Women Under the Law of Moses

During the course of religious debate we hear people quote scripture, Luther, Calvin, and occasionally Wesley. Now I have read my share of Luther, especially when he talks about beer. I find Calvin hard to read, much less colorful than Martin, so I have to have a really good reason to read him, and Wesley, well he wrote good hymns.

I try to quote scripture sparingly, not because God's Word is irrelevant, it isn't. It is generally because I don't want to sound like all the other folks trying to fit scripture into their world view, or, trying to fit their world view into scripture. If and when I do turn to scripture during religious debates I like to focus on the New Testament. The Old Testament, especially the books of the law, well, (sit down you fundies) just is not relevant to our world today.

Today at Recovery Worship we heard from the 8^th Chapter of John, the story of the woman caught in adultery. The "teachers of the law and the Pharisees" quizzed Jesus on what they should do with her, based on the Law of Moses. Well, for a moment, let us look at the verse from Deuteronomy they were talking about; "If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel." Pretty severe punishment if you ask me. We discussed that it was strange that they only brought the woman to Jesus; we all wondered where the man disappeared to. Someone suggested that perhaps the man was one of the Pharisees, an interesting hypothesis. However, can we say this law pertains to us today? I hope not, if so we would run out of stones. But even more striking than this law are the laws that follow in Deuteronomy.

"If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, ²⁴you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

25 But if the man meets the engaged woman in the open country and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. ²⁶You shall do nothing to the young woman; the young woman has not committed an offence punishable by death, because this case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor. ²⁷Since he found her in the open country, the engaged woman may have cried for help, but there was no one to rescue her." (23-27)

Under the Law of Moses a woman is simply the property of either their father or their husband. Is this a model of law we wish to hold up in our world today? I don't think so. I honestly think people who quote the Law of Moses today would not be in favor, for the most part, of totally observing all of the Law of Moses today. If we are not ready to embrace all of the Law of Moses, I suggest we not pick and choose the portions of the law that we want to hold against others.

See you next week.