The Bible really is quite a charming book. It's truly astounding what you'll find if you just take the time to sit there and read it for a while.
This week's Torah portion is Ki Teitzei. I started reading from the beginning, and it didn't take me long at all to find the good bits. The following is from my Artscroll Chumash. Yes, I have an Artscroll Chumash. Sue me.
If a man marries a wife, and comes to her and hates her, and he makes a wanton accusation against her, spreading a bad name against her, and he said, "I married this woman, and I came near to her and I did not find signs of virginity on her." Then the father of the girl and her mother should take and bring proofs of the girl's virginity to the elders of the city, to the gate. The father of the girl should say to the elders, "I gave my daughter to this man as a wife, and he hated her. Now, behold! he made a wanton accusation against her, saying, 'I did not find signs of virginity on your daughter' - but these are the signs of virginity of my daughter!" And they should spread out the sheet before the elders of the city.
The elders of the city shall take that man and punish him. And they shall fine him one hundred silver [shekels] and give them to the father of the girl, for he had issued a slander against a virgin of Israel, and she shall remain with him as a wife; he cannot divorce her all his days.
But if this matter was true - signs of virginity were not found on the girl - then they shall take the girl to the entrance of her father's house and the people of her city shall pelt her with stones and she shall die, for she had commited an outrage in Israel, to commit adultery in her father's house, and you shall remove the evil from your midst. (Deut 22:13 - 21)
TL;DR version: If a girl gets married, has sex, and doesn't bleed, her husband can get her executed just for the lulz.
A girl sometimes bleeds during sex due to her hymen breaking. The understanding in Biblical times was that the first time a girl has sex, her hymen will break, and she will bleed. If there's no blood, it's not her first time. Simple.
The problem is that many a woman does not bleed the first time she has sex, due to her hymen already being broken or, less frequently, due to her hymen simply stretching, rather than breaking, during sex. A study by Monica Christiansson and Carola Eriksson of Sweden in 2005 stated that "fewer than 30% of women who have gone through puberty and have consensual intercourse bleed the first time" (thank you, Wikipedia).
To recap: every single woman whose hymen breaks before marriage can be effectively murdered by her husband based on false accusations of immorality.
Ask me again why I'm not religious.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
yitzi
maybe back in the ole bibleical times, ladies' hymens were more hardy and less stretchy, and thus would almost always bleed during their first time...
iunno, im no expert on the subject
maybe you should ask someone who has chosen to study and work with vaginas for their entire life
Like Sarah Palin, this Biblical law does not concern itself much with reality. It ought to be obvious to anyone that it is most unreliable to decide guilt merely on the absence of anything (in this case, the absence of an intact hymen). But you'd have to lose your emunah to care about broader evidence...
...and if you had emunah, you would believe that God, in His infinite wisdom, gave husbands the right to dispose of their unquestionably soiled teenage wives, and of course the right to have as many wives, concubines and prostitutes as they choose. Gaird, who'd want to live in our repressed times?
Post a Comment