Why does the bible require a rape victim to marry her rapist? Stay tuned and find out on Unapologetic.

If you ever hear about the bible and it's stance on rape, you'll probably hear about it from an atheist. This is one of the arguments that they will generally tout out against the Bible, and God, and Christianity, to show that Christianity is immoral because the bible condones and seems to even endorse rape, “it requires a rape victim to marry her rapist, right?” Actually, no.

You probably guessed that was going to be the answer, and that is the answer but we really need to cover why that is the answer. This objection comes from a superficial reading of some Old Testament passages. We're going to look at a few different Old Testament passages that talk about rape and sex outside of marriage. The first that we're going to look at is Exodus 22:16-17, which says,

“If a man seduces [patah] a virgin who is not engaged, and lies with her, he must pay a dowry for her to be his wife. If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the dowry for virgins.”

Now, this word seduces, it's the Hebrew word “patah", I'm not a Hebrew scholar, I'm relying on the work that other notable people who are experts in their field have done in this area. “patah" is not the strongest word that could be used here as we will see.

What we do see is this man seduced this woman who was a virgin, and was not engaged. Now, unless the father absolutely refuses, they're going to have to marry each other. That's one passage that we're going to look at. Why would this be the case? Well, a non-virgin is going to have a very hard time in that society getting married in the future. What's also noteworthy is he could not divorce her - the man that seduced this woman - he could not divorce her after they got married. Which is contrary to the fact that generally divorce could happen in that culture though it was not looked favorably upon and certainly not God's design, but he was paying for his crime. You might say, "He seduced her, why does she have to stay with him for the rest of her life?" Well, it's not an ideal system, that is for sure. However, this at least provides for her physical security, she's going to be married, she's not going to be on her own; it's going to provide for her financial security which she would also not have necessarily, if she were on her own.

It's making the best of a not great situation, but it's not rape. The word there is not as strong as the word might be for “forces”, when the word that's used is “seduces”. Let's look at another passage, Deuteronomy, chapter 22,

“If there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man, and another man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death; the girl, because she did not cry out in the city [i.e., where her screams could be heard], and the man, because he has violated his neighbor’s wife. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.”

This is not rape, that's not what's being described here, this is adultery that's being described, sex outside of marriage.

You'll see that no-one is having to marry someone else in this case, because they're both going to be dead at the end of the story. Adultery was a capital crime. It warranted the death penalty in the Israel theocracy. You might say “well, how do you know that this was consensual?” The passage says she didn't cry out. "Oh, so she has to cry out in order for it to be consensual?" No, it does reason that a woman might not cry out if she's being raped. However, this was a standard in place that tried to do the best it could in a day where there weren't security cameras, and cellphone cameras, and DNA…