Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 19:20-22

20 And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, betrothed to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her; she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free. 

21 And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, even a ram for a trespass offering. 

22 And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering before the Lord for his sin which he hath done: and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him.

Today’s verses deal with a controversial subject: fornication with a bondwoman. There doesn’t seem to be any distinction in the language as to whether this is referring only to a foreign Canaanite woman, or an Israelite daughter who is an indentured servant, or both. In any case, the matter here is clearly fornication, not rape, which is handled elsewhere. Also, I say fornication because it fits are modern vernacular where the woman is unmarried, but she is betrothed, and in Ancient Israel that would have elevated the crime to the level of adultery.

In regular cases, adultery was an immediate death sentence for both parties. Hence the woman taken in adultery brought as a test to Jesus to see if he would approve of stoning her. But as we see today, this was actually only the punishment for free persons. The law recognized servants as not having the same privileges, and therefore they were not subject to the same punishments. As we have seen in several cases, the law was designed with protections around the vulnerable. In one sense it was no respecter of persons, condemning all for the same sinful behaviors, creating no class who could just get away with wrongdoing. At the same time, it would change the range of applicable punishment, always retaining the greatest penalty for those with the greatest opportunity.

Verse 20 describes the woman’s punishment as “she shall be scourged,” but this is a highly debated translation. The Hebrew word used here, בִּקּרֶת (biqqoreth), means “examination, i.e. (by implication) punishment — scourged” (Strong’s Concordance). There is nothing that actually makes certain that the word was meant to be scourged here, instead of investigated, nor anything that links it to the woman only. This passage could just as easily read “they shall be scourged” or “they shall be investigated.” Indeed, almost every translation today does use one of those other interpretations.

What is clear is that separate from whatever punishment is described in verse 20, the man involved in the offense would have to make a trespass offering. After this, both parties could apparently be forgiven.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:14

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Another very brief commandment, this one forbidding married individuals from breaking their marriage covenant and having sexual relations with anyone other than their spouse. Of course, this one commandment does not cover the entire breadth of sexual sin. It does not mention anything about fornication, or bestiality, or incest, or homosexuality. However, just because all these matters are not covered in the ten commandments does not mean that they are not covered elsewhere in the word of God. Here in the mountain Moses received the foundational rules of God’s law, but there were other visits to the mountain, and other details yet to come. Leviticus, for example, has several chapters that cover the other sexual perversions that are expressly forbidden by God.

I think it is fair to say, though, that adultery is the root evil that all other sexual perversions are an extension of, and this explains why it would be forbidden first in the ten commandments. Calling out adultery points to the fact that sexuality is fundamental to the union between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage, and so it is the perversion of that order that constitutes a sin. Whether we also pervert that order by having sexual relations before we are married, or with people that we cannot be married to, or with animals, it all follows the idea of breaking apart the marriage covenant and taking the things which belongs to it elsewhere. All sexual sin is in the spirit of adultery.