• ADULTERY IN THE BIBLE

     

    Bible Study Resource

    THE DOUBLE STANDARD

    To the modern reader, the double standards existing in biblical times are horrifying. Men could use prostitutes without incurring social disapproval (see the story of TAMAR AND JUDAH) but women were severely punished if they had sex outside marriage.

    In Jewish law, as in the Greek and Roman world, a husband’s deliberate infidelity did not constitute adultery.

    ABRAHAM’S GREAT SIN

    But at the same time adultery was the ‘great sin’ mentioned in Genesis 20:9 -

    ‘Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him “What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such great guilt on me and my kingdom?”‘

    What Abraham has done is pass his wife Sarah off as his sister, so that Abimelech might have accidentally had sexual intercourse with another man’s wife.

    The reader knows that Sarah is in fact her husband’s half-sister (things are complicated in this family), but that is not the point. Abimelech fears he may have inadvertently sinned against the proprietary rights of the husband, Abraham, and this crime would have been punishable by death.

    This was law in the Middle East at that time except in Babylon, where the injured husband might save his wife’s life, and her lover’s, by pleading for clemency – a rather unlikely scenario, but possible.

    ADULTERY – AN EVIL ACT

    In early Old Testament times, adultery by a married woman or a betrothed girl was not only a crime against her husband or fiancee, but also an evil act. Both the woman and her lover were liable to the death penalty:

    22  If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.
    23  If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her,

    Ancient gates of the city of Dan in northern Israel

    24  then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
    25  But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die.
    26  But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor,
    27  because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.
    28  If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found,
    29  then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.

    Frightening.

    ORDEAL BY WATER

    You might like to read the strange ritual observed when a jealous husband suspected his wife of infidelity: the ordeal of ‘the bitter water’, Numbers 5:12-31. Innocence or guilt was determined largely by the reactions of the parties involved.

    ADULTERY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

    The New Testament attitude to adultery is more nuanced. On the one hand there is the famous story of Jesus’ encounter with the Woman Taken in Adultery – surely one of the most subtle and beautiful stories in the Bible.

    On the other hand, the New Testament takes an uncompromising view of adultery, and regards all acts of unchastity as offences against God and against one’s neighbor: ‘I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’ (Matthew 5:28)

    The laxity of sexual morality in the Roman and Jewish worlds was similar to sexual mores in western society today, and this may be why the early Christian church had strict laws about it. The early Church made no bones about it: Christians must not associate with are those who were sexually immoral (1 Corinthians 5:9).

    Galatians 5:16-21 spells it out even more clearly: ‘…do not gratify the desires of the flesh’. It lists the ‘works of the flesh: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these’ – notice that items of sexual immorality are mentioned first, highlighting their importance.

    Even so, Jesus preached compassion and acceptance for someone who truly regretted a sin they had committed – as is shown in the story of the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with ointment (Luke 7:36:50). ’I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven…’

    SUMMARY

    Punishment for adulterers, both male and female, was harsh in the early biblical period. Later on it seemed as if a double standard developed: men used prostitutes, but woman had to be blameless in sexual matters.

    Adultery was strongly condemned in the New Testament: Christians wished to set themselves apart from the sexual immorality of the Roman world.

    Jesus‘ own attitude was compassion and forgiveness, but only when the sinner had truly repented.