In reading commentaries for my post The Stereotype of the Nagging, Contentious Wife, I ran across an interpretation of Proverbs 6:26 that I’m not convinced is entirely accurate. This is the verse that seems to say it’s okay for a man to visit a prostitute – at least in some English versions – though he’d better stay away from another man’s wife. I don’t know about you, but it would not be okay with me if my husband dallied with any other woman, no matter who she was or how she made a living.[1]
For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life. (Prov. 6:26, NIV)
The comparison between the toll exacted on a man for having sex with a married woman versus a prostitute appears to imply that sleeping with the second is no big deal.[2] Even though it’s not entirely clear how to translate the Hebrew (it may mean that a prostitute reduces a man to a loaf of bread), becoming a pauper is not as bad as losing your life.[3]
What’s going on here? Tremper Longman III explains it like this:
The final section of this passage focuses on the inevitability of punishment for those who have a physically intimate relationship with a woman married to another man. …One might question why this would be the case since sleeping with a prostitute also intrudes on the man’s marriage with his wife. …It is not that sleeping with a prostitute is right, but that the other is doubly wrong. Two marriage relationships are shattered.[4]
While Longman’s assessment makes sense, it does not reflect the cultural assumptions in place at the time. No doubt sleeping with a prostitute is wrong and adultery is doubly wrong, but that is probably not the point of this verse. Rather, it may reflect the reality of the sexual double standard at the time, even though the verse clearly is not condoning sleeping with a prostitute.
Longman’s comment got me thinking that maybe some of my readers aren’t aware of how expectations of sexual purity were different for men and women during Old Testament times. So I thought I’d write about that today.
The Double Standard
The distinction may be seen most clearly in that the Old Testament never mentions the marital status of a man involved in sexual indiscretion. Whether the man was married was, in fact, of no consequence; the only issue was the status of the female. Adultery was understood and legally defined as “sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who was married or betrothed to another man,”[5] but never as sex between a married man and a single woman.
This double standard is apparent in Deuteronomy 22:25-29 that details differing consequences for rape, based on the woman’s marital status. If the woman was pledged to be married, the man was guilty of violating “another man’s wife” and subject to the penalty due adulterers, which was death. If she was not pledged to anyone – and this is the kicker – the man was simply required to pay her father the bride price and marry her.
Rather than being punishable by law, the man’s actions could potentially be legitimized through marriage. The man’s marital status, in contrast, is never mentioned as a consideration in determining whether adultery has been committed. Neither is there note of any harm done to his first wife, if he has one, through his unfaithfulness and subsequent polygyny.
Similarly, it was the woman’s status (as married, engaged, or single) that determined the penalty if the encounter was deemed consensual.[6] If she was betrothed, both were considered adulterers and stoned to death (Deut. 22:23-24). If she was unattached, once again the man was required to pay the girl’s father and marry her, with no possibility of divorce (Ex. 22:16-17). If the man was already married, all that changed for him was that now he had to provide for another wife. As long as the woman in question was “single,” neither party was guilty of adultery in the eyes of the law or the culture.
This perspective is evidenced in more general principles. For example, whereas “a young woman was required to remain a virgin until the consummation of her marriage … there is no mention of a corresponding requirement of male virginity.”[7] Even after a man was married sexual fidelity to his wife was neither expected nor enforced.[8]
Why this laxness regarding men’s extracurricular sexual activity, but not women’s?
Well, one of the primary purposes of the sexual boundaries encoded in the Old Testament was to preserve the integrity of the family line, not necessarily to establish an ultimate standard of holiness.[9] Adultery on the part of the wife was prohibited since her fidelity was essential to this process but, at least in terms of his own household, the man’s was not.[10] The point was to ensure a man that any children born in his household were indeed his progeny. In contrast, the identity of a baby’s mother is obvious and therefore needed no legal protection.[11]
As a consequence, as far as the practical sexual ethics of the Old Testament are concerned, a man’s sexual exploits were only considered “wrong,” i.e. worthy of punishment, if he put the family line of another man in jeopardy. The ideal of one woman and one man for life was neither encoded in the law nor enshrined in common practice, though Genesis 2 makes clear that was always God’s intent.
Men as Victims of Adultery
Hence there was no Old Testament law that even implied a husband could commit adultery against his wife; a man could only commit adultery against another man (by sleeping with that man’s wife or betrothed). In the same way, a woman’s sexual indiscretion was always against a man, most often her husband but sometimes her father (if she was unmarried).
Neither a man’s nor a woman’s adultery was ever understood as being committed against a woman. This is why it didn’t matter if the male adulterer was married or not. Legally, in the Hebrew scriptures, adultery was always an offense against a man.
If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife – with the wife of his neighbor – both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death. (Lev. 20:10, italics added)
If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. (Deut. 22:22, italics added)
So, for example, if Bathsheba had not already been married, David would not have been guilty of adultery.[12] David’s “crime” consisted in taking “the wife of Uriah the Hittite” (2 Sam. 12:10), not in his unfaithfulness to his own wives. In no Old Testament scenario would any of David’s wives – Ahinoam, Abigail, Maakah, Haggith, Abital, Eglah, or Michal – have been considered victims of David’s adultery.
In fact, no one viewed women as victims of adultery in those days. Rather, women were the cause of adultery and men the victims.[13] Not that this was ever God’s view of the matter; it was simply the interpretive lens of this ancient world.
Prostitution
Back to our problematic verse, Proverbs 6:26. In concert with this sexual double standard, even in Israel there was an implicit acceptance of prostitutes and prostitution.[14] The fact that Hebrew men were inclined to sell their daughters as harlots – yet were not permitted to do so (Lev. 19:29) – tells us the practice persisted, even though it was neither sanctioned by God nor fully condoned by society.[15]
So, a man could visit a prostitute without breaking any law or committing adultery (in the legal sense), even if he was married.[16] A Hebrew woman, however, could be stoned or burned to death for offering herself as a prostitute, particularly if a male relative took offense at her activities.[17]This is the background to Proverbs 6:26.
This verse is not about purity or morality in the way we would think of those things, but about pragmatic issues. While visiting a prostitute was not desirable, some societal elements may have accepted it as a compromise. Though a prostitute may cost a pretty penny or even reduce a man to abject poverty, she does not put his life in danger like the “unchaste wife,” creatively described by Bruce Waltke as the “deadly quick-silver lady” and “huntress waiting to trap her prey” who “stalk[s] the streets to seduce young men.”[18]
Jesus
Though a lot had changed since Old Testament times, a general attitude that favored men with respect to sexual ethics was still widespread during Jesus’ lifetime, and may be what lies behind some of his encounters with the religious leaders.
For example, while an upstanding First Century Jewish man would not be caught dead committing actual adultery, in some circles ipso facto adultery through serial divorce and remarriage was perfectly respectable.[19] Jesus slams this double standard and legalistic workaround of God’s design for human sexuality.[20]
In Matthew 5:32 Jesus does this slamming in a remarkable way. The verse is usually translated something like this:
But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery. (Matt. 5:32, NIV 1984)
The part translated “become an adulteress” is, unexpectedly, a passive verb. The normal meaning of a passive verb is that the subject of the verb is the recipient of the action, rather than the one performing it.[21] The updated NIV is the only translation I’ve seen that attempts to bring the passive voice of this verb into its translation, rendering it as follows:[22]
But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery. (Matt. 5:32, NIV 2011)
Jesus not only says this practice is immoral, he also claims it is a crime against a wife. What a change from Old Testament sexual ethics where it was legally impossible for a woman to be the victim of adultery. No wonder even the disciples thought Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce was crazy.[23]
When reading the Old Testament we need to remember that while some of its ethics represent absolutes, others reflect practical concerns. We also need to make sure we don’t take the sometimes one-sided view of Old Testament texts and employ it to blame one gender for all the evils in the world, but instead recognize that both men and women can and do harm one another.
So, yeah; a woman can be the victim of adultery. Who knew?
[1] Scripture gives very little attention to prostitution as sex slavery, though there is a nod to it in the fact that fathers are forbidden to turn their daughters into prostitutes. Yet for the most part prostitution is addressed as though the woman freely chose that line of work. One wonders how often this was truly the case.
[2] Tremper Longman III notes: “A prostitute will cost money, but a relationship with another man’s wife may well cost the son his life,” Proverbs (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), loc. 3754, Kindle. Bruce Waltke writes: “Specifically, he [the son] needs protection from the smooth-talking, unfaithful wife. The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1-15 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), loc. 9249, Kindle.
[3] The KJV, NKJV, NASB, NET, and ASV, among others, translate along these lines, that visiting a prostitute will reduce a man to a loaf of bread (i.e. abject poverty). However, the CSB, CEV, ESV, RSV and others align with the NIV. The text is unclear enough that even the best biblical scholars disagree about the most likely meaning.
[4] Longman, loc. 3772.
[5] B. L. Bandstra and A. D. Verhey, “Sex,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE), vol. 4, ed. G. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 438.
[6] The woman was obligated to cry out to prove that she did not consent but was given the benefit of the doubt if the encounter occurred where no one could hear her.
[7] Bandstra and Verhey, 438.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Another was to forbid sexual acts that were considered aberrations, such as incest, bestiality and homosexuality.
[10] See my post Cheating Wives, the Double Standard and a Bizarre Bible Passage on Num. 5:11-31 for an illustration of how this priority worked out in the OT legal code.
[11] This is not an unreasonable expectation, yet it shifted the focus form marital fidelity to more practical issues. This, in turn, made room for the double standard, an obvious deviation from God’s best.
[12] According to Old Testament standards with its tolerance of polygyny.
[13] The book of Proverbs, in particular, presents this view of things. Recent commentators, however, recognize that this is at best only half of the story.
[14] Bruce Waltke notes that “Foreign prostitutes are tacitly accepted in the Old Testament as part of the tawdry scenery,” loc. 9309.
[15] F. E. Hirsch and J. K. Grider, “Crime,” in ISBE, vol. 1, ed. G. Bromiley (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1979), 816.
[16] Note that both female and male temple prostitutes, an abomination in Israel yet part of the landscape at various times, were solely for the service of men, never women.
[17] See the account of Judah and Tamar in Gen. 38. Judah’s men thought nothing of the fact that he had visited a prostitute. Though Judah was widowed by this time so his behavior might be viewed as somehow “excusable,” so was Tamar. Yet Judah as Tamar’s father-in-law had the power to prescribe the death penalty for her while completely overlooking his own indiscretion. Fortunately, Tamar was savvy enough to protect herself in advance by keeping Judah’s seal and staff.
[18] Waltke, Proverbs 1-15, loc. 3431; Proverbs 15-31, loc. 5225, 5239. See also Hirsch and Grider, 816. While the description is faithful to the tone of the original, it does not acknowledge the one-sidedness of painting women as society’s sexual predators, especially in the ancient world where this was not typical. Yet even in today’s world where women are also sexually aggressive, men are statistically more likely to victimize women sexually than the other way around. For these reasons I find Waltke’s terminology unhelpful.
[19] See Matt. 19:1-12, especially v. 3.
[20] Even in the Old Testament God rejected this double standard that favored men. See Hos. 4:13-14 where God says he will not punish the women for becoming prostitutes or adulteresses “because the men themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes.” So while an equal standard is harder to find in the Old Testament, it does exist and clearly expresses God’s perspective.
[21] For example, “I murdered” is active and “I was murdered” is passive. The difficulty with translation arises from the fact that in English we can say “I committed adultery” (active) but not “I was committed adultery” (passive). The problem stems from a limitation of the English language.
[22] In Mark 10:12 Jesus addresses the situation where a wife divorces her husband without cause to marry another man. In this case, since she initiated the divorce, she is guilty of adultery. So it’s not that a woman couldn’t be guilty of adultery but rather that, in fact, sometimes she was the victim and not the perpetrator. Jesus’ point in all these teachings is not to split hairs over when divorce may or may not be “allowed,” but rather to emphasize God’s original intent for marriage as a lifelong, loving commitment between one man and one woman. Jesus was slamming the casual attitude of Jewish men who put away their wife because another woman (probably younger and more beautiful) caught their eye.
[23] Matt. 19:1-12.
Sarah J. O'Connor 
I have noticed the double standard, it has to do with biology. Women by nature of their biology receive and to some degree retain biological material from men. This is why in the New Testament a divorced woman becomes an adulteress if she re marries while her former husband is still alive (as well as any man dumb enough to marry her), only after he dies is she free to marry again. It must be something about the living DNA in her body from a male still alive in the universe that we don’t fully understand yet. Our current culture is a cesspool of mix and match DNA and generations of mongrels, we have no idea what mayhem we have done. It is interesting to note that a known working prostitute is in the family tree of our Lord though. Also, as far as polygamy there are no known cases of a woman having multiple husbands in the Bible, that is a huge double standard and should tell you that fairness doesn’t mean much to our creator in this area. Just look at the animals, where is the fairness? This is what threw off Darwin, he saw that it was survival of the fittest. We as humans threw off our perfect condition and now this is what we have, it isn’t fair at all, but it is what it is.
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Absolutely correct. I myself wonder if women werent created SOLELY to deflect blame from g-ds CONSTANT F UPs 🤷♀️. I see and know NO love whatsoever, am blamed and face scorn and mocking. WHY AM I HERE????!!!
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It’s not correct actually. male dna probably comes when women give birth to males.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC40117/
Even if they did retain dna from sex, there is no connection between this retention and the morality of polyandry. All acts are the same whether they’re committed by men or women, and the same applies to polyamory.
I’d also like to point out that even though it seems as if there is a double standard of adultery, there isn’t. Hosea 4:14 proves this. The proverb about visiting a prostitute is true though because fornication is not as bad as adultery since adultery is only when a spouse cheats on another spouse.
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I dont know what version of bible you read but I read KJV and the translation of that to my own language “malayalam” is quite clear and not confusing at all. This whole conversation and blog is based on how you look at words. In my translation in native language, it clearly says to allude to this meaning “due to prostitute, a man will end up having to scrounge for food” aka, it means his wrong actions will bring consequences for him. It does not say it is ok to go to prostitutes. Eg: just because the road signs warns you of consequences of certain possible actions whilst you drive doesnt mean that it is ok to perform that action. Rather it helps you to avoid it.
Even other translations means this word such as “a man is bought down to a piece of bread (although he started off rich but now spend his money on prostitutes) because of a prostitute” or some other translations means “the price of a prostitute is a loaf of bread” this 2nd one alludes to how cheap prostitute is. Their body is swapped for a piece of bread!! You can even compare the two translations, a prostitute swaps her body for a piece of bread and whatever value one gives that piece of bread is he/r worth. Now that the man is also bought down to a piece of bread, he equally got devalued, due to the prostitute. He lost self worth. To me, both meanings doesnt allude to making in ok to go to prostitutes of whatsoever.
And @Tony, polygamy was bot okayed by God. It was adopted from other cultures. When he created humans, he created a man and only one woman!!
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Hi Roshna. I agree that it is not okay to visit a prostitute and that this verse is not stating it is, although it could be misunderstood in that way. My point was to highlight the sexual double standard in OT times where men’s sexual indiscretions were not understood to impact women, but only men, and the way that we too easily read our modern sensibilities into ancient texts. Jesus, of course, demonstrates what God’s perspective has always been: absolute sexual fidelity on the part of both partners.
Thanks for reading.
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I’m really confused, Sarah.
Are men more righteous when they cheat than women are?
It doesn’t really make sense to say this double standard was allowed just because of their patriarchal culture. If men were held responsible for cheating just like women were, family lines would still be secure. It’s just based on male lineage and the belief all the man’s children are legitimate
Why should the law concede to culture?
For example:
Why should betrothed women be held responsible for getting raped? This is rape culture.
Why should they be subject to unreliable virginity testing? Why should they be treated like products?
Why do rapists live while (supposed) non-virgin brides die?
These can’t be concessions to culture, because they are commanded to kill her. It enforces patriarchy.
It’s like men had an unlimited pool of women to choose from. As long as the women weren’t married, the men (married or not) could marry, fornicate, and rape without being killed.
It’s not like these patriarchal laws had to be given to them, right. It could have protected women instead of sinful culture. If they can be commanded to honor the stranger, and care for orphans and widows, couldn’t they treat women as equals? They had these laws for ~3000 years, long enough for a massive culture change, but the law enforced this culture for that long.
In 1 Thessalonians 4 Paul refers to adultery as a crime against her man. 1 Corinthians 7:39 and Romans 7:3 also seem to imply that men don’t commit adultery when they cheat.
Does this mean this same double standard is continued in the NT?
I don’t know how to make sense of this.
Thank you.
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Hi Joel. I’m sorry you’re confused. I’m not sure if you’re confused about whether this is what the OT is saying, or if your question is why it says what it does. Either way, I’ll try to answer.
First, the OT legal code does not present God’s perfect will. It was designed to define criminality and punishments, not moral absolutes. While we know that the 10 commandments were given directly by God, most of the secondary laws were a result of rulings in various situations that came to light over time (similar to what happens in modern societies). When something occurred – say a man had sex with an unattached woman – a ruling was made based on the overarching principles of the 10 commandments. Since adultery was forbidden, the question would be, what constitutes adultery? In a culture that accepted polygyny (one man marrying multiple women), is consensual sex between a man (married or unmarried) and an unattached woman adultery? Should we stone them for that or let them get married? How do we solve this problem? Or what if he seduced her – or even took her against her will? Is it better for her to be damaged goods forever than to be married to a lustful man?
So, for example, we might not understand why Tamar would want Amnon to marry her after he raped her, but societal thinking was different in those days. If she had married she would have become a respectable woman; as it was, she became nothing and we never hear of her again.
Jesus addresses the weaknesses of thinking any legal code can fully represent God’s standards, even one based on his revealed will. Repeatedly in Matthew 5 Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said… but I tell you…” Each time he is referring either directly to the OT law or to rabbinic interpretation of it, and each time he explains that God’s standards are higher. The problem was that over time the Jews began to equate the written law (which was designed to help society function) with righteousness. Jesus makes clear that the two are not the same, which would have been shocking to his listeners.
So no, a man who cheats is not righteous and rape is not okay in God’s eyes. And yes, the OT law could have been written differently; it could have expected men to be virgins upon marriage (yet how would they establish this??), or it could have outlawed polygyny just as it disallowed polyandry (but how many women would then have no husband and no way to survive in a society where many men died in battle?). It could have acknowledged that women could be victims of adultery and expected men to remain faithful to their marriage vows. All of this would seem more just to us. But the fact is that it didn’t.
This is where we have to accept that the OT ethic is not absolute, but culture-bound. However, the NT texts do not represent a double standard. In 1 These. 4:6 (the verse I think you are referring to) the issue is translation. “His brother” in this context means “fellow Christian,” so it could be a man or a woman. See this post for more on translation issues:
Rom. 7:3 is simply an illustration. Paul could just as well have used the example of a married man. Perhaps he didn’t because as Christians we are the bride of Christ, so the example of a wife is more fitting. Paul probably addresses widows specifically in 1 Cor. 7:39 because there were more widows than widowers. There is nothing here to indicate the standard does not apply to men as well. The NT makes it clear that men do commit adultery when they cheat, just like women.
Back to the OT law, we know that God’s will is not and will never be perfectly actualized in this world. Jesus said to pray that God’s will would be done, not to assume that everything that happens is his will. So a question for you is to consider to what extent life here on earth – including the Hebrew law code we find int he Bible – is an interaction between the will of God and the will of man. To what extent does God permit us to make bad decisions – or write unfair laws – and then live with the consequences? To what extent was the patriarchal system a result of the fall of humankind rather than an expression of God’s best?
Hope some of this helps. Thanks for reading.
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Joel, I had these same issues, and, while reading Jack Holland’s book, A Brief History of Misogyny, a lot was made clear to me, about the myths and writings of the Ancient Greeks being adopted by the writers of the Bible and other Holy texts. And, of course, each translation is given a new meaning, through the agenda of the translator.
Unfortunately, although it *appears* that things have changed over these past millennia, many haven’t. We still live in a patriarchal, misogynistic, society (the society, being like a dysfunctional family system), which needs individuals to question it, and say, enough!
It’s difficult to do that when the society appears to be going your way (as in male), but sexism, as with any form of inequality, and ‘othering,’ doesn’t help anyone, as I’m sure you know. It takes courage to take a stand against a dysfunctional family system, and it certainly takes courage to take a stand against a dysfunctional societal system such as a patriarchy…
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No human myth was adopted by the One and Only God who created The Holy Bible, YHWH Jehovah.
PLEASE, EVERYONE, if you haven’t already, embrace the factually One and Only God, One and Only Jesus Christ and the One and Only Holy Spirit. God is good. God is love. Jesus is Lord. Jesus IS coming. Your soul depends on it!
I have seen God act in my life. He saved my soul, changed my heart, changed my mind, helped people through me, took care of people in my life, people I hurt before I found God. God is the only reason I was able to reconcile with my dad before he died.
God worked through Jesus Christ to save our souls. Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, and that God raised Him from the dead, repent of your sins, accept God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit into your heart and you will be saved.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, that all who believe on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus Christ is The Way, The Truth and The Life. No one comes to the Father Jehovah God but through Him.
Not long after I got saved I prayed to God for help understanding the Holy Bible, and that same day someone knocked on my door asking me if I wanted to understand the Bible.
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Ezekiel says:
18:5 If a man is righteous and does what is lawful and right…does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman in her time of her impurity …
18:21 …if a wicked man turns from his sins which he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die.
I’ve made my share of mistakes in life; I have never pursued another man’s wife; but I have done things that were not right; yet, if we realize what we do is wrong, turn from it and repent, there should be forgiveness…
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Yes, that is the wonder of the gospel! Though we all are hopeless sinners, God in his mercy extends forgiveness to those who turn to his Son in repentance. May you experience God’s love and peace and acceptance. Blessings.
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Why does Deuteronomy 17:12 say Israelite women who hate these double standard and abusive laws have to be killed? So much tyranny and oppression.
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Hi Megan. Thanks for your comment. A couple thoughts for you:
I don’t think the women of that day understood these laws to be abusive or indicating a double standard. When we read them today we have to keep their worldview in mind, however, so we don’t come to the wrong conclusion about how to apply them today. And although polygamy was never God’s intention, it was the way of the world and no doubt accepted by ancient women as normal. We see this in the way Sarah offered Hagar to Abraham; it was nothing strange and, in fact, expected in the case of barrenness.
The legal “standard” was devised to protect the inheritance, not to legislate morality, so it wasn’t seen as a “double” standard. There was one standard: make sure children born in a household are legitimate heirs.
It is very difficult to stomach the death penalty for so many offenses, yet that also was the way of the world. In those societies, protecting the community was of greater importance than the individual life. We tend to see things differently today.
The verse you mention, Deut. 17:12, is not so much about hating the way things were set up but rather a willful refusal to abide by the ruling handed down. This would demonstrate a deliberate defiance of God and apply to both men and women equally. Interestingly, this verse only explicitly refers to men (ish), not women (ishah). This may be meaningless as ish can at times mean “anyone.” However, v. 2 of the same chapter specifically mentions both (ish and ishah), so there may be some significance to the fact that v. 12 focuses on the ish. It could be that it is a warning to a man who is unhappy about a decision that came down in favor of his wife or another woman, and is tempted to disregard the ruling. He needs to know that he must obey the court on pain of death, no matter whether he believes he should be able to circumvent the law if it had to do with the fate of the women in his household.
I don’t know that I will ever fully understand the OT world this side of heaven. The record we have points to so much brutality and death that is hard to take. But we need to remember that in that world, the Israelite law code was unique in how protective it was of women, foreigners, slaves, and the poor. It may not meet our standards, but we don’t live by it either. Jesus came and “fulfilled the law,” demonstrating a better way.
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thanks, Sarah. But even if women might not have thought it’s that bad its still horrible, and oppressed women throughout history in primitive societies and the church have fought back (and so do you), so what happens when they see this? There’s no reason to kill people for this while keeping slavery, etc. Allowing abuses is not a step towards eradicating them or protecting people and the community. We can’t just say “they weren’t as bad as others”. That too low a bar. Thanks
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I myself wonder if women werent created SOLELY to deflect blame from g-ds CONSTANT F UPs 🤷♀️. I see and know NO love whatsoever, am blamed and face scorn and mocking smirks and sneers😒. WHY AM I HERE????!!!
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I’m sorry that has been your experience. There is no excuse for mistreatment of that kind. I wish we could sit down over a cup of coffee and I could convince you that you are valuable and worthy of respect, that you are greatly loved by God, and that what you have encountered does not originate with God nor does he condone it but rather that, in fact, he will one day hold accountable those who have mistreated and denigrated you. I would pray with you and ask God to reveal to you why you are here – why you matter, why you count, and why your voice is needed.
But from your comment it seems that you and I may hold theological differences over the way God’s sovereignty interacts with the human will, where evil originates, and how to hold the goodness of God in tension with life in an imperfect world. So I don’t know if we would land on common ground or not. But thank you for your heartfelt comments. I have begun working on a book with the goal of convincing Christian women that being a woman is a good thing. I will keep your words in mind as I write.
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Um you ‘wish’ we could talk but in the same breathe you JUDGE my comment saying I might not know ‘g-ds goodness’🙄. Look around WHERE is it GOOD for it to be a ‘woman’?? Are you dense? Your very comment reeked of EXACTLY what I spoke of ASSUMPTIONS ans your BLIND foolishness in thinking WOMEN ARENT TO BLAME!!! Cause the world and males know they are and you are in delusional land!!! Whenever you want this screenshot of a man who JUST blamed eve TODAY I’ll send it to you. Otherwise stay in la la land as if goodness needs to be corrupted which it is . Cause NOTHING is ‘good’. Whatever you need to feel better
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Hi Sarah,
Were the Old Testament laws given by God or were they made by the rabbis? I know the 10 commandments were given by God but I am not sure about the civil laws.
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Most scholars think the bulk of the law code is case law (casuistic), meaning it consists of rulings in response to specific cases that arose over time in the life of the nation, most likely beginning during their sojourn in Egypt. These rulings were then compiled by Moses (and his aides, perhaps) and taught to the people as part of their covenant commitment to live in a way that honored Yahweh. The overarching legal principles were of course the 10 Commandments.
So, to your question, it is likely that the majority of the OT law code was not given directly to Moses from God, as was the decalogue. Yet neither did it arise from the teachings of the rabbis, as the rabbis did not come on the scene until much later.
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Hi Sarah…
You might like to read, A Brief History of Misogyny – the World’s Oldest Prejudice, by Jack Holland. It was his life’s work.
If you read it alongside the holy works you’re studying, you will see that yes, indeed, much of the Bible was written (and/or translated – the translations often being the problem) by misogynists pushing their own agenda.
But if we take from it what lifts the heart, and let go of the rest, it won’t leave women and girls feeling like they have no place in his-tory… It will help to remove the toxic shame that invades every woman, through an understanding that all we’ve read and learned has been written by men who despise or disregard women and girls.
Even the language is exclusionary. Every book I ever read growing up excluded girls and women, or, in fairytales, girls were made to believe they had to wait for some man to come along and rescue her -the Cinderella complex, as written by Collette Dowling, in 1981.
Women have an important role in this era, and that is, to bring awareness, love, and light, to this inherently misogynistic patriarchal world. It’s gone on long enough! In fact, for WAY too long. The time of darkness is over. Let’s bring in the Light…
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Much is always the case with human pagan perceptions, that is a lie. It’s human sin that brings about things such as actual misogyny and mistreatment of women. In the REAL and ONLY Truth that is The Holy Bible, the Word of God, men are held responsible for their own sin as well, regardless of whether women were apart of it or even persuaded men into. Adam and Eve is a showcase of this. Adam is cast out of the garden just like she is. Jesus Christ, being the Way, the Truth and the Life that only He is, tells that if men feels lust in his heart for a woman he has committed adultery. Only those who don’t understand that the whole and complete Word of God is both God’s commandments and history, are the ones who assume there’s a lack of connection between that.
PLEASE, don’t allow yourself to be led astray by human misunderstandings, because the only way to be lifted up, to be saved, is to faith that the Holy Word is the whole truth and that human sin is what brings the shame and worst traits of humanity.
If you haven’t already, embrace the factually One and Only God, One and Only Jesus Christ and the One and Only Holy Spirit. God is good. God is love. Jesus is Lord. Jesus IS coming. Your soul depends on it!
I have seen God act in my life. He saved my soul, changed my heart, changed my mind, helped people through me, took care of people in my life, people I hurt before I found God. God is the only reason I was able to reconcile with my dad before he died.
God worked through Jesus Christ to save our souls. Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, and that God raised Him from the dead, repent of your sins, accept God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit into your heart and you will be saved.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, that all who believe on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus Christ is The Way, The Truth and The Life. No one comes to the Father Jehovah God but through Him.
Not long after I got saved I prayed to God for help understanding the Holy Bible, and that same day someone knocked on my door asking me if I wanted to understand the Bible.
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Sarah,
so can I marry a woman that had a divorce but that was because the man was unfaithful and slept with another woman that was not his wife?
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or would is the man still able to sleep with another woman so long as that woman is not married or in a relationship (concubine) with another man?
I know that the new testament added a man can’t just divorce his wife for any reason it must be for sexual immorality on the woman’s part. If she does not commit sexual immorality / adultery and you divorce her and she didn’t do anything wrong then the man is at fault and he is the one in the wrong forcing this wife to commit adultery.
but this still doesn’t change the original framework it just adds more depth to what was already there bringing about a penalty for the man for wronging the wife.
is this correct?
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As far as marrying a divorced person, most Christian scholars would argue that numerous considerations come into play, including whether the divorce took place before or after the individual became a Christian along with the reason for the divorce.
As far as sleeping with someone other than the one person you are legally married to, this is never acceptable for a Christian man or woman. My point in the article was that under certain circumstances in Old Testament times a man’s indiscretion was not always defined as adultery. However, we know that extramarital sex and polygamy were never God’s design.
If your question about remarriage is personal, a couple of good books you might find helpful are “Divorce and Remarriage in the Church” by David Instone-Brewer and “…And Marries Another” by Craig Keener.
Blessings…
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