Misunderstanding The Bible On Rape

Unfortunately, there are great misunderstandings about what the Bible says about rape both inside and outside of the church.  According to some, the Bible does not condemn all rape outright, as, according to them, Deuteronomy 22:25-27 only condemns and prescribes execution for the rape of a woman engaged to someone else.  Some might even assert that the Bible teaches that rape of an engaged woman is wrong because it is an offense of theft against the future husband.  Even more ludicrous, some make the further claim that Deuteronomy 22:28-29 seems to instruct an unmarried, unengaged woman to marry a man who rapes her.  What . . . the . . . fuck?

These beliefs, which greatly deviate from what the Bible actually says about the matter, ignore or trivialize male victims of rape, have absolutely nothing to say about marital rape, and treat rape of an engaged or married person as if the reason it is wrong is because extramarital sex has occurred.  I will work backwards in refuting these myths, starting with the atrocious idea that the Bible tells unmarried virgin women who are raped to marry their rapists.

Heinously mistranslated in some English Bibles, Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is a parallel passage to Exodus 22:16-17; that some laws from Exodus are repeated in Deuteronomy is not surprising, considering that Deuteronomy means "second law."  Deuteronomy certainly introduces new issues and legislation, such as the passage on rape (22:25-27), the very topic of this article, though one can find some identical legislation in earlier parts of the Torah.

In Exodus 22:16-17, unmarried, unengaged men and women are permitted to sleep together if they get married afterward.  No, premarital sex is not intrinsically sinful according to the Bible.  Noncommittal and nonconsensual sex are condemned by the Bible, as are acts like adultery, bestiality, incest, and homosexual behaviors.  Exodus 22:16-17 plainly deals with consensual premarital sex.  Likewise, so does Deuteronomy 22:28-29, although verse 28 has sometimes been mistranslated.  The Hebrew word for forced sex is not present.  The Bible never instructs anyone to marry his or her rapist.  Indeed, the only Biblical response to rape is to condemn it and execute the rapist in accordance with Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 22:26-27 already condemns and attaches the death penalty to all rape, since it directly says that rape is like murder (22:26): all murder is evil and deserves the death penalty (Exodus 22:12).  Rape, like murder, is evil not because it "steals" from someone besides the victim, although sometimes it can cause great mental anguish friends or family members of the victim.  It is evil because it forces an unwilling participant into a sex act (not that consent alone makes a sex act morally permissible).  The reason that Deuteronomy 22:25-27 provides a case law about a man raping a betrothed woman in the countryside is because the preceding context gives multiple examples of how to handle sexual sins involving a married/engaged woman, starting with consensual adultery (Deuteronomy 22:22), moving onward to consensual sex between a man and a separately engaged woman (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), with the passage then describing a case of rape of an engaged woman.  This is why verse 25 is so precise.

The precision of verse 25 is obviously not because only the rape of an engaged or married woman is wrong, or because a separate punishment is reserved for other cases of rape.  The primary points of Deuteronomy 22:25-27 are that all rape is evil because rape abuses its victims and that a person who is forced into an otherwise sinful sex act has not sinned.  If someone has had adultery, incest, or a homosexual act forced upon them, that person is not guilty of committing a sin (22:26).  These are the things Deuteronomy 22:25-27 communicates.

As for the application of case laws, I want to point out how asinine it would be to mistake the fact that case laws deal with specific situations for confirmation that the act in question is not equally sinful in other situations.  For instance, Exodus 21:18-19 details Yahweh's command about how to legally handle a situation where one man strikes another with a stone, not in self-defense, with an illness of the victim resulting.  The assigned penalty is financial restitution to the victim.  This case law has nothing to do with the gender or marital status of the aggressor or victim, as it is about the sinfulness of a physically abusive behavior, and thus the aforementioned kind of assault is sinful irrespective of whether the perpetrator or recipient is a man or woman, married or unmarried.  All people have the same base metaphysical value and core human rights by simply being a person (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2), and someone's genitalia does not render them incapable of carrying out this act.

Is it not sinful or a Biblically punishable offense for a man to assault or murder a woman?  For a woman to assault or murder a man?  For a woman to assault or murder a woman?  Absolutely not!  All infliction of physical harm and killing are sinful outside of specific, Biblically-defined contexts of justice.  Case laws in the Torah illustrate examples of particular criminal sins.  To conclude that because Exodus 21:18-19, at least in some translations, refers to a man assaulting a man, it must not be sinful or to assault a woman in the same way is to descend into immense stupidity.  The same is true of the understanding of rape this article is refuting.  All rapists deserves death according to Deuteronomy.

Why the fuck would someone, atheist, Christian, or otherwise, believe these myths about what the Bible says concerning rape?  Perhaps a lack of textual education or a lack of intelligence in interpretation would play a role.  Maybe both simultaneously.  The immorality of raping a woman has nothing to do with offending, humiliating, or "stealing" from a husband, and vice versa.  Rape is intrinsically sinful--and prescribed execution--wherever it appears and regardless of who is the victim.  Whether it occurs in a countryside, a marriage, or a prison, the Bible demands the death of the rapist.  This requirement does not vanish when the victim is unmarried, unengaged, a man, or the spouse of the rapist (see 1 Corinthians 7:3-5).  It is a universal demand.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful when it comes to understanding the Bible.