Christian perspectives on Deuteronomy and rape as warfare

[yourfriendrick]

Here are two passages which (after a bit of study and cross-checking) appear to be talking about the use of rape as a weapon of war.

(Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
 
     As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace.  If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor.  But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town.  When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town.  But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder.  You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.
 
(Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB)
 
    "When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house.  But before she may live there, she must shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive's garb.  After she has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife.  However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion."

Clearly, these passages are saying that God is giving Israel a military mission, and hostages are required to be taken. The second passage, in particular, specifies that female captives are allowed one month of mourning before their sexuality is no longer their own.

1. Christian thinking admits various miracles. If the Bible says that the common practices of nature were suspended for a while so that two men could disembark from a boat and walk around on water during a storm, typical Christian interpretation says that's factual, because it's a miracle. So assuming that one month of mourning was observed, it's entirely possible that God commanded capture of hostages, and yet none of them were raped, because one month of captivity was sufficient to make all hostages completely consenting to all wishes of their captors. (I would regard such an event as no less miraculous than a walk on stormy waters, but that's beside the point.)

2. An alternate Christian perspective is that the women in question were not good people when they were captured: they had been worshiping false idols and evil spirits, and they were given a privilege when they were captured, so God was commanding their captivity as a deserved punishment.

3. Another possible interpretation was that God was providing the opportunity of marriage, but that the prospective wives would have full freedom to refuse if they so desired, so God never condoned rape.

4. Still another perspective might be that while Christian scripture is perfect, Old Testament Scripture was written down incorrectly, because the Old Testament had scribes who were inferior to the scribes of the New Testament. Thus any rapes that might have resulted were the fault of the scribes, not of God's perfect commandments. Indeed, the incarnation of Jesus might have been appropriate precisely because human interpreters of God's will tended to make this sort of mistake.

[Darias]

Another Christian's perspective is that these passages along with all others found in the Bible were penned by men -- men who often attributed their victories, hopes, etc to God. I don't believe God ordered the above-said rape because again, "God-Breathed inerrant, infallibility" of the Bible is totally and completely irreconcilable with the idea that "God is loving and just." Claiming that God is a "God of wrath" does not at all excuse God from supposedly committing murder, slaughtering children, ordering rape, etc. God cannot be the embodiment of love, and God cannot be just, if God also is a bloodthirsty narcissistic monster. And if you read passages like these, whilst accepting Biblical inerrancy, it is hard to deny that God is violent, evil, and merciless.

The only way to get around that is to accept that the Bible is a collection of books penned by many human authors and that it is not God breathed. That way you can read the Bible as literature, or as history. Just because there are wars and evils people committed and then attributed to God, it does not mean that God told them to do it. To cling to a false doctrine (Biblical inerrancy) will only cause Christians to make excuses for God -- to justify the instances of murder, slavery, rape, and genocide (and thus accepting such evil as okay as long as God wills it) -- or it requires Christians to just ignore the passages altogether as "holy mysteries."

[cnorman18]

Another way of looking at this passage is simply to put in the context of the time. In the ancient world, raiding and warfare against neighboring villages or tribes was a pretty common way to obtain a wife; it was the practice throughout the ancient world. Probably a good thing in the long run, since it prevented inbreeding among the relatively small tribes and communities of the day. At any rate, in the Bronze Age and before, women were universally regarded as property; mere livestock, with no rights of their own whatever.

The Hebrew Bible and early Jewish law were a radical departure from that. Here, we see consideration actually given to a woman's feelings; but it's not only different in that obvious way. Marriage may not have been optional for the woman -- it's hard to think of an ancient society where the decision of whom to marry was EVER left to the woman -- but at least in the case of women captured by the Hebrews, they weren't raped and discarded that day. Her captor was obliged to wait for a month, and in the meantime her attractiveness was minimized and she was to be left alone. It's worth noting, too, that for the Hebrews, women weren't discarded at all; if the man wanted her, he had to wait a month and then MARRY her -- and again, in Jewish law, that gave the woman certain rights which no other women of the ancient world had. That's all there in the book, too.

This is not at all the same thing as the practice of, say, the conquering armies of even modern times, wherein women were routinely raped and then casually murdered in the heat of battle or immediately thereafter -- or, worse, deliberately gang-raped as a matter of calculated policy, as a way to publicly shame and demoralize them and their people. Compared to, say, the practices of the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, these ancient practices of the Hebrews look positively civilized.

By today's standards, these laws are brutal and horrid; by the standards of the second millennium BCE, or even 20th-century Eastern Europe, they're practically an Equal Rights Amendment. Historical context comes first; any other perspective is anachronistic and unfair.

[Shermana]

What are you supposed to do with all the virgins of your defeated enemy (who of course was going to let all your own virgins go free unmolested of course?) It would be cruel to NOT marry them into your tribe. Where were they going to go?

[yourfriendrick]

Another Christian's perspective is that these passages along with all others found in the Bible were penned by men -- men who often attributed their victories, hopes, etc to God. I don't believe God ordered the above-said rape because again, "God-Breathed inerrant, infallibility" of the Bible is totally and completely irreconcilable with the idea that "God is loving and just."

I think that is pretty close to what I was driving at with paragraph 4:

Still another perspective might be that while Christian scripture is perfect, Old Testament Scripture was written down incorrectly, because the Old Testament had scribes who were inferior to the scribes of the New Testament. Thus any rapes that might have resulted were the fault of the scribes, not of God's perfect commandments. Indeed, the incarnation of Jesus might have been appropriate precisely because human interpreters of God's will tended to make this sort of mistake.

Except with your variation, I think you're saying that both Old Testament and New Testament scribes were mere mortals.

[yourfriendrick]

in the Bronze Age and before, women were universally regarded as property; mere livestock, with no rights of their own whatever.

That is a very surprising claim. Is that claim accepted scholarly opinion? If so, where are the peer-reviewed journals and textbooks that will provide authority for that claim?

Compared to, say, the practices of the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, these ancient practices of the Hebrews look positively civilized.

That allegation in particular goes beyond the bounds of the present forum. If we want to make claims about the practices of various modern political groups, it's a non-Scriptural issue.

What are you supposed to do with all the virgins of your defeated enemy? ... Where were they going to go?

If the Scripture had not made a call for total warfare, the killing of small boys, etc., an isolated population of virgins would not be an issue. The virgins were only an issue because the Scripture demanded unusually stern methods in war. Hypothetically, one could make a case from secular histories of the Bronze Age that women in other Bronze Age conflicts were treated more humanely, but such a historical case would need to rest on historical authorities that would be acceptable within this forum.

In other words, it would be wasteful to construct a historical case based on an arbitrarily selected set of books, only to find that this forum denies all cases founded on those references without examination.

[JehovahsWitness]

Here are two passages which (after a bit of study and cross-checking) appear to be talking about the use of rape as a weapon of war.

Since I see no topic for debate I am going to present my interpretation of the scriptures presented and argue they to not sanction rape of war captives.

Were Hebrew soldiers given permission to rape their captives?

Many people presume that by telling the soldiers to spare the young girls that permission was being given to sexually abuse them or keep them as sex slaves. However this is a PRESUMPTION and one not based on what we know about the Hebrew system. The scriptures often sited never even mention the word "rape" or "sex" (heb yada). The Hebrew law had a very strict moral code that protected SLAVES and CAPTIVES as well as natives. The Law stated having sex with a woman, even if she was a slave, would not go unpunished.

"If a man sleeps with a female slave who is promised to another man but who has not been ransomed or released, there must be due punishment" (Leviticus 19:20)

Thus sex outside of marriage was never sanctioned and if a master wanted to have sex with his slavegirl then the law stipulated he had to marry her first (automatically making her a free Citizen and giving her the same rights as any Jewish wife) See Deut 21:1. If the man later wished to divorce, the woman was free and not to be treated as "merchandise" (ibid KJV)

Further if we are to automatically presume that sparing or taking or "enjoying the spoils" of war equates with permission to have sex are we also to presume sparing the animals meant waving the Hebrew law against bestiality? There was no temple prostitution in the hebrew system, no sex worship and virginity was highly valued, Clearly, the permission to keep the young girls was to have as slaves and later if they so chose take as wives. Suggestions that the Law allowed for the keeping of sex slaves is unfounded supposition.


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In the light of the above I would suggest that the "request" for a Christian prerspective of the biblical authorization of rape of war victims presupposes a fallacy and the point is therefore moot.





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WOMEN, SLAVERY and ...WAR CAPTIVES

[cnorman18]

in the Bronze Age and before, women were universally regarded as property; mere livestock, with no rights of their own whatever.

That is a very surprising claim. Is that claim accepted scholarly opinion? If so, where are the peer-reviewed journals and textbooks that will provide authority for that claim?

Okay, I admit that I overstated the case; but the rights and freedoms of women in the ancient world were certainly not comparable to the rights and freedoms of men. Arranged marriages were the norm, as they still are in some parts of the world, and it is a fact (cf. the Hammurabic Code) that the most important part of the marriage contract was the purchase price of the bride. In any case, as with your next objection, my central point remains.

Compared to, say, the practices of the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, these ancient practices of the Hebrews look positively civilized.

That allegation in particular goes beyond the bounds of the present forum. If we want to make claims about the practices of various modern political groups, it's a non-Scriptural issue.

Sorry, this forum addresses questions of secular and modern history rather regularly. The reference to the Balkans was only an extended example, anyway; the main contention was that the Hebrews' laws were innovative and remarkably civilized for their time. Delete the example of the recent behavior of the Serbs and that point isn't affected.

If you want to limit the discussion here strictly to religious points of view and religious interpretations and applications, that's OK with me, but in that case I have nothing more to say. I thought we were talking about the place of these practices and guidelines in actual history.

[cnorman18]

What are you supposed to do with all the virgins of your defeated enemy (who of course was going to let all your own virgins go free unmolested of course?) It would be cruel to NOT marry them into your tribe. Where were they going to go?

That would only be a problem in the case of total massacres. In the case of ordinary battle or warfare, the women would stay with their own people, and judging from the guidelines given here, without being raped or otherwise molested. Beyond that I can't say; any guesses would be just that, guesses. I don't think it would be proper to blithely assume that callous cruelty would apply as a matter of course, though. If that were the case, rape and murder wouldn't have been prohibited in the passages we're discussing.

[Filthy Tugboat]

What are you supposed to do with all the virgins of your defeated enemy (who of course was going to let all your own virgins go free unmolested of course?) It would be cruel to NOT marry them into your tribe. Where were they going to go?

You could leave the virgins with the remaining members of their tribe, there should be no obligation to slaughter absolutely everyone. They should leave the non combatant men alive too, and the women who are not virgins and the sick and the elderly. Why were they asked to be so bloodthirsty and cruel?

"Kill everyone but the virgins and children then force those children and virgins to live with and work for you while you know that they know you are the ones that killed their family. Just to top it off you can pick whichever slave you want to marry and they have no say in the matter. For as long as you wish, you can subject this victim to staring into the eyes of the man that may have killed her entire family. To add to that, whenever you decide you don't want this wife anymore you can simply leave them, they are given citizen status but are left to fend for themselves."

Does that sound reasonable to you? I hope not. I mean honestly that is more heinous than most rapes that we have today. The only one I can think of that would compare would be the Austrian man who raped his daughter for almost 30 years.

On a side note, I noticed that you included a comparative statement as to how the army that the Israelites defeated would not have let the Israelites virgins go free if the situation was reversed. Does this make rape, torture and genocide OK? If it doesn't why did you include that statement in your post? In fact from the tone of this comment it almost sounds like you objectify the virgins in the same manner that the Israelites and the army/leadership that the Israelites defeated did. They treat the virgins as an object that would be included in the 'spoils of war'.