Most of the commandments are eternal. Some commandments reflect eternal truths, but must be viewed in context. Such is the commandment to marry a rape victim to the rapist. There is not much information about the crime rate in ancient Judea, but violent crime was rampant in the Roman suburbs and in feudal Europe. It is reasonable to assume that rural Judea was a violent place, too. Women had to venture outside the city walls to tend their flocks, bring water home, and to travel. Violent crime was unavoidable. Societies before the modern age ostracized victims of rape, and primitive societies still do. They did so for sensible reasons. Rape often resulted in pregnancy, incurable STD, or even damag to the child-bearing functions. The victim was often utterly negligent (thus the Torah allows her to be blamed for the crime), and so didn’t make a good wife.

The lawgiver, therefore, was solving the problems of integrating the victim back into society, punishing the offender, and preventing the crime. He achieved all of those aims by harsh, no-nonsense means—and with extreme efficiency. The Torah first cracks down on negligence and fearful submission to criminals. Rapists often intimidate their victims into silence where screaming would help. The Torah, accordingly, makes silence during rape into a capital offense. Before that law, the victims had a choice. They could scream and face the risk of being killed by the rapist, but also have a chance of frightening him away. Or they could keep silent, submit to the rapist, but assuredly save their (subsequently ostracized) life. The Torah took away that choice. The victim who doesn’t scream is executed. The rapist’s threat to kill a screaming victim became weak in comparison with the assured judicial execution of a silent victim. Rapists, therefore, knew that their victims would assuredly scream. By the exceedingly harsh measure of blaming the victim the Torah created a huge deterrent to rapists. (The same logic applies to the problem of terrorist kidnappings. Just as rape victims are forbidden to cooperate with their assailants, so the government must not cooperate with kidnappers. Discouragement and prevention on the societal level take precedence over saving an individual.)

The rape endangered the victim’s life, and almost assuredly extinguished her social life. Following the rule of “an eye for an eye,” the Torah proclaims rape a capital offense. Harsh, perhaps, but efficient. Even in modern society, victims of rape and their relatives would gladly kill the rapist.

Integrating the victim back into society is where the Torah’s practicality takes precedence over moralistic concerns. The rapist has to marry his victim, and is barred from ever divorcing her. Wisely, the Torah allows the marriage option only to affluent criminals. There is little sense in marrying one’s daughter to a criminal pauper. Before the marriage, the rapist has to pay the girl’s family a fine of fifty shekels—the amount equal to one’s Temple tax obligation for a hundred years. As with any other monetary obligation, a failed debtor (essentially, a thief) was enslaved. The Torah, thus, implicitly allows the victim’s family to enslave the rapist.

Logical and thoughtful, the Torah differentiates between the cases of a betrothed woman and one who is not. In the last case, marriage to an affluent criminal makes sense when ostracism is the only alternative. In the first case, making one’s bride to marry the rapist would be doubtlessly unethical. The rapist is executed, but what to do about the victim in that case? The Torah admits, there is no universal solution. The woman is considered a victim of an accident; her situation is compared to “for as when a man rises against his neighbor, and slays him, even so is this matter.” In modern terms, the case of a raped bride can be likened to the case of a bride who has suffered a serious car accident. There is no single answer to the moral problem. The most the Torah can do is proclaim the victim without sin and enjoin others from harming her. The rest is up to her family and the bridegroom. Harsh? You bet. But just as realistic and practical now as three thousand years ago.

The Torah doesn’t detail punishments for homosexual rape. Apparently, it was uncommon in Judea.