Deuteronmy 21-26

Chapters 21-26
21:10-14
10 "When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hands, and you take them captive, 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have desire for her and would take her for yourself as wife, 12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails. 13 And she shall put off her captive's garb, and shall remain in your house and bewail her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 Then, if you have no delight in her, you shall let her go where she will; but you shall not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her.

So you can take a woman pow captive and force her to have sex with you, but only if you let her mourn her family first. Then if you rapesleep with her and don't like her after all, then you have to let her go and you can't sell her to someone else. Okkaaay… Well, I guess that qualified as civilized and enlightened back then.

21:18
18 "If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chastise him, will not give heed to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.' 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

The whole town gets to kill disobedient children. What's the length things are allowed to get to before this happens?

22:5
5 "A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.

This shouldn't, despite what some conservative religious people think, mean that women are not allowed to wear pants. Women wearing pants made for women are not cross dressing, just like men in kilts and robes are not cross dressing. I have a feeling there's a lot more to this verse, I just don't have time to look into it at this exact moment.

22:20-24

20 But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman, 21 then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has wrought folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father's house; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you. 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, 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 the midst of you

If she's not a virgin, she has to die. Yes, I'm aware that this could mean simply that she gets in trouble for lying about it, but there's still a disgusting double standard here and I don't see any way the passage can be justified. I respect the concept that people should save themselves for marriage (even though in practice, it doesn't work too well) but that means a woman should have a right to expect *her* partner hasn't been with anyone else either.

If a man rapes a woman in a city, and she doesn't scream for help, they both have to die. This is rather naïve, in assuming that just because she'd scream, someone would rush to her aid. It's obviously written by a man, and most likely a very sheltered man too. They don't seem to grasp how rape sometimes really works- that rape can happen and no one bothers to stop and protect the woman, or that sometimes there are fuzzy gray lines where sex starts out consensual and ends up something else, that people can be repeatedly raped for years and not even realize that's what has happened to them (such as husbands forcing themselves on their wives) or that the man can simply put his hand over her mouth so she can't scream. I don't think they had roofies back then, but I bet they had some kind of similar herb and failing that, a rock or a cudgel works pretty well.

Yes, in an ideal world, if a woman was being attacked and screamed, there would be plenty of people who would do the decent thing and help her. But we don't live in that world, that's why colleges have to hand out mace and teach female students self defense moves.

23:1-7

1 "He whose testicles are crushed or whose male member is cut off shall not enter the assembly of the LORD. 2 "No bastard shall enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD.

3 "No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation none belonging to them shall enter the assembly of the LORD for ever; 4 because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came forth out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Be'or from Pethor of Mesopota'mia, to curse you.

What if it's not his fault? What if he's castrated without his consent? And some poor kid can't enter the temple because his parents screwed up? It really seems like an awful lot of people are ending up excluded here.

And as a Christian, this does bother me. The thing about my religion is that, even though the proselytizing is annoying, and the pushyness is annoying, Christianity makes a point of actively reaching out to everyone. Yes, people are encouraged to change behavior that is seen as undesirable in order to be considered part of a specific congregation, but no one is ever, ever, ever, officially blocked from worshipping. The worst that can happen is excommunication and that only happens due to something that you, yourself have actually done, and only in the like three or four denominations (out of hundreds) that actually practice excommunication. You can't be kicked out of church because of your race or because of something your parents did.

And no one is ever barred from entering a church building on the basis of not being able to provide adequate paperwork.

One of the big things that has stopped me from joining some other religion is that most of them have never extended any effort to reach out to me. People come to Christianity because they feel wanted.

7 "You shall not abhor an E'domite, for he is your brother; you shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land. 8 The children of the third generation that are born to them may enter the assembly of the LORD.

23:17
15 "You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you; 16 he shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place which he shall choose within one of your towns, where it pleases him best; you shall not oppress him. 17 "There shall be no cult prostitute of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a cult prostitute of the sons of Israel.

A nifty concept of proto social justice, followed immediately by another prohibition against cult prostitutes, who the authors really seem to hate.

25:11
11 "When men fight with one another, and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, 12 then you shall cut off her hand; your eye shall have no pity.

So if two men are fighting, and the wife tries to defend her husband and touches the other man on his privates, it's the wife who gets in trouble? WTF? That makes no sense!



Deut 27-30

Moses talks about what'll happen if the Israelites reject God. Or maybe just general prophecies, I wasn't clear on that.

28:49
49 The Lord will bring a nation from far away, from the end of the earth, to swoop down on you like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a grim-faced nation showing no respect to the old or favor to the young. 51 It shall consume the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed, leaving you neither grain, wine, and oil, nor the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, until it has made you perish. 52 It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout your land; it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout the land that the Lord your God has given you.

Is this perhaps about Rome? Oh man, I hope it's only about Rome.

Well, Moses has half the people stand on one mountain and pronounce a curse, and half the people stand on another mountain and pronounce a blessing. Then they all gather together and Moses preaches to them one last time before he goes off to die.

RIP Moses, you weren't so bad.