Saturday, April 26, 2025

Widows, Female Virginity, And Biblical Egalitarianism

Introduced in the Torah and then acknowledged in the New Testament, there is the distinct obligation for spouses to not sexually neglect or deprive each other (Exodus 21:10-11, 1 Corinthians 7:2-5).  As a consequence, any marriage where husbands and wives act in alignment with their Biblical obligations, short of physical or mental health complications, would not be utterly devoid of sex as long as sex is desired.  If both spouses are indeed content without sex due to well-communicated asexuality, living accordingly could not be neglect in the fullest sense.  A widow or widower could not otherwise have been married for a lengthy duration before mistreating their partner through deprivation.  Most widows as well as widowers would nonetheless probably not be virgins, a likely thing independent of adherence to Biblical ethics or lack thereof!

For women as well as men, circumstances where it is not sinful for to lose virginity ahead of a marriage--or to marry someone other than the person one lost one's virginity with--include certain cases of premarital sex (Exodus 22:16-17), any instance of rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27), remarriage following the death of a partner, and remarriage after a morally legitimate divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1-4; see also Exodus 21:10-11, 26-27, and Deuteronomy 21:10-14 for other relevant verses from Mosaic Law).  Obviously, women, like men, do not have to be virgins before marriage, though casual sex is sinful for men and women alike.  Some people do not realize that each of these facts is incompatible with their asinine notion that on Christianity, female virgins are more worthy or worthwhile as spouses than other women, or that virginity is required of women prior to marriage (or of women and men).

Throughout the supposedly misogynistic Torah laws (though the misinterpreting party often has no problem with what would if consistent with their fallacious interpretations be misandrist passages), care for widows is prescribed.  Sometimes the command is universal in its obligatory nature (Exodus 22:22-24), and other times it pertains to the distribution of tithes in the Promised Land, a context-dependent but still objective obligation.  I will mention the individual verses in the following paragraph.  Obviously, however, though this logically necessary ramification is not articulated in the text, if widows should be cared for and protected from all the same forms of mistreatment as anyone else, then this is another proof that women who are not virgins are not Biblically regarded as subhuman or secondary in importance.

Exodus 22:22-24 says to not take advantage of widows, such as by violating the commands of Exodus 21:20-32, each verse of which explicitly pertains to unjust violence against women--but in a manner that emphasizes that men do not deserve any less consideration as victims of the same acts.  There is no male or female privilege prescribed or tolerated here.  All of the same human rights all people possess are those of widows; it is that overlooking or exploiting them because of their vulnerable status is expressly condemned.  Deuteronomy 14:28-29, 24:17-22, 26:12-13 all prescribe varying degrees of care or generosity towards widows alongside other groups like foreigners.  As if they would in any way be excluded otherwise, Deuteronomy 16:9-15 reinforces that widows are to be included along with male and female slaves/servants, sons and daughters, foreigners, and Levites in annual celebrations before God like the Festival of Weeks.

The explicit, repeated emphasis on protecting and assisting widows would contradict any worldview that conflates female virginity with a woman's value as a person.  After all, if a non-virgin woman is lesser than a female virgin (men are virgins too until they have sex!), then the righteous thing to do could only be to disregard women who are not virgins!  This is logically erroneous for its hypocritical sexism, if it only applied to women, and it is simply not what the Bible teaches anywhere.  So much of the Bible outright excludes this notion as it is.  A woman's value as a person is the same as a man's on Judeo-Christianity, derived from being made in the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2).

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