Rules for Raping Virgins – Law makes order from chaos

Sometimes you aren’t required to blame the victim

In the case of rape, the bible requires that both the rapist and victim die by stoning if the victim is married. You know, to keep the ickyness of rape from contaminating the community.

That seems fine, but what about unmarried women? As far as I can tell, it’s ok to rape an unmarried non-virgin: probably because the chick in that situation doesn’t have any marriage potential or monetary value. The complications arise when raping a virgin. If a man is caught in the act of raping a virgin, he is then required to pay the girl’s father 50 shekels of silver and marry the girl. I’m not sure if this is a punishment or a reward. It could be, “You raped Sarah the daughter of Seth, so now you have to pay off Seth and you’re stuck with Sarah forever.” Or it could be a good way to pick out a new wife without having to get her father’s permission: “I don’t like you Seth. You are a stupid piece of crap and I would never have allowed you to marry my daughter, but since you raped her now I have no choice. Here is your new bride.”

Now you may say, “What if the virgin is already betrothed to someone? If you made her marry the rapist that wouldn’t be fair to the guy that had already arranged to marry her and paid the bride price?” Fortunately Jehovah thought of that too. If someone rapes a betrothed virgin in a city, then it’s the victim’s fault because she didn’t yell loud enough to attract someone that could protect her from the rape. In that case, both the rapist and victim are taken outside the city gate and everyone throws rocks at them until they die.

That may seem unfair, but Jehovah isn’t a monster. If the betrothed virgin is raped out in a field somewhere, the law understands that it isn’t her fault. You see, there aren’t enough people around for her to call successfully for help. In this case only the rapist is stoned to death.

Sadly, the “rape in a field” rule doesn’t bring me a lot of comfort. Once the girl is no longer a virgin the bridegroom can get out of marrying her because he paid for a virgin. Then the victim is an unmarried non-virgin and I’m pretty sure the only job she could get after that is in the respectable field of prostitution. Then I wonder if that is how all biblical prostitutes get started on their career path. Also: please refer to the section of the second paragraph dealing with non-married, non-virgins.

Moral: Jehovah came up with some pretty great rules for dealing with rape in a large community setting.

Ref: Deuteronomy 22:22-29

The Invasion Hits a Snag – Not all is well in Zion

It’s Jehovah’s way to kill a bunch of non-involved people when somebody sins

After wiping Jericho off the face of the Earth, Joshua sent a couple of guys to check out Ai. The spies returned and said, “Um, there’s like nobody in Ai. You should only spend like, two or three thousand guys to eliminate them so not everyone is inconvenienced by the trip.” This sounded good to Joshua so it was done.

Everything was going really well until the people from Ai tried to stop the Hebrews. This totally threw off God’s Warriors who had no experience with actual combat. Naturally they fled and while they were running away the soldiers from Ai managed to kill 36 of them.

When Joshua heard his men had not only run from the enemy, but had also suffered losses of 1.2% he was completely beside himself. He fell down in the dirt and cried all day. Eventually Joshua asked Jehovah why He had bothered to free the Hebrews from Egypt if He was just going to let them all be killed in Palestine! Jehovah was quick to answer saying, “Look, I’m not really trying to kill all of you, but here’s the deal. Someone took some stuff from Jericho after I told you to tell them to not do that.”

Joshua immediately set about trying to rectify the situation. He ordered a survey of every man and every tent to find the offender. Eventually it was determined that a Jew named Achan took a set of clothes and a bunch of money. Joshua told Achan that because he was causing trouble, Jehovah was going to cause him some trouble. Then the people of God threw rocks at Achan until he was dead. Just to be sure, they incinerated him too.

After the whole incident with Achan’s disobedient ways was resolved, Jehovah told Joshua to get back to the business of wiping out Palestinians. Joshua didn’t want to mess up again, so this time he sent 30,000 men to hide around the back of the city of Ai. Then he took a smaller force and pretended to attack the city from the front, then run away.  When the soldiers from Ai and its neighboring city Beth-el saw Joshua and his force running away they gave chase, just like the time before.

This time was different. Once all the fighting men were chasing Joshua, the secret 30,000 took control of Ai and burned it to the ground. With that business concluded Joshua stopped running away and turned to attack and the 30,000 turned their attention to the fight. The men of Ai and Beth-el were quickly wiped out except the king of Ai. Joshua had him hanged from a tree unto death. Then all the women and children from both cities were slaughtered.

Moral: don’t go against God, or his fans will kill you twice.

Ref: Joshua 7 & 8