Let me share a few practical thoughts that I take from the careful and painful study in how women were treated in ancient wars and how God implemented incremental, redemptive movement in the midst of ancient abuse and violence.
One question is at the forefront of a series like this. Based on what we have learned from the Bible and the Ancient Near East, how does God want us to handle challenging situations like Haiti, Ukraine and Israel/Gaza. In many ways our culture today is no better than that of the Ancient Near East. In spite of the advances made in the Geneva Conventions, war rape is still practiced today and, in the case of Hamas, it is even a subject of boast, a particular painful way to “even the score” with an enemy.
It is clear from the Scriptures that God does not approve of atrocities of war. He grieves the consequences of actions performed by His own people as well as their enemies. But the God of the Bible is realistic, even He can’t solve it all human injustice with a “snap of the fingers”. God’s actions in this world are constrained by the cosmic conflict. So if you are a person doing all they can to bring peace and reconciliation into this world, don’t blame yourself when things don’t seem improved. Even God does not get everything He wants. Many of our best efforts to make a difference in this world will not succeed and other efforts will result in only minimal success.
I think we can take two major lessons from the above studies. 1) When we do attempt to act redemptively, we are on the winning team, even when there is little visible improvement. God only asks us to do our level best, God will sort it all out in the End. The resolution of all the injustice in this world is not our responsibility. Something better is coming and God is the One who will see to it.
In the meantime, 2) There is something we can DO. Like God, we can work for incremental improvement. These small improvements may be disappointing to us, but they forecast that something better is coming. As an old Jewish proverb says, To save one person is as if you saved the whole world. Doing all that you can to implement change is God’s work. You are doing what God does, you are doing what God would do in your place.
The Bible often presents things that are less than ideal. Human hearts are hard. The Bible indicates that even God must be very patient with the human condition. When we mourn the situation, God mourns with us. When we work to make a difference, God works with us. When things don’t work out quite the way we had hoped, we can be patient, because God is also patient.
Tag Archives: Treatment of Women in War
Revisiting Deut 21:10-14
I apologize for the long gap in time since the last blog. I have been occupied with many things. But I am determined to increase the pace and also catch up with your comments and questions.
With the previous blogs in mind, let’s revisit Deuteronomy 21:10-14:
“When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, 11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, 12 and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. 13 And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.”
When viewed in light of today’s ethical standards, the instruction here seems ethically deficient. But it was not written to our day, it was written to a much earlier time, with horrendous standards for the treatment of women in the context of war. In light of ancient war practices, the guidance Israel received from God in this passage can be seen as a remarkably redemptive advance on ancient practices.
First of all, allowance is made for the captive woman to mourn her situation. She is separated from her home, her family and familiar associations. It is highly likely that her parents were killed and even possible that she was forced to witness that. The cutting of hair, trimming of nails, and change of clothing were drastic acts typical of intense mourning. Although she is a pagan, the divine guidance gives voice to the woman’s pain. William Webb imagines the captive woman saying to herself: “My world is torn apart, joy and beauty are removed from me.” The actions described are a visible expression of the woman’s inner sorrow.
The text requires a month-long waiting period before the Israelite soldier can marry her and engage in sexual intercourse. One week was the norm for mourning in the Ancient Near East. Allowance for a month was an act of compassion toward the captive woman. Given the post-battle trauma of the situation, a month is not enough, but it is a clear advance over ancient practices.
The text requires the soldier to engage in an Israelite marriage covenant before he can have sex with her. Obviously, this means that there is no allowance for battlefield rape, as practiced by most ancient cultures. Marriage would provide the captive woman protection and benefits within Israelite society, regardless of how the marriage turned out (Exod 21:10-11). And should things not go well, the soldier is not allowed to sell her as a slave. She is a free, Israelite woman now. Such consideration for the position and feelings of the woman in such a situation is amazing in its context.
On top of that, the text shows a serious concern for the captive woman’s honor. She is not just a piece of property, to be used as the Israelite soldier wishes. If the marriage doesn’t work out, both the sex and the divorce dishonor her (she is no longer a virgin). This passage, read in its larger, ancient context, shows that God was deeply disappointed at the poor treatment of women in the ancient world (laid out in graphic terms in previous blogs).
As noted in the work of William Webbs, Deuteronomy 21:10-14 portrays an incremental, redemptive ethic. God is leading them in the right direction, as fast as they are capable or willing to go. God’s goal, in directions like these, is better treatment of captive women. Does Deuteronomy 21 reflect God’s ideal? Absolutely not. God’s ultimate ethic is far higher than what is expressed here. But We catch a glimpse of God’s ultimate ethic in the way Jesus treated women in the four Gospels. I think of stories like the woman taken in adultery (John 8:3-11) and Mary of Bethany (John 12:1-8). See also the story in Luke 7:36-50. God is leading the human race toward His ultimate ethnic, one small step at a time.
Israel, guided by God, treated women differently
In the previous blog, we outlined the horrific way that women were treated in ancient wars. How does Deuteronomy 21:10-14 represent God’s incremental redemptive ethic in its historical context? While the Bible does not categorically state that Israel did not mistreat women after battle, there are a number of facts that make clear that Israel, guided by God, was very different than the ancient war practices summarized in the previous blog.
First of all, Israel’s warriors were not allowed to have sex with anyone during a campaign, not even with their spouses. Note the incident of David visiting the High Priest at the sanctuary while on a military mission. 1 Sam 21:2-5: “And David said to Ahimelech the priest, ‘The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, “Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.” I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.’ And the priest answered David, ‘I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread–if the young men have kept themselves from women.’ 5 And David answered the priest, ‘Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?’” The bread of the sanctuary was holy, and it could only be eaten by holy people. This indicates the military activity was considered as holy, with specific sexual requirements for the soldiers.
A similar passage is 2 Samuel 11:10-11: “When they told David, ‘Uriah did not go down to his house,’ David said to Uriah, ‘Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?’ Uriah said to David, ‘The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.’” The presence of the ark with the army meant presence of temple. Israel’s soldiers were to behave on the battlefield the same way they would behave in the temple. Sexuality forbidden in temple context. God’s temple was to be very different than the pagan temples. There was no temple prostitution in God’s plan for Israel. Furthermore, the presence of the ark in battle meant Israel’s soldiers were allowed no sexual activity.
As we have seen previously, the temple and the battlefield were the places in the ancient world where women were most vulnerable to coerced sexuality. Yahweh specifically excluded these two domains from sexuality of any kind, much less coerced sexuality. Uriah the Hittite clearly understood that these rules applied to him, even though he was away from the battlefield. He was on a mission to communicate messages from his general to his king. That meant it would be inappropriate for him to have intercourse, even with his wife. This has profound implications for Deuteronomy 21:10-14. In light of these strictures, it would be fair to wonder if female captives were completely off-limits to Israelite soldiers. Deuteronomy 21 expresses God’s concession to ancient practices, providing a way forward for a soldier who took a liking to a female captive. In the next blog we will take a second look at Deuteronomy 21:10-14, with a deeper awareness of the context in which God was operating.
The work of William Webb and Gordon Oeste
I have really appreciated the research done by William Webb and Gordon Oeste in the book entitled Bloody, Brutal and Barbaric? Wrestling with Troubling War Texts. It was published in 2019 by InterVarsity Press, Downer’s Grove, Illinois. The book is heavy reading and quite detailed, but I highly recommend it for those who are willing to put out the effort and the time to dig deeper into this topic. I will be sharing a number of insights from the book along with thoughts of my own in this blog and the ones that follow.
Webb and Oeste approach texts like Deuteronomy 21:10-14 from four perspectives. I will label these four with the capital letters A, B, C, and D, for easy comparison. The first perspective is to understand the reality of the times in which the Bible was originally written. The Bible is not directly addressing the issues of our times, it is addressing another world a long time ago. While human nature has not changed all that much in the last 3500 years, human culture and practice has changed quite a bit in more recent times. The Bible was not written to address our questions and concerns, it was written to address the world of the Ancient Near East. So “perspective “A: seeks to understand the wider world to which the Bible was written, as far as that understanding is available to us.
The second perspective, which I will label “B”, addresses the ethics of the Bible itself. In the Bible we see a God who understands human weakness, and does not expect His people to understand or practice the highest ethical levels that He is capable of. Instead, He encourages His people to “be all that they can be” in their fallen condition and in the context of a very messed-up world. The ethics of the Bible are, in a sense, “frozen in time”, God’s recommendations within a specific context, not God’s ultimate ideal. One of the key insights we learn from the stories of the Bible is how God meets people where they are. God encourages people to reach for the “ideal”, but is accepting of the “real” as humanity’s best effort. In Deuteronomy 21:10-14, we will come to see God “settling” for small, incremental improvements in His peoples’ understanding and practice.
The third perspective, which I will label “C”, approaches the Bible from the ethics of today. And while this may come as a surprise to some, the ethics of today are often better than whose of Bible times. Why would that be the case? In part, it would be the influence of the Bible as a whole on the culture and ethics of our world today. Whether or not people acknowledge it, we are living in the light of Jesus’ teachings and example, and the world is a much better place because of it. Given the influence of Jesus on our world today, the ethics of today can often seem superior to the ethics of the Bible, because we are reading from the perspective of a world that has gained much from the gradual influence of the Bible as a whole, when read in light of the life and death of Jesus.
The fourth perspective, which I will label “D”, reads the Bible in the light of God’s ideals and in light of the ethics of the final judgment. D discovers in the Bible the way that God always wanted to rule on this earth, but was not able to because of the hardness of human hearts. The final judgment will be a time when all the injustices of this world will be set right, and God’s true ethic will be clearly seen. Perspective D moves beyond God’s specific responses to specific situations to see the heart of God in the biblical text as a whole. The ethics of the final judgment will move far beyond the Geneva Conventions and other ethical advances of our time. But we are not there yet.
When you compare C (the ethics of today) with B (the ethics of the biblical text) the Bible often looks out of date. It can even seem repressive, a step back from what we know today to be right. But that is misreading the character of the biblical God, who steps into the sewer of human depravity to reach us where we are and take us a step or two in the right direction. He takes us no faster that we are able or willing to go. In so doing, He takes the risk of being misunderstood by later readers of the Bible. Instead, if you compare B (the ethics of the Bible) with A (the realities of the Ancient Near East) you will see in Deuteronomy 21:10-14 a tangible movement in a positive direction. It is an incremental, redemptive movement toward a better ethic that the ethic of the time. When we read the Bible in its original context, we will discover the goal of that strange text in Deuteronomy, better treatment of female prisoners of war. From our perspective (C) that step may seem too small, but it is a real step and led Israel to treat women much differently than their neighbors at the time did.
Women, War, and the Bible: Reflections on Deuteronomy 21:10-14
The world as we experience it is a mess. There are mass migrations, leading to tragedy and cultural conflict. There are mass shootings in many places, particularly in the United States. This was rare, even in the recent past. Cries of genocide are voiced by Ukrainians in Russian-controlled territory, and by Gazans under assault by Israel. Children growing up today are faced with unprecedented levels of gender confusion. Concerns over climate are expressed all around the world. Artificial intelligence is feared as the potential cause of the extinction of the human race. There are more and more weapons of mass destruction, and more and more places are faced with a breakdown of law and order. Among these tragic events is the horrific treatment of women in war, as we can witness in places like Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, and also Haiti in recent days.
Is there a word from the Lord for our situation today? Do we have any idea how God would handle a mess like the one we are living through? I think we do. I believe that is a major reason why there are so many troubling and violent texts in the Bible. God has given us the Bible as a record of how He handled many messy situations over a period of 1500 years. These stories do not give us the last word on how to handle any situation we might face. But they do exhibit a God who gets deeply involved in the human condition, and often acts in ways that risk Him being misunderstood by those reading the stories later on. But these stories are written up as examples of the way God handles messy situations. These things were written down for those upon whom “the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11).
One of the messiest of all situations in the Bible is Israel’s conquest of Canaan. Like today there was a mass migration of people from one part of the world to another. Illegal immigrants were pouring over the border of Canaan. There appears to be a genocide of the original inhabitants of the land in order to make room for a whole new group of people. As a result, there were wholesale injuries and many premature deaths. Families were separated, there were refugees everywhere in the land. The fact that these things seem to have happened at the direct command of God makes them even more troubling for many.
A full exploration of Israel’s conquest of Canaan would be too large a project for a short series of blogs. I propose instead that we look at one specific aspect of that conquest, the treatment of captive women in the wake of war. God through Moses gives some very direct instructions on how captive women should be treated by the Israelite soldiers (Deut 21:10-14). At first glance, these instructions are troubling to the point of being offensive in the minds of many. But I believe that a careful examination of this passage will help us understand what God was trying to do in the conquest, and by extension, help us gain a clearer picture of how to deal with today’s messy world. That is what I hope to do in this series of blogs on women, war, and the Bible.
A word of caution. The Bible addresses issues like this with great frankness and sometimes graphic clarity. If this blog were aimed at children, I would not do this, because not everything in the Bible is intended for children. From here on this blog series will be for adults only. Stay tuned.