22:13,14
Once on Justin Brierley’s Premier Radio programme Unbelievable I heard an evangelical woman say that the Bible wasn’t clear on sex before marriage being wrong. I was shocked and surprised at the time. The Bible is perfectly clear that sex before marriage is wrong, with this being one such passage. So this section begins with the case of a man marrying a woman and then discovering that she wasn’t a virgin.
22:15-19
If evidence was provided that demonstrated that she was a virgin, then the husband was clearly in the wrong, and was guilty of besmirching the woman and her family. The man would then be whipped and fined. Moreover, he was to remain married to the woman and was not allowed to divorce her. Now this raises at least a couple of questions to our modern ears. One is why is all the concern about whether or not the woman was a virgin, what about the man? Well the reason is probably that there was no way of proving whether the man was a virgin, so it was just a matter of practicalities. Later parts of this chapter will show that men are answerable for their conduct as well. A second question regards the two remaining married. We are appalled at this because we regard marriage very much from a romantic perspective. In the Bible it is regarded very much as a matter of practicalities. The Bible does also attach importance to romance, but not to the all consuming extent that our society does. Our society’s imbalance has serious consequences for society. Marriages are the bedrock for a stable society.
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