and sin no more. Can you imagine, I mean, just let this strike your heart. Can you imagine what it would be like to look into the eyes of God incarnate and hear him say to you, I don't condemn you. Can you feel, and go and sin no more, also an equally important part of that, so we don't get into free grace here. But can you feel Christ's recognition of her humanity in that? Can you feel that his compassion and his awareness of her dignity and is treating her with a human being, treating her as a human being? This is something that the gospel does to us. It treats us as human

beings. It gives us dignity. It actually, you know, forgiveness of sins is one way of getting your dignity, back. Some of you watching this video may be so guilty and so shame covered because of things that you've done or that you continue to struggle with. It actually is a way of sort of robbing your humanity. And when the Bible speaks of righteousness being imputed to you, forgiveness of sins, God, the covering with clothing is one image that is used for that. And I'll just leave you with this thought. I love to just say this, even though I know some atheists watching this video won't believe in any of this, but I can say what the Christian message is to you. And for Christians, maybe this is something that could be an encouragement for you. What the gospel of Jesus Christ

ultimately means is Jesus says to every single penitent sinner, I do not condemn you, go and sin no more. What that woman experienced in that moment, that's the message of the whole Bible. Basically, there is a God and you can be restored to Him through Christ. And that's, you know, what that woman felt, okay, when God in the flesh is looking me, seeing me, treating me with dignity and saying, I don't actually despise you. I don't condemn you. I don't hate your guts, you know, like all these other people do. Go, change. That's what the gospel does for each of us. It's the most beautiful story you can even imagine, let alone if it's true. And I say, so, you know, read Deuteronomy 21 in light of the bigger picture. That's actually really important.

It's actually, the Bible's a big book. It comes for a lot of different times in history. Read each little portion in light of the big thing. All right, I got to stop because I'm learning lately. I ramble at the end of my videos, especially when I go into preacher mode. Hope this video is helpful. Last thing, if you have other passages, I might extend this into a series of videos responding to tough passages. If there's other passages you think it would be helpful for Truth United's videos to address, put them in the comments, and I'll consider that. Thanks for watching everybody. Hope this helps people. Let me know what you think in the comments. We'll see you in the next video.