Rape in the (Written) Torah

As part of my ongoing series of articles covering the subject of morality - or rather immorality - in the Written Torah and Tanakh (otherwise known as the 'Jewish Bible') it is important to cover to the subject of rape. This is so given that although rape is a common enough occurrence: it is relatively rare for theological sanction to be given to it in religious literature outside of the long-standing debate as to whether a husband can rape his wife and vice versa.

This is however - as we shall we see - different in the (Written) Torah, which we should remind ourselves is the principle text from which all of jewish religious law (i.e., halakha) derives.

The first mention the Torah makes of rape comes in the book of Exodus where we are told as follows:

'When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt faithlessly with her. If he designates her for his son he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights.' (1)

In the above passage that is ostensibly dealing with the issue of the sale of a daughter into slavery we can see that it is assumes a priori in the negotiation that the daughter of the jew concerned will necessarily be taken to bed by her jewish owner. That is, of course, rape as the jewish owner is forcing his attentions on someone who has no choice whether to consent or not: thus removing her ability to consent making the sexual attentions of the jewish owner rape.

We can see the a priori assumption of sexual intercourse occurring in two parts of the passage in particular. These are 'he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people' and 'if he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights.'

The first of these is an admonition that the jewish owner may not sell a female jewish slave to a non-jew. The only possible reason for this attitude is in relation to the endogamous and exclusive nature of the way that Israel is conceived of in the Torah. In other words if the jewish owner sells his slave to a non-jew then the non-jew - it is assumed - will sleep with her and possibly have children with her meaning that the bloodline of Israel (i.e., the jews) is debased by an infusion of non-jewish ancestry (thus this must not be allowed to happen).

The second is a fairly bald statement that as an enslaved concubine the jewess who has been bought as a slave from her father shall not suffer materially or in position when and if her jewish owner marries again.

We can thus see this statement from the book of Exodus as being as a fairly blunt endorsement of both the concept of sexual slavery and of right of the jewish owner to rape jewish (as well as presumably non-jewish) slaves. We should also once again note that the jewish female slave who is forced to be a piece of sexual chattel for her jewish master is subject to some protection in the Torah in spite of the exploitation inherent in her situation.

There is no protection for non-jewish women who the Torah makes quite clear are not worthy of being anything else but concubines for male jews. This shown in the book of Numbers when we find the following passage:

'Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live?” Behold these caused the sons of Israel, by the counsel of Balaam, to act treacherously against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.' (2)

This admonition is confirmed in the book of Deuteronomy when are informed that:

'When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer is to you peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labour for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you.' (3)

In both of the above passages we can see that Yahweh explicitly tells the Israelites that they should kill the men of any city that they sack and then take the women to be their sex slaves. There is no room for interpretation around that as the passages are both explicit and blunt. However there is a slight qualification when Moses states that the Israelites should kill any women who are not virgins and leave alive those who are.

This - given the early age that girls became sexually active in society during Moses' time - suggests that Moses is here not only advocating the wholesale rape of captured non-jewish women, but also that the Israelites engage in paederasty (i.e., sex with under-age children). Moses' paedophilia is a subject for another article, but the fact that is a necessary consequence of what the Torah says is in itself rather disturbing to say the least.

The only potential qualification to the advocating of mass rape of non-jewish women in the Torah is also found in the book of Deuteronomy when are told that:

'When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hands, and you take them captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have desire for her and would take her for yourself as a wife, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails. And she shall put off her captive's garb, and shall remain in your house and bewail her father and mother a full month; after that you may go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. Then, if you have no delight in her, you shall let her go where she will; but you shall not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.' (4)

Now on the face of it some might argue that this passage mitigates the harshness of the previous two: however this would not be correct for the simple reason that such an interpretation necessarily ignores the conditional element within the passage and also the harsh undertone it presents.

We can see that this passage is not nearly as nice as it might appear upon initially reading it by noting the first conditional clause. In that this clause is only invoked if an Israelite finds a specific non-jewish captive from a town (who must - as the previous passages tell us - be a virgin) very attractive and wants to make her his wife.

It is important to note that last bit again: if he wants to make her his wife.

That is the kicker to a universal interpretation of this passage as this conditional element means that the additional rules are only invoked when a jew wants to marry a non-jewish captive (she predictably has no say in the matter): not when he wants to use her as an enslaved concubine or simply rape her there and then.

We should also note in relation to this that when a jew decides that the 'beautiful non-jewish woman' he has married is no longer someone he wants to cohabit with: then he can simply evict her from his house and property. All he may not do is sell her for money or use her as a slave (as he has married her): he can just simply kick her out to die from starvation in the street (as there is no requirement that he provide her the means to live and her relatives are already dead so she cannot return to her father's house [which is assumed to have broken her will hence the comment about her 'humiliation']).

The other harshness within the passage is contained within the fact that the jew who has decided that he will force this enslaved non-jewish woman to marry him: is required to force her to shave her head and then cut her finger nails as short as possible for a whole month. During that time the passage implies that the non-jewish woman should be forced to stay inside of her new husband's house and mourn for her parents: after that period is up then her jewish rapist-to-be may do what he wilt with her.

Thus we can see that this passage from Deuteronomy is not in any way a mollification of the other harsher passages in the Torah advocating the systematic rape of non-jewish women, but rather is a ruling for a specific (and presumably unusual) situation, which even then is virulently anti-gentile in its content.

At this juncture some might counter that these passages do not advocate rape, because the jews did not conceive of the taking of a woman by force as being morally wrong. However this would be incorrect as the Torah also contains specific rulings about the subject of rape, which illustrate that to jews the key to their laws on rape was whether the raped woman was jewish or non-jewish, if jewish what her social class was and if free then if she was betrothed/married or not.

This can be see in another passage from the book of Deuteronomy where it is related that:

'If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out of the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbour's wife; so you shall purge the evil from midst of you.

But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. But to the young woman you shall do nothing; in the young woman there is no offence punishable by death, for this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbour; because he came upon her in open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.

If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her; he may not put her away all his days.' (5)

In the above text we can see a fairly well-codified idea of what rape entails and in what specific instances it may occur. We can also see that the rape of jewish women who were not slaves of jewish masters was most emphatically not permitted by the Torah and is judged harshly by the use of death sentences by stoning. However when the jewess is a virgin and not betrothed then being found in copulation with a man (be it forced or otherwise) we are told that the man is forced to marry her without possibility of divorce, which is rather lighter sentence.

This in itself deserves a short comment in that it relates to the essentially misogynistic view of women that is held by Judaism. This is because Judaism essentially views a jewish woman as a lesser being than the jewish man and that as such the jewish woman has little right to control her own destiny and merely serves as part of her male owner's possessions. This is why the rape of jewish women by jewish men is only harshly condemned by the Torah when that woman is betrothed and thus - as the passage explicitly tells us - is the property of another jewish man who the jewish rapist has now stolen.

We should pointedly remark that this outright and rather outrageous Judaic misogyny is likely the root cause of why so many feminist ideologues have been jewish women. In so far as - like how Sigmund Freud created psychoanalysis as an inversion of Hasidic spirituality and fear of bodily fluids - they were simply rebelling and fighting against the extremely misogynistic attitudes that are central to Judaism, which they then assumed - as Freud did - were universal (since jews as the 'chosen people' must be - in their own cultural mores - be representative of the non-chosen people in their thinking in order to be able to lead them to betterment) as opposed to largely restricted to jews.

This attitude of condemnation however is completely alien to the rape of non-jewish women however and not once is this condemned by the Torah and indeed - as we have seen - is actually advocated be it as being part of the gifts of Yahweh to his chosen people. Essentially when jews conquer then non-jewesses are to be regarded as objects for their sexual gratification and nothing more.

References

(1) Exod. 21:7-10 (RSV)

(2) Num. 31:15-18 (RSV)

(3) Deut. 20:10-14 (RSV)

(4) Ibid. 21:10-14 (RSV)

(5) Ibid. 22:23-29 (RSV)