In this Q&A, I explain Deuteronomy 22:28-29. The enemy loves to use this verse as means to prove God is an evil, unloving God; however, those touting this have been misled. This law was made to protect women, not harm them.
People who are not filled with the Holy Spirit, but are filled with the spirit of the antichrist will say YHWH is an evil God because He allows women to be raped for just 50 shekels, per His own law.
No, you don’t get to rape women for the price of 50 shekels and that’s okay with YHWH. That’s just ridiculous. Let’s dig in.
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Herein lies the problem:
- Unless you have the Holy Spirit, you don’t have the wisdom and understanding to know what is happening in this verse.
- Without wisdom and understanding from The Holy Spirit through repentance and belief, you will never read the passage correctly.
1 John 2:27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 9:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.
Proverbs 14:6 A scorner seeketh wisdom, and findeth it not: but knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth.
Just a quick side note: We, as humans, are body, mind, soul, and spirit. You either have The Holy Spirit abiding in you or something else… the spirit of the antichrist.
Jesus said in Matthew 12:30 He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.
Here is the verse in question repeatedly brought up by those possessing an antichrist spirit:
Deuteronomy 22:28-29
28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
First off, it’s clear this is consensual sex. The man has sex with a virgin. She is not betrothed to be married. They were caught together, unmarried, having sex. They were found. It is clear, due to the lack of “crying out” language used in the previous passage.
In the previous passage, Deuteronomy 22:25, we read:
In Deuteronomy 22:25 we read:
25 But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. 26 But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, 27 because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.
Two things here to note from Deuteronomy 22:25:
1. The woman cried out for help. No one heard her because she was out in the open country. She did nothing wrong.
2. The man is punished to death. It’s murder for murder basically because the woman is now defiled.
The world was not the same then as it is now. The odds were great that no man would want to marry this woman, now that she is not a virgin and is defiled. During this time in history, women were dependent on men entirely. Not having a husband subjected a woman to death. Having no one to care for her, she would be desolate and starve. In a situation where the woman is now deflowered, her father would have to agree to care for her for the rest of her life and that would be a huge burden on the family. The passage explains exactly that when it reads, “For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor.” So, it’s clear that in Deuteronomy 22:25 we have a rape, which was equal to murder, during that time period.
In the passage in question, Deuteronomy 22:28-29, we see no crying out. The man and woman were engaged in consensual sex before marriage. Since the man took her virginity before marriage, no man would want her after that, and again, we would have the murder scenario since the woman would have no one to care for her. Therefore, the man is to pay the future father-in-law the wages for the woman, which was customary in the day, and marry her, so she is taken care of all the days of her life. In this case, they probably already want to marry each other. They just got caught messing around before they tied the knot.
If they weren’t planning on marrying, they could have been enjoying a one-day-roll-in-the-hay, so to speak – our modern day “One Night Stand”. In this case, the sex was mutual, but there may not have been plans to be married in the future. If that is the case, because it is now public knowledge that the woman is now deflowered, the man must marry her. Remember shot gun weddings from our wild west days? Again, in this situation also, no other man will likely marry her now and the father most likely cannot support her all her life. If the man didn’t marry her, the woman would be subject to desolation, despair, starvation, and death. It’s a murder, death sentence.
In either case, the man must still pay a bride price for his bride to the father-in-law. No other man is going to want her now and her father won’t get a good bride price for her. The bride price was customary during that time period and represented payment for losing a helping hand around the estate and a symbol of the man’s financial ability to care for the woman. A father would obviously get a higher bridewealth payment for his daughter by a suitor based upon her beauty and virginity. Therefore, a man deflowering a woman must pay at least the standard bride price for his bride to her father (50 Shekels), which would be fair and was customary during the time period.
These laws were put in place to protect women from starvation and death due to the customs of the culture in that day and time.