“How could you kill your wife because you discover she wasn’t a virgin when you married her? That’s barbaric yet it’s what God commands! This God is evil and has no place in a society that values love and compassion.” But is this the society to which the commandment pertains?
then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel, to play the harlot in her father’s house. So you shall put away the evil from among you.
DEUTERONOMY 22:21
All of humanity had a nature that was separate from God, separate from the source of all goodness and life and many were living according to their own ways. They didn’t believe in Him and as such, sought supreme authority for themselves. Abuses of power would result in violence and oppression as men lusted after women and women seduced and manipulated men for their own purposes. God however would use their destructive ways to destroy the evil that was destroying them.
God had brought a people whom He called His people out of a land of bondage and hard servitude to a land that He was going to give them. Having seen His power and authority over those who held them however, most of His people didn’t believe in Him. They still wanted to live according to their own ways yet were proclaiming Him as their God so He taught them His ways to keep them in the good way that they may know Him.
How they would relate with one another on a personal level would serve to illustrate the way in which He related with them, that He was a God of love and compassion, a God of devotion, commitment and singularity of heart toward His people. As the one considered responsible for his household therefore, the father was to love and care for his children and teach them God’s ways and as a result, his children would love and trust him. The children would then leave their father’s house to marry, to enter into a covenant bond of love and commitment where man and woman would come together and the two would become one, devoted to one another with singularity of heart out of which children would be born. Intimate relationship was not to be used as an avenue for abuse and manipulation as that would compromise value and trust and in doing so, undermine who God was and who they were as His people.
After spending forty years in the wilderness, God’s people were about to enter the land He had promised to give them. There were people already in the land however who didn’t know God and were living according to their own ways so given the tendency for His people to go after those ways and those among them who rejected Him and sought to draw the people away from Him, Moses their leader gave them instruction: When a young woman just married was found not to be a virgin, the men of the city were to stone her to death at the entrance to her father’s house to remove the evil from among them.
For the practice of the nations around them of women enticing men for their own purposes would serve as an attractive prospect, the young woman among God’s people secretly using the influence her desirability had, then proclaiming she was a virgin when she married. After being exposed however, this would incite shame, jealousy and betrayal as she was still in her father’s house and recipient of his love, care and teaching about God yet had become one with men she didn’t care about and wasn’t committed to. As a result, the men were to destroy her and her ways rather than embrace them and in doing so, remove the shame, jealousy and betrayal caused.
It wasn’t because the young woman was not a virgin when she married that she was killed, rather she rejected God whilst under the guise of being His people and abused and manipulated those closest to her to draw them away from Him to herself and her own ways. For women from other nations who had been with many men would join God’s people, marry and have children. Their husbands knew they weren’t virgins when they married them but they had chosen God to be their God, His ways as their ways and committed themselves to one man with devotion and singularity of heart.
Then God came Himself. The fullness of the revelation of who He was would now be realised as everyone would see the all powerful, almighty God use His power to comfort, heal and save. As a man they would behold His commitment and singularity of heart in taking the abuse of the world upon Himself so that through His death, resurrection and ascension back to heaven He would make the way for all to join Him in a covenant bond of love and peace. The influence evil had through separation from Him would now be destroyed as all could come to Him and know Him personally in a way that was not possible before, where those who receive Him enter His house, a place where His devotion and commitment protect and nurture, where the need to destroy is replaced by a secure confidence to trust and believe in the power and authority of a compassionate and loving God.