Justice cannot afford niceties

Most of the commandments are eternal. Some commandments reflect the eternal truths, but must be viewed in the context. Such is the commandment of marrying a rape’s victim to the rapist. There is not much information about the crime rate in ancient Judea, but violent crime was rampant in Roman suburbs and in the 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 the flocks, bring water home, and to travel. The violent crime was unavoidable. Societies until the modern age ostracized the victims of rape, and primitive societies still do. They did so for sensible reasons. Rape often resulted in pregnancy, incurable STD, or even damaged the child-bearing functions. The victim was often utterly negligent (thus the Torah allows for blaming her for the crime), and so didn’t make a good wife.

The lawgiver, therefore, was solving the problems of integrating the victim back into the society, punishing the offender, and preventing the crime. He achieved all of those aims with harsh, no-nonsense means – and with the extreme efficiency. The Torah first cracks down on negligence and fearful submission to criminals. Rapists often intimidated 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 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 of killing a screaming victim became bleak in comparison with the assured judicial execution of a non-screaming victim. Rapists, therefore, knew that their victims will 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 like the 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 endangers the victim’s life, and almost assuredly extinguished her social life. Following the “an eye for an eye,” the Torah proclaims rape a capital offense. Harsh, perhaps, but efficient. Even in the modern society, victims of rape and their relatives would gladly kill the rapist.

Integrating the victim back into the 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. Exceedingly wisely, the Torah allows the marriage option only to affluent criminals. There is little sense in marrying one’s daughter to 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 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 betrothed woman and the one who is not. In the last case, marriage to an affluent criminal makes sense when ostracizing 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 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 raped bride can be likened to the case of a bride who suffered heavy 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 realistic and practical now just as three thousand years ago.

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

chaim

Some points:
First, we should specify the “rape” figure of the law.
To rape a single woman, alone in the fields, was never a issue of marrying her. This kind of rape, as we know it, was always a capital ofense, as for the Hebrews as for the peoples surrounding them.
So what is the real meaning of “rape” here?
Marriage was a base issue for Hebrews. As a patriarcal society, the marriage was made by buying the right to the bride’s father.
Rape in this case is the figure of forcing a women to have sexual intercourse without previous father agreement. This is, as Ovadiah says here, in deed a steal.
If the women treated to cheat their parents saying she was raped, the parents ask why she did not cried?
If the man tried to have sex with the girl without buying her, that was a staling, and the law specify prices to pay for stealing.
Another point, please do not missunderstand the
Silver shekel of the Moshe law with the half silver shekel of the second temple’s time.
Moshe siver shekel was a silver measure, without form, and the second temple half shekel was a greek coin…

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Kashmiri Nomad

Samson Blinded on the soundness of making a rapist marry his victim.

Ray Bright Subscribed to comments via email

This is a reply to Alexander Maistrovoy’s “Give chance to peace! …Without Israel”
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I agree with Alexander Maistrovoy on his main point that Arab identity is deeply intertwined with Islam. It is almost inseparable. I agree that so far practically all Arab peace initiatives were just a strategy towards their final goal of destruction of Israel.

Unfortunately I believe that Maistrovoy is DEEPLY mistaken when he quotes from Eder:

“Islam teaching is distorted be fanatics” and “Muslim clergy conceal truth about Muslim prophecies regarding Jews”

It would take a lot of Talmudic twisting to make Islamic teaching accept Israel. Koran and ahadith both are anti-Semitic. They glorify Muhammad’s extermination of the Jewish tribes in Medina, and proclaim that Jews are grandsons of pigs and apes.
Plain and simple reading of Koran and Hadith makes a much stronger case for extermination of Jews than for acceptance of a Jews state. No moderate can win a honest debate with Islamists, Ayatollah Khomeini and the Wahabis are correct in their interpretation of Islam. The path to making Islam “moderate” is a path towards defeat. It is just as doomed as trying to make Nazism moderate. Read Mein Kampf, and you will know that according to Nazis “Jews are unproductive,parasites who destroy any culture in which they live.
The only way to change Islam, is to utterly defeat it, utterly discredit it.
We need to openly criticize Islam. Expose it’s incompatibility modernity, it’s utter idiocy and inhumanity. The West must never compromise by affording Muslims special consideration. Islam must be utterly discredited. The Danish caricatures were a good beginning. The caricatures of Muhammad having sex with his 9 years old bride should be imprinted in everybody’s mind. Let the Muslims rage, let them complain, let them hear that in the West we have the freedom to criticize every religion including Islam. If they don’t like it, let them go back to their Muslim countries.
If they riot, or fight then defeat them militarily: It was Muhammad’s military success that convinced Arabs of the “truth” of Islam. Likewise, the ultimate military defeat will convince them of it’s falseness.

Danny the Admin

To Chaim: Please clarify for me, how do we know that rape in the field was not expiated by forced marriage? The text seems clear: rapist may be executed wherever the crime took place.
I don;t think the marriage was only a matter of her father’s agreement. Even Lavan asked his daughter.
The Torah speaks of Moshe’s shekel, the same shekel used to pay the Temple dues according to the Torah.

Danny, just have to look about “raping” in all the semitic nations laws.
The text you read maybe not translated right. The marriage is allways a issue of father authorization.In Some cases just the father maybe dead or absent,thus the differences. If the text MARKS the specific case it’s because of some reason. And Laban laying with his daughter is a example of what you have not to do…
The shekel is a wheight measure. That does not mean it’s the same shekel or the temple. Anyway, in the Moshe’s law, the temple is not mentioned, just the tabernacle.