Yesterday I concluded “More on Biblical Marriage” by saying:

Deep Strength summarizes his position in “Agency and force with Deuteronomy 22 and Exodus 22.” At the end of the article, he gave this warning:

As this is an ideas blog, I will happily stick to making substantive points. I’m pretty sure my comments are unwelcome there, so I’ll respond here (and in more depth than is possible in a comment).

Let’s dive in.

Deep Strength makes the argument—correctly—that the discussion of female agency leads to potential pitfalls:

So what’s the problem? Deep Strength cites Artisanal Toad, but Artisanal Toad’s understanding of female agency was deeply flawed. It is true that Toad’s position did not work logically, as discussed here and here. The error that Artisanal Toad and Deep Strength have made is presuming that female agency is primarily in view in Deuteronomy 22, Numbers 30, and Exodus 22. The reality is that it is not. Thus, Deep Strength makes a bad conclusion:

When a Father decides whether or not his daughter (and her new husband) must divorce, it isn’t because she has no, partial, or full agency. Her level of agency isn’t relevant, just as her new husband’s agency isn’t relevant. Neither get any say in the matter. Even if her judgment had been fully agentic and completely error free, it would have changed nothing. The same is true of her vows.

This is especially important with the next point:

Whether a betrothed woman screams or not, whether she consented or not, whether she has agency or not, whether it is rape or not, has no bearing on whether or not a marriage took place. As a betrothed woman—already legally married to another man—the important detail is whether or not she is a willful party to adultery. The issue isn’t rape, it is adultery. That’s why the Law is concerned about her screaming or not: it wants to know if she committed adultery. After all, the man isn’t being put to death because he raped a woman, but because he committed adultery.

Similarly, the Law doesn’t distinguish between whether a non-betrothed virgin is raped (i.e. screams) or consented (i.e. remains silent), because it isn’t adultery in either case. It is marriage in any case. Discovery of the marriage is all that matters. And just like in Exodus 22:16-17, the man must pay a bride price to make her a free-wife instead of a concubine (servant-wife). That she is already a wife—married by the act of sexual relations—is the very premise of the Law.

Adultery is one of the key sins that reflect the condition of the heart and so requires “consent” (i.e. will) in order to commit. It is adultery, not rape, that is being condemned of the betrothed woman and her partner. The reason why death is mandated in Deuteronomy 22:25-27 (as opposed to the non-betrothed virgin in Deuteronomy 22:28-29 and Exodus 22:16-17) is because death ends the illicit adulterous marriage that had been created. The death of the husband ends it. The only question is whether she joins him in death.

By contrast, marriage—which isn’t a sin—does not require consent (i.e. an act of will): it just is what it is. Deuteronomy 22:28-29 (as in Exodus 22:16-17) condemns a man making a servant-wife concubine of a virgin, rather than “making an honest woman of her” which is why he has to pay a mandatory bride-price. You don’t pay a bride-price unless you are married! Moreover, treating it like a monetary fine for rape, rather than a bride-price, is an insult to the victim of the sexual assault.

In other words, adultery requires consent, marriage does not. The issue of rape is a red-herring. It is neither approving nor disapproving of rape. Rape is, at best, incidental—not essential—to the heart of this matter of Law. Rape is simply not the subject of this Law.

The marriage ideal is that of a husband and his sole free-wife. Polygamy and concubines (servant-wives) are not ideal.  Thus rape is, of course, completely out of the question. Even though all sexual relations creates a marriage, not all such marriages are good. Concubinage is bad, polygamy is bad, and adultery is bad. But these are not equivalent. Echoing the Law, Paul begrudgingly allows slavery (e.g. servant wives), forbids polygamy (specifically for Christian leaders), and utterly condemns adultery (e.g. prostitution).

The key error is presuming that the formation of marriage requires consent. Notice how this position requires speculative leaps of logic:

This argument is strained beyond reason.

Nowhere in scripture does a man have limited sexual agency compared to a woman. Joseph’s agency—in the purported gender-swapped role of the virgin woman—was not at issue. The issue was adultery and whether or not Joseph consented to and committed it. Potiphar’s wife had already committed adultery in her heart, but Joseph had not. Neither the agency of Potiphar’s wife nor Joseph was limited in any meaningful sense: both parties exercised full agency in their deeds! Nor was the fact that it was a seduction (vs. rape) relevant. Just as in Deuteronomy 22:28-29, the issue was adultery and a determination of the guilty and innocent parties.

In the case of sexual relations with an eligible virgin woman, the punishment for the man is a shotgun wedding: to “make an honest woman of her” by her mandatory elevation from servant-wife concubine to free-wife. Consent plays no explicit role (but, it is implicit in the nature of the restitution).

In the case of sexual relations with a non-eligible, married woman, the punishment is death. Consent plays a role in determining whether or not one or both parties committed adultery, as you don’t put someone to death (e.g. the betrothed woman who screamed; Joseph) if the action took place beyond their control. Adultery is a sin that requires affirmative consent. You can’t be raped into adultery (and a subsequent death sentence), regardless of your inherent level of agency: it must be chosen.

The one thing you can conclude for sure is that impaired consent is not in view. Consent is either irrelevant (in the case of the non-betrothed virgin woman or rape involving a married person) or full (in the case of consensual adultery). None of these passages involved limited agency of any participants.

As we discussed in the previous article, the words used are largely irrelevant with respect to agency. To wit:

The issue is the marital status (i.e. eligibility). Non-adulterous sex is marital sex. Adulterous sex is not. The former is concubinage absent a father’s consent and the payment of the marital bride-price. The latter—a violation of the 7th Commandment—requires death of any party that consented to it, where a determination of rape absolves the victim of being guilty of adultery.

I don’t require a detailed word study of ambiguous words to understand this rather simple precept—explainable in a single paragraph—that neatly ties together Genesis 2, Deuteronomy 22, Numbers 30, Exodus 22, the 7th Commandment, Potiphar’s wife and Joseph, and Paul’s teaching on marriage.

This conclusion is based on an illusion.

The Bible does not have a word or concept corresponding to the English word and concept for rape. For example, as Thinking noted, it is not possible for marital sex (in the sense meant by the Bible) to be rape (in the sense that we mean it in English).

In discussing these topics, we must clearly enunciate the differences without committing false equivalences. The Bible does not approve of rape (in the English sense) because it does not discuss rape (in the English sense). To take the Hebrew words (in the Hebrew sense) and equate them to English words (in the English sense) is fallacious.

In the Bible, a marriage takes place (or is maintained) whenever a man and a woman have sexual relations, whether or not it is rape, seduction, or freely chosen. That’s because sexual relations are, quite literally, the act of marriage. In particular, the moral judgment of the sexual act is orthogonal—independent of—the establishment of marriage. Asserting the latter is not an assertion of the former.

For example, if a woman is already married (whether betrothed, in a consummated union, or divorced while her husband still lives) then any man who chooses to have sexual relations with her is condemned to death, and if she chose to have sexual relations with him she is condemned to death.

Thus, on one hand, adultery establishes marriage while simultaneously being illicit and necessitating death. But, on the other hand, consummating a marriage after a proper ceremony between two virgins establishes a marriage while simultaneously being licit and necessitating a lifelong bond. The two variables—the act of marriage and the moral evaluation of sexual relations—are independent of each other.

This, rather plainly, does not rely on conflating different words (“chazaq = taphas = rape = marriage”), nor does it ignore contextual clues (“screaming versus discovery”), nor does it neglect agency (“throw away female agency under the guise of being under authority”). In fact, I made none of these arguments. I didn’t even mention being under authority, because it isn’t relevant to the discussion.

As I pointed out here and above, Exodus 22:16-17 is exactly that: a Hebrew shotgun marriage. The law presumes that a marriage took place between a man and his servant-wife concubine. The payment of the marital bride-price forces the man to declare his wife to be a free-wife. To use modern parlance, he has to “make an honest woman of her.” But this has nothing to do with sexual arousal and dominance, which, in the context of rape, is rather like victim blaming.

As also pointed out, it is not an annulment. It is a divorce. This was Artisanal Toad’s error, as I pointed out to him. The marriage really did take place, with or without the father’s consent. That Law makes absolutely no logical sense otherwise. As Shipley notes, “That a marriage took place during the seduction is the very premise of this law.”

And, again, it’s not about consent or agency. Except for determining whether adultery took place, the proposed solutions and punishments do not factor in consent at all, let alone distinguishing between compromised and non-compromised consent. On the question of consent to adultery, either she wanted it (i.e. committed adultery) or she didn’t (i.e. was raped). Either way, there was no compromise of her consent. Her consent—or lack thereof—is given full agentic weight.

It is true that the sex=marriage arguments don’t work logically, but only if you assume agency and consent are the primary topics under consideration. The reality is that the assertions of agency and consent are largely speculations and inferences, rather than what the texts in question actually say.

I would have to beg-the-question that the passage is about agency and consent in order to conclude that sex is not equal to marriage because the passage is about agency and consent. That’s plainly circular reasoning.

If we set aside the unfounded assumptions, the sex=marriage arguments do work logically. Most importantly, when one observes deductively that the passages inherently presuppose that a marriage takes place by the act of sexual relations…

…sex=marriage is the only explanation that works logically and deductively. Marital status—not agency or consent—is what is being discussed:

What turns the law (and the words chosen) is marital status, not whether or not it was rape. What makes it deductive reasoning, rather than an inductive inference, is because the difference in marital status is explicit, while the explanation given for the difference in the words selected is based on a (somewhat circular) inductive inference.

Occam’s Razor is typically applied in order to eliminate the conclusion that relies on the greatest number of fundamental assumptions in favor of the one with the least number of assumptions. Thus, I can summarize in a single paragraph…

…the deductive reasoning behind the teachings contained in Genesis 2, Deuteronomy 22, Numbers 30, Exodus 22, the 7th Commandment, Potiphar’s wife and Joseph, and Paul’s teaching on marriage, while Deep Strength’s explanation is long, detailed, complicated, and full of speculative inferences.

These speculative inferences include these notions:

None of these are denotations of those words. Moreover, none of those words even connote rape in the lexicons. As Thinking pointed out, some of these may have been translated as rape, but making an inferential conclusion about a word from a translation (which is itself a conclusion) is circular reasoning. Rape is, at best, a contextual inference, not a lexical conclusion.

Even setting aside the circular reasoning, Deep Strength has made multiple fundamental assumptions about rape, consent, deception, and compromise, none of which can be established deductively from a lexical word study.

A Note On Consent

I have glossed over a serious issue with Deep Strength’s use of consent. In English, consent carries a clear connotation of agreeing to be acted upon, rather than directly deciding to do something without respect to one’s relationship with another. But this understanding doesn’t fit into the passages being discussed.

The idea that sex must be consensual or else it is rape is a modern formulation. Such a frame, whether true or not, is alien to the text being examined. No ancient reader would have applied such a distinctly modern take onto the passages.

This is especially notable in the case of the man having sexual relations with the betrothed—married—woman. If she was guilty of adultery it is not because she consented to it—to another’s will—but because she chose it. It didn’t just happen to her. Thus, she shares in the death sentence. But, if she was not guilty of adultery, it was because she neither consented nor chose it.

One can, in theory, consent to being married or having sexual relations, but one cannot merely consent—grant permission or agreement—to sin. Sin doesn’t just happen by itself without a free choice. By making this about consent, Deep Strength is making it not about choice. In other words, by his framing he is the one limiting the woman’s agency (rather than the text itself). It is unsurprising, then, that he concludes that these passages limit a woman’s agency!

This is not some academic distinction. The focus on consent dramatically alters the meaning of the passage, even though the Bible never describes sinning in terms of consent.

The issue is adultery, not consent. If you think the issue is consent, you won’t understand why the punishment is death. More importantly, you won’t understand why the father doesn’t have a right to override the death sentence, to cancel her “vow” or decision to have sex as he can in other situations.

“Consent” does not explain why a father can cancel his young daughter’s vows (Numbers 30) and force her new husband be divorced from her even though she rashly, but freely, decided to have sex (Exodus 22), but have no right to override her death sentence even though she rashly, but freely, decided to have sex (Deuteronomy 22) and no right to override the actuality of her marriage as shown by the payment of the bride-price (Exodus 22).

For example, the only difference between a non-betrothed virgin woman choosing to have sex with a man and a betrothed woman choosing to have sex with another man is that, in the latter case, she is betrothed and explicitly going against her father’s wishes for who she is supposed to marry. But the whole point of Exodus 22 is that the father is able to “annul” the marriage because it goes against his wishes. So why can’t he “annul” the other marriage that goes against his wishes just because she is now betrothed? Where is his agency and right to consent for her? And, per Deuteronomy 22, why can’t her betrothed husband “annul” the marriage and take her anyway? Where is his agency and right to consent for his wife? Consent and agency do not explain the mandatory death sentence.

But none of this is a problem. It’s not a problem with the logical consistency of the Bible. That’s because in all these cases, the woman’s agency isn’t relevant to the discussion. Consent and agency are irrelevant.