Sexual Ethics and the Old Testament

Several Old Testament passages pose ethical challenges. For example, Israelite warriors were permitted to take captured women as wives (Deut 21:10–14), with the female captive permitted one month to mourn the death of her parents. The law also demanded that the captive could not be sold into slavery if her captor was displeased with her after consummating the marriage (Deut 21:13). The Old Testament also uses patriarchal language in which female members of a family are understood as possessions, as evidenced by the father’s right to sell his daughter into slavery (Exod 21:7; Num 30:1–16 and Lev 12:4–5 also present patriarchal biases). Furthermore, a man who rapes a young woman must, if she was not betrothed, marry her (Deut 22:28–29).

The sexually violent imagery by which Nahum denounces Nineveh raises questions of prophetic propriety and whether the use of such metaphorical imagery could contribute to tolerance of sexual abuse. He depicts Nineveh as a prostitute whose nakedness Yahweh exposes and pelts with “filth” (שִׁקּוּץ, shiqquts; Nah 3:5–6). Some see a distinctly masculine bias in laws such as the trial by water described in Num 5:11–31 (see Ellens, Numbers 5.11–31, 55–82).

Sexual mores, legal codes, and social structures were pervasively androcentric in the ancient world. Proverbs, for instance, while insisting on sexual purity, focuses its teaching on Israel’s male progeny, identified as “my son” (25 instances in Proverbs). However, biblical law does provide some protections for the disenfranchised and the most vulnerable of society, including women. For example:

• The law bases its call to be merciful toward strangers, widows, orphans, and the poor on God’s merciful rescue of Israel from Egypt when they were enslaved (Exod 23:9; Lev 19:34; Deut 5:15; 10:19; 15:15; 24:18).

• The law upholds justice for every member of society as an essential component of civic and religious duty (Deut 27:19).

• Women and men were equally accountable to the imperatives and penalties of the law (see J. H. Ellens, Sex in the Bible, 86).

• The trial for adultery in Num 5:11–31 may serve to protect an innocent woman from a jealous husband (see Davidson, Flame, 245).