Ep 68: Take My Wife... Please!

00:00It's no benefit to us if we kill our brother, let's sell him.

00:05So, Judah's already not looking good from a modern sensibility point of view, but--

00:12He's a dick.

00:13Is what he--

00:15To put it bluntly, yes, that is what you're doing.

00:21Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:25And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:26And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to

00:31the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about

00:36the same.

00:37Are we things today, Dan?

00:38Good.

00:39Things are good.

00:40We're delving deep into some, I don't know, some stuff that some people might find disturbing

00:48this week.

00:49Yeah.

00:50It's not easy stuff, and all of it is-- well, let's just say that if you have feminist sensibilities

01:00like I do--

01:01Which you should.

01:03You're not going to like a lot of things you're here today.

01:07Yeah.

01:08Yeah.

01:09As you're probably used to hearing on the podcast, we're going to get weird today.

01:17It's a little problematic.

01:19The first half will be a little less problematic than the last-- the last one, we're just going

01:25to give you a trigger warning right now.

01:27If you're triggered by mentions of sexual assault or whatever, please feel free to skip

01:35the last half.

01:36But do listen to the first half, even though it will still piss you off.

01:40[laughter]

01:41Precisely.

01:42Yeah.

01:43So should we dive into this?

01:45I don't think we have any other choice of this.

01:48We must do it.

01:49It's our job, after all.

01:52We're starting off in Genesis chapter 38.

01:56And what's weird about chapter 38 in Genesis is that chapter 37 starts off the Joseph being

02:05sold into slavery's story, it's the whole Joseph story.

02:09Then chapter 38, nothing about that at all.

02:13It's about his brother.

02:15And then chapter 39, back to Joseph.

02:17So it's like this weird sort of interruption of the narrative.

02:23Kind of an A, B kind of sitcom thing.

02:26Right.

02:27Right.

02:28We're excited.

02:29Unless this is the Kramer plot.

02:30Yeah.

02:31You got to think about He-Man where they went and shot over to the other scene and we're

02:40dealing with Judah and Tamar.

02:44Now this is Judah for whom the kingdom of Judah is eventually named, is that right?

02:50That would be accurate.

02:51Okay.

02:52Yeah.

02:53So pretty fancy dude.

02:54Yeah, he's big time.

02:57And we've got Israel is Jacob, who is Judah's father.

03:03And that's the northern kingdom of Israel.

03:05And then Judah is the southern kingdom of Judah, Judah being one of the twelve sons of Israel.

03:12And Judah was kind of doing some silly stuff in the previous chapter, 37, comes up with

03:20this idea, hey, you know, it's no benefit to us.

03:24If we kill our brother, let's sell him in your slavery.

03:28And so Judah's already not looking good from a modern sensibility's point of view, but

03:36He's a dick.

03:37He's worried.

03:39To put it bluntly.

03:40Yes.

03:41That is what Judah is.

03:43But in chapter 38, we're going to see a little bit about his family and we're going to bring

03:47into view a principle called lever at marriage, which we're going to talk a little bit more

03:52about once we get into it.

03:54But to start, Judah went down with his brothers and settled near a certain dolemite whose

04:01name was Hera.

04:02And so we're in Canaan, Judah, Mary's, Shua, and they have a son named Er.

04:11And then they have another son named Onan.

04:14And then they have another son named Shela.

04:17Now, a lot of people who talk about chapter 38, focus in on the Onan part of the story.

04:24Yes.

04:25You may have heard of Onan before.

04:27You probably haven't heard of her much less Shela, but so Judah picks out a wife.

04:36And in this time period, your marriages were closely related to what we think of as as

04:42arranged marriages where a father was like, I like the cut of her jib.

04:47I'm going to go talk to her father and I'm going to secure a contract so that either

04:52right now or when they come of age, my son will marry this guy's daughter.

04:58And so he pays a bride price, the father of the young woman, profits from letting his

05:07daughter go.

05:09And that's usually the betrovel.

05:12So that's when they're engaged.

05:13And that engagement period could be pretty long, but they were contractually married basically.

05:20They just had to consummate the marriage and then actually go off and become part of their

05:24own household.

05:26But we got a problem rather tersely, verse seven just says, but her was wicked in the

05:34sight of the Lord.

05:36And so out on I, you know, killed him.

05:40Yeah, he got offed, which is, which is rough like, this happens more than once in this

05:47chapter where God just like zap somebody.

05:52It's it.

05:53Yeah.

05:54There you go.

05:55It's something that, you know, when when you're talking about body count in the Hebrew Bible,

05:59people will be like, Oh, Satan had, you know, only killed eight people.

06:02God killed millions.

06:03And you know, this was one.

06:05Yeah.

06:07And there's going to be another before the chapter, a spoiler alert.

06:11But we've this at this point, we have to talk about something called leverage marriage because

06:18Judah has brought this, this woman into his household now air and Tamar would have had

06:27to have gone off and formed their own household.

06:29But above that, hierarchically speaking, in terms of the family was was Judah's household.

06:36And so Tamar kind of reverts to Judah's household.

06:39She does not have a child yet.

06:42And each male in the line, particularly the oldest who stood to inherit the lion's share

06:48of the father's inheritance, wanted a child to carry on their line, carry on their share

06:56in the inheritance, carry on their name, all of that stuff.

06:58And if they didn't get that, then you have an arrangement called leverage marriage.

07:05And this is discussed in Deuteronomy 25 versus five through 10.

07:13And basically the commandment is this, if a man marries a wife and then he dies before

07:20he's able to impregnate his wife, then the close the next of kin, usually the brother,

07:27but it could be somebody else in the in the family.

07:31The next of kin, who is a male, has a responsibility to either marry her or get someone else to

07:39marry her.

07:40And then whatever children come from that relationship are raised in the name of the

07:46deceased person.

07:49And then,

07:50Which is a little weird.

07:51Like that's, yeah, it's like, but it's just a, you know, it's just words, right?

07:57It's just in the name of this person.

08:01I don't know.

08:02It just, it seems like a weird thing to get too like hung up on hung up on well, the

08:07thing is they also inherits everything that the older sibling who is dead stood to inherit.

08:15And so it is legally financially in every way it is considered the offspring of the deceased.

08:22And so there, and it, this is something that we see in, in a variety of different places

08:26in the ancient world.

08:27And even in some societies still today and lever it doesn't have anything to do with

08:33the tribe of Levi, it comes from a Latin word, levere, which means brother in law.

08:39So,

08:40Oh, okay.

08:41Yeah.

08:42So this, this is not unique to the Bible.

08:45And the, I, one of the ideas is that provides for the widow.

08:49She's now under the auspices, the protection, the roof of a potter familius, a male who

08:57runs a household.

08:58And then her, she is going to have offspring and they're going to be raised in, in the

09:04name of, of the deceased.

09:06And you know, depending on exactly how it's expected to work, it's kind of a raw deal

09:12for the person who might marry this woman because some of their money is going to go

09:19to this child who's not going to be raised in, in their name.

09:23And you know, this might the, the inheritance from the living brother's parents father might

09:31skip over them to go to the sun.

09:33Let's, let's use the names of this story as our example, because I think it's getting

09:37a little bit hard to follow.

09:39My bad.

09:40We're tired.

09:41We're tired.

09:42I might just be that I'm having trouble.

09:44Right.

09:45So everyone else is fine.

09:46Yeah. So Ur has died, Ur has died, Onan is the next in line.

09:51And Judas, and Judas like, look, you got to go marry your Ur's widow, you go, shut up

10:00and do it.

10:02And so Onan goes in and marries tomorrow.

10:06And then we get this peculiar story, which has been interpreted a variety of different

10:09ways where it says, this is NRSVUE, but since Onan knew that the offspring would not be

10:16his because it's in, in name, legally, financially, in every way, it is Ur's child.

10:24Right.

10:25He spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went into his brother's wife so that he

10:29would not give offspring to his brother.

10:32So he's going to, he's going to take advantage of this opportunity to, you know, the extent

10:37he can without actually causing problems for himself financially.

10:44And he commits quite a syneuroptus.

10:47And it seems to be, let me see if it's an iterative verb.

10:53It is, I think it's just a PL.

10:56I don't know what that means.

10:59Nothing to worry about.

11:01It just says he spilled the seed onto the ground when he went in.

11:05Okay.

11:06That could mean whenever he went in, all the time he went in, but in Hebrew, it's not exactly.

11:12It seems to be just one time.

11:15And then the next verse says what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord.

11:18Who's watching, obviously, and he put him to death also.

11:24So Ur was just wicked.

11:26Onan was like, I'm not impregnating my new wife.

11:31So his, his objection is if I, if Tamar has my child, then that's Ur's child legally.

11:42And that child then inherits Ur's inheritance.

11:47And my, and if I don't impregnate her, then I could have another wife and that would be

11:54my child and my child would get everything.

11:57That's the situation that would seem to be the most like detrimental to Onan.

12:03That is a possibility in this circumstance.

12:05The text is not precisely clear.

12:06The text just says, since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his.

12:10So he could be like, and there have been a lot of speculations about what exactly going

12:14on here.

12:15Onan might be like, ooh, brother, ooh, I don't want to raise a child with my deceased brother's

12:23wife.

12:24That, ooh, or it could be, you know, this child is not going to be my child.

12:30It is some, you know, it's my deceased brother's child.

12:32It's not in my name.

12:33I, I'm not going to care for this child.

12:35I don't want this child.

12:37I, it most likely to, in my opinion, there's some kind of financial thing going on here

12:42that it has something to do with inheritance and stuff like that.

12:46But these are all just probabilities.

12:48Speculations.

12:49Yeah, we don't know for sure.

12:52And because Leveret marriage operated differently from society to society and from time to time,

12:57you know, within this culture, it could have operated differently from, from town to town.

13:02We can't really say for sure.

13:04But so no matter, no matter what, Onan made a bad decision.

13:08Onan made a bad decision in the moment.

13:12You know, he was, he was not thinking and he did something.

13:17He was thinking, he had, he definitely had thoughts, he was, he had purpose and thought.

13:23Yes.

13:24But he didn't realize that the big, the big guy was watching.

13:28Yeah, he did not consider the implications and he's gone.

13:33Yeah.

13:34So he got, he got the final zap from the all father and then we have another problem.

13:41The problem then reverse back to Judah.

13:43Right.

13:44Damn it.

13:48But it's okay because he's got another one.

13:50He's got another son.

13:52However, as the story says, Judah says to Tamar, Hey, stay in your father's house until

13:59my son, Shala grows up.

14:01And according to the text, Judah was just stalling.

14:05Judah was like every, every child of mine, this woman touches.

14:13We find him dead with a hole in his chest, kind of predator style.

14:17And she's saying God done it is not me.

14:23And so Tamar went to live in her father's house.

14:26So basically Tamar is like, okay, I'm not a part of Judah's household anymore.

14:29I'm going back to live with my family, which is, is not got to be a great prospect.

14:36She's got no prospects because now that she has been with two other men, she's been married

14:41to two other men.

14:42These tainted goods in the eyes of decent Israelite society, according to the standards

14:50and practices of that time period.

14:53So it seems like her best bet is the youngest son is Shala.

14:59Right.

15:00And Judah's like, let's let's let the let's let the corpse quit sizzling before we give

15:08you my youngest son, right?

15:13And then Judah's wife dies and when Judah's time of morning is over, he goes, he basically

15:19heads off to work.

15:21He went up to Timna to his sheep shears.

15:23He and his friend, Hira, via Dula might.

15:26And and Tamar gets wind of this, you know, there's there's got to be a pretty robust gossip

15:34network going on here.

15:37But so she throws off her widow's garments and it says she put on a veil, wrapped herself

15:44up and sat down at the entrance to a nine, which is on the road to Timna.

15:53And so the veil and we're going to see something a little peculiar here and Timna, if I'm pretty

15:59sure is it is there's a little valley that goes down to the schvella toward the sea.

16:05And so Beit Shemesh is a little up the valley uphill a little bit, Timna is there stories

16:10from the judges, Samson associated with with Timna.

16:15But she basically dresses up as some manner of sex worker, right?

16:22It says she put on a veil, wrapped herself up.

16:24And then in 3815 says when Judah saw her, he thought her to be a prostitute for she had

16:30covered her face.

16:32Now face coverings were not unusual.

16:35It was not like that's the uniform of a sex worker as far as we can tell, but maybe something

16:40having to do with maybe the thickness of the veil, the fabric of the veil, the color of

16:45the veil, maybe it just said prostitute across the front of it.

16:49Yeah, it could have, who knows what was on it.

16:54Something keyed Judah to this.

16:56And this is something that I bring up in the chapter of the book that I have coming out

17:00soon, when on a chapter about whether women were told to cover up in the Bible.

17:07Because the, a lot of people will point to passages that talk about, Oh, someone was

17:12dressed as a prostitute and went today when, you know, you hear a father saying, don't

17:17go out like that.

17:18You're, you're dressed like a prostitute.

17:20The idea is you're dressed in revealing clothing, right.

17:23As far as we can tell from this and from a couple of passages in Proverbs, it sounds

17:28like don't go out like that, you're dressed in it like a prostitute means you're wearing

17:32a specific kind of veil, or you're wearing specific jewelry or something like that.

17:37You're even more covered up.

17:38Yeah.

17:39You're, you're taking some of those layers off young lady, you look like a yes, indeed.

17:46So great editing on the fly there.

17:49Thank you.

17:50Thank you.

17:51Yeah.

17:52My brain was going to places that we don't, we, this is a, this is a family show, yeah.

17:57Not really.

17:58Cause it's such a matter of sharing.

18:04So she sits down and she's going to, she's going to intercept Judah.

18:08And she sees that Shala.

18:09She sees Shala with Judah going off to the sheep shearers and he's grown up.

18:15He's plenty old.

18:17And she's like, huh, he hasn't given him to me yet.

18:20So it sounds like this is just not in the post.

18:24And says, when Judah saw her, he thought to, to be a prostitute, she'd covered her face.

18:28He went over to her at the roadside and said, come, let me come into you.

18:33And this means precisely what it sounds like.

18:34This is a euphemism, but a pretty descriptive euphemism, right.

18:40And she's like, so we got to talk price first.

18:44And he's like, ooh, I left my wallet back at the sheep shearers.

18:48How about, and he's, he's basically giving her collateral.

18:52This is not payment.

18:53This is collateral says, I will send you a kid from the flock.

18:57Okay.

18:58So that's the payment.

18:59And she says, only if you give me a pledge until you send it.

19:01And he says, what collateral do you want?

19:04She says you're a signet.

19:05So I, like a seal, a ring that marks something with his identity and your cord and the staff

19:13that is in your hand.

19:15So pretty steep collateral, if you asked me is a card, basically a belt.

19:19Is that what we're talking about?

19:20Let me look at the, the Hebrew here, what we've got, Patil.

19:29This is not a very common, something that's tied on, fine fiber.

19:35Yeah, this could be any one of a number of different things.

19:41So yeah, give me a ring.

19:43I'll take, I'll take your stick and that piece of string, whatever that's doing.

19:49Give me your Jordans.

19:52I like the, the look at that belt.

19:54Yeah.

19:55So, yeah, this, this is basically Judah is like, you know, it's been a long day.

20:01Oh, look, a sex worker, I could use some relief.

20:06And he provides this collateral.

20:09So he's like, sure, sure, sure, take it, take it.

20:11And she conceives because of his patronization.

20:17And she got up and went away and when she got home, took off the, the sex worker garments

20:24and put back on the widow garments.

20:28And then when Judah was like, okay, hey, I visited this sex worker, I told her I would

20:35give her one of our goats.

20:36So I'm going to take that goat right there.

20:39And he goes back and he can't find her.

20:42And he asks the town, well, he sends his buddy back.

20:46I, I, oh, yeah, by his friend, the, the, he asked the townspeople, where's the prostitute

20:52who was at?

20:53And I'm by the wayside, but they said, I know prostitute here, yeah, we've never had a

20:58prostitute.

20:59Are you kidding me?

21:01Have you ever seen Amazon women on the moon?

21:04Oh, maybe there's, there's a great skit with Arsenio Hall, where he gets home from work

21:11in his apartment and the phone rings and he's like, Hello, is like, Oh, no, there's nobody

21:15by Sheila here.

21:17And then, and he's having just like a progressively worse day that ends up with him falling out

21:22of his window and dying, but the phone rings in the middle of all of this calamity and

21:29every time he's like, ain't no Sheila here, man.

21:34So yeah, no, no prostitute has been here.

21:36So he was like, huh, and goes back to Judah, says, I can't find her, I guess you get to

21:41keep the kid.

21:42Yeah, but he's got your ring and stuff, so yeah.

21:46And verse 23 says, let her keep the things as her own.

21:49Otherwise we will be laughed at.

21:51You see, I sent this kid and you could not find her.

21:54He's like, I don't want to make a big deal out of this.

21:57Yeah.

21:58Okay.

21:59Let her have it.

22:00Don't want to post on Facebook.

22:01Hey, I patronized this sex worker the other day.

22:03He's on neighbor.com.

22:05Does anyone know where the woman with the veil is?

22:09I owe her a goat.

22:11Yeah.

22:12And then three months later, Judah was told, hey, man, your daughter-in-law, Tamar, has

22:17prostituted herself.

22:18Moreover, she is pregnant as a result of prostitution.

22:22And Judah immediately like, or is it like, bring her out, let her be burned.

22:26Yeah.

22:27Which is rough.

22:28Yeah.

22:29Considering the fact that even if he doesn't know who she is, which he doesn't, like you

22:36participated in one half of just such an arrangement, why are you getting all burny about everything?

22:42Yeah.

22:43So it's, yeah, there's some pretty rank hypocrisy here when he is basically treating this like

22:51a stop off at the bar to have a beer before going home, but, and then he's like, what?

22:57You've been selling beer?

22:58We're going to have to execute you.

23:01It does feel like, let me ask you this.

23:04In the world of the leverage marriage, since that's sort of part of what we've been talking

23:08about, would that the, had she, you know, if it weren't his child, if it was just, she

23:17had just prostituted herself and, and conceived, would that child then be considered er's child?

23:25No.

23:26No.

23:27Okay.

23:28Yeah.

23:29So leverage marriage is not just first come, first served.

23:30It is, it is supposed to be within the kinship line.

23:34So this is actually what we have with the story of Ruth and Boaz.

23:39I don't know.

23:40Have we ever talked about Ruth?

23:41No.

23:42We need to do a roof.

23:43Yeah.

23:44We need to do a roof.

23:45Yeah.

23:46So anyway, Boaz is not the closest of kin to Ruth's deceased husband.

23:50And we have the scene where he goes to the closest of kin and he's like, man, and the

23:55closest of kin goes, no.

23:57And so then they've got to have this ritual where he takes off his sandal and gives it

24:01to him, but, but because Boaz is in the kinship line, that's what makes him eligible to actually

24:10fulfill the leverate marriage, because otherwise it's just another marriage.

24:15I guess that, I mean, you know, that comports with the sort of the theme that we have off

24:19to talked about on this, which is that the woman, the, the woman is kind of meaningless

24:26in this other than just sort of as a vessel and a piece of property, like her, her contribution

24:32is not anything.

24:34Yeah.

24:35So it's about, it's about the line, the masculine line, the men in this fam, familial sort of

24:44line.

24:45Yeah.

24:46And so her, her personhood is basically established upon her ability to facilitate the procreation

24:54of her husband.

24:56And so yeah, her agency and her will is virtually null.

25:01But as this story shows, they, her agency and her will is active.

25:08It may not be very respected, but she's going to, she's actually going to exploit this rather

25:14patriarchal system of expectations and rules and everything to get to protect herself.

25:22And she's going to be recognized as the more righteous one for that.

25:26So, so basically they, they bring her in, say, Hey, we got to burn you.

25:31And they bring her before Judah.

25:34And she says, Hey, check these things out.

25:36It was the owner of these things who impregnated me.

25:40And, and here's what the, the enter as the U.E. at the end of verse 25 says, and she said,

25:46Take note, please, who's these are, the signet and the court and the staff.

25:53Do note, if you would, yeah, point of order, point of order, it's, yeah, it does take a

26:04lot of self containment to be facing burning death and go, uh, could you please take note

26:11of the following?

26:13And, and what is the, okay, so recognize, so it's a, it's a imperative of, uh, with the

26:21na on the end, which is kind of a, a please, thank you thing, uh, hakerna, uh, which is

26:27please recognize, um, to whom, uh, these things belong.

26:32Your honor, I present our, I present exhibit a, may I approach, um, and Judah acknowledge

26:41them or recognize them, the same verb that, that Tamar says and says, she is more right

26:47than I, since I did not give her to my son, shallah, and he did not lie with her again.

26:52I'd note at the end of the verse, uh, saying, Judah decided not to, to, uh, go it again,

27:00but, yeah, but yeah, Judah, uh, immediately recognizes, and you know, this, this is a

27:05literary creation, you know, they're telling this, this story, the way that the story needs

27:10to go to advance the narrative.

27:12But if we imagined it was real, I can just say Judah, like getting his matches out and

27:19being like, what are you doing with my signet ring and my, oh, crap.

27:23Oh, oh, he looks over at his buddy and it's like, can I get a wait?

27:29No, I guess we found her.

27:33And, uh, but, uh, you were a goat.

27:40That's how the scene, if this were a, uh, a sitcom and we were about to do the he man's

27:45back to Egypt, that's how the scene would have ended.

27:50So you still need that goat, huh?

27:53Um, and so he, he immediately realizes why she has done what she has done.

27:58She is trying to secure offspring that are part of this kinship line.

28:05And she's like, I will go, I don't need the apples fallen to the ground.

28:09I'm going to go straight to the tree.

28:11Right.

28:12And she, uh, and you know, that's valid, I guess, um, and does seem to be because everything

28:19works out fine.

28:20Yeah.

28:21In the story, as you say, she has hailed as the righteous one, he acknowledges his own,

28:28uh, problematic behavior in this, not however, none of none of his sin, it seems to me, and

28:36you can correct me if I'm wrong, is about going to a prostitute.

28:42That is, that is never decried in this.

28:45There's nothing in the story that suggests there's anything wrong with that.

28:48There's something wrong with a woman being a prostitute, according to, you know, part

28:53of their family, no, no, uh, no, no twice married and, and we know daughter of mine is

28:59going to be engaged in sex work on, um, you know, under my roof, but even if she's not

29:04under his roof anymore, but yeah, the, uh, and, and this raises a point that, uh, a lot

29:09of people don't realize when they talk about adultery, adultery, like a man was not committing

29:15adultery, if he was married and went and had sex with an unmarried woman, that's not adultery

29:21in the Hebrew Bible, because he could be married to as many women as he wanted.

29:26And in that time period, there was, uh, there were a variety of different ways to kind of

29:32stake a marriage claim.

29:33And one of them was to have sex with a woman and we're going to get to that in a little

29:38minute.

29:39Yeah.

29:40Let's, let's wrap this business up and then we'll, we'll get into some, some real nitty

29:43gritty on that front. Right. So, so Judah's like, ah, you got me. You got me. I didn't,

29:49uh, I didn't give you my youngest son because I thought, uh, somehow, you know, um, it was

29:54so I married an axe murder scenario. I thought maybe you were Mrs. X and we're going to, um,

30:00take Shalav from me as well. And, uh, I, one can only imagine, uh, what her response must

30:08have been at that time. Uh, relief, probably that she was not going to be burned. Uh, probably

30:15a little, uh, pride in, um, sticking it to Judah. Yeah. Um, I mean, he, okay, no more

30:24jokes that I just can't do. All right. But here's the question that I have just as this.

30:29I don't even know if we know the ins and outs of, I mean, first of all, this is Genesis,

30:36which means that maybe the, uh, the deuteronomy mystic. Is that the word? Dude, that is a word.

30:42Um, the deuteronomist would be whoever was responsible. Whatever the laws are that govern

30:47all of this because, you know, the, the laws that you pointed out are in deuteronomy, whatever

30:53the laws are that govern this. I don't know how this works, but my curiosity is did Tamar

30:59by the end of this give birth to, oh, and it's twins, but did are the twins that she gave

31:06birth to, uh, Judas youngest sons or are they hers oldest sons? So, um, there's not a, there's

31:20not a marriage there. Yeah. This, this I think is a, is an interesting question, uh, because

31:24I mean the, the act, the, um, the act of patronization could be considered a, um, the act of marriage.

31:35So it could be a legally, they would have been considered hers, uh, children because she's,

31:42she's basically trying to fulfill the leverate expectation where the other two have failed.

31:48But, uh, I'd, I'd be curious how people who like put together the lineages would actually

31:54list that. Yeah. Um, in fact, I, I'm just going to look it up right now. How do they?

32:00I mean, the question makes sense, right? I like, Oh yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. So I mean,

32:05because she could then be his wife, Judas wife, but if Onan's kid was going to be then

32:14considered legally hers kid. Yeah. Who knows? I, yeah, that's, that's. So, uh, if we look

32:23in the genealogy in Matthew one, it actually lists Perez and Zara as Judas children. Okay.

32:31Now, yeah. So, um, again, it's a situation where leverage works differently in, in different

32:38circumstances, different societies. And so who knows, uh, exactly how it was understood.

32:44It could have changed because obviously the, the genealogy in Matthew is not like a perfect

32:50representation of the genealogies as they were understood 500 years earlier. Uh, they're,

32:56they're negotiating with it just like everyone else is. Right. But, um, yeah, that is, that

33:02is an interesting question because according to the law of leverage marriage, uh, you know,

33:07and that's why that's why Onan didn't want to do it because it wouldn't have been considered

33:11his child. It would have been considered is deceased brothers child. Yeah. Hmm. So if,

33:16if, if it had, if they had been shalaz kids, then they would have been urs kids, but since

33:21they were dad's kids and their dad's kids and they don't get the first borns share,

33:28they get the last borns share probably. Yeah. I get that is an inch. That is an interesting

33:35consideration. Anyway, now again, this is all literary fiction. So okay. Fine. Just trying

33:42to explore the, the, the rules here. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and this, you know, the, they're

33:49more like guidelines than, yeah, I'm sure this is something that I, that I always point

33:53out when I'm teaching biblical Hebrew, um, by the way, I'm going to be teaching biblical

33:57Hebrew starting August 5th. So, um, anybody out there who wants to, uh, to learn some

34:03of this, you know, the language isn't built on a foundation of rules. Language is does

34:08what language is going to do. And then we turn around and look back at it and try to

34:12identify patterns. Right. And then we say, these are the rules when really it's like

34:16these are the tendencies. Yeah. And all tendencies have, uh, exceptions. So, but yeah, that's,

34:23uh, that's the story of, uh, Judah and Er and Onan and Tamar and not Shalah. Right. So.

34:34And the story of leverage marriage, which, uh, this is the, the, this and Ruth are the

34:39two stories where leverage bubbles to the surface within, uh, the Hebrew Bible. Would

34:44leverage of covered kind of everybody? Would that be a, a standard like thing or did it

34:50apply only in certain circumstances or only if invoked by the, by the widow or like, was

34:56it or by the widow as if she had a choice in the matter by, by the family or whatever?

35:02Um, it's that's another unknown. We see what's in the text. And according to the text, it

35:10sounds like this is the law. This is what is expected. But, uh, we already know that

35:15Deuteronomy is a, is a pretty ambitious set of laws that probably wasn't ever enforced.

35:23And so we, we probably had, uh, each tribe probably had its own way of, of making it

35:28work. And it, it's also probably something that often flew under the radar. You know,

35:34you, you probably had situations where somebody died and the dad and the, the daughter in

35:39law were just like, let's just, right. Let's not worry about this. And, and that, and you

35:45know, nobody would have gotten upset. The curtain twitchers across the street might

35:49have tried to, to raise, uh, some complaints, but yeah, who knows.

35:54It almost seems like just reading the text, it almost seems like Judah is just making

35:59this decision. Like it could, he could have made a different decision, but instead he

36:04decided, you know what? Own and good get in there. We're, we're gonna, we're gonna keep

36:09pursuing this. Yeah. And this, and this is, uh, this raises another observation that this

36:17period seems to be more about just the patriarchy running the show. Right. As the Potter familius,

36:25as the supreme authority within that household, which included the, uh, the sons, the daughters,

36:31the servants, the servants, sons and daughters, any, anybody who resided within their, he,

36:36um, reigns supreme. And so he probably could have done what he wanted and they're, you

36:42know, depending on how early we understand leverate marriage to have been operative among

36:48these tribes. Maybe it wasn't even a thing. Maybe if it was a thing, the elders, uh, we're

36:53kind of like, yeah, you got that option if you want, um, we don't know for sure. But Deuteronomy

36:5925 is probably later than this story. Okay. Uh, but yeah. All right. Well, there you go.

37:07There's, there's the story of that. Uh, we may return to Genesis 38 at some point if

37:12we ever want to discuss masturbation, because, uh, own anism becomes a very important part

37:19of that discussion. Uh, but we'll see, we'll see who knows. Um, in the meantime, let us move

37:26on to a little chapter and verse only this is, this is laws of the land. You know what

37:31I mean? We're, we're going to get into some, some legalistic stuff. Uh, we're going back to Deuteronomy.

37:38This is 22. Mm hmm. And we're going to discuss some laws and, uh, yeah, this is, this is where

37:46things start to get a little sketchy. So why don't you guide us through what we're, what we're

37:50looking at here. Okay. Um, if, if you want an interesting law, you can check out, uh, earlier

38:00in the chapter versus 13 through 21. We're going to skip that for now. We're going to start in verse

38:0622. And this is, this is basically some laws about adultery and sexual assault. And there's a

38:12little bit of overlap between these two things. Uh, and something that we've talked about before

38:18is that, you know, you don't really have a clear concept of the agency and the will of women in

38:23this time period. Uh, that in fact, they were not considered to be the owners of their own

38:29sexuality and their sexual organs and stuff. That was property of their husband or their

38:36father anticipating, uh, getting paid to, um, sell them to a husband. So, um, they don't really have

38:45much agency or control over their own sexuality. And so there, we're going to see some, some lines

38:52blurring together here, but starting in verse 22, we have a set of laws and this is NRSVUE. I'm

38:57going to dip into the Hebrew a little bit to talk about what's going on in some of these passages.

39:01If a man is discovered lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die,

39:07the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.

39:13Now, this is talking about adultery. Uh, and we just talked about how, uh, if, if a married man

39:21is lying with a woman who's not married, that's not adultery at all. We're going to get to what's

39:26going on there. But this is just saying, yeah, they, they both must die. So shall you purge

39:31the evil from Israel. And the idea here seems to be similar to what we have going on in the

39:35holiness legislation, which is this idea that this act generates a kind of metaphysical contaminant

39:43that gets out onto the actual land and pollutes the land and the land can only stand so much of

39:50it before it will vomit you out. And that's, that's the warning we get in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20.

39:57And so the punishment, it says this punishment is how you purge the evil from Israel, from the land.

40:04Yeah. It keeps saying that it says, it says that sort of after each of these things, like, yeah,

40:09this is the, it feels like it knows that this is harsh, that killing these people is harsh.

40:17And so it's sort of justifying it. Yeah. In that way, it is interesting that

40:22women are not considered to be the, you know, obviously, in this case, where a man is lying with

40:33the wife of another man, it's clear what the man's sin is. Like, it's a, it's a violation of the

40:41other man's property, right, essentially. It's unclear what the woman's sin is or like, in this case,

40:49she could, you know, he could be doing it entirely against her will, but she's still going to be

40:56killed for this act. Yeah. Yeah. And it does, it just does not address

41:01whether or not this was consensual. It is hurt. Yeah. It doesn't seem to be relevant to the question.

41:10No. And she, yeah, this has bred some very, very bad, I just this week saw a tick-tock

41:20of a woman talking about when she was young and having been told in church, you know,

41:27sort of among the young women of her church, she had been told that they had all been told that if

41:33they were sexually assaulted, better that they should, that they should fight to the death.

41:40Right. Then come home sullied. Right. And I think that is just about as toxic a theology as you could

41:47possibly, possibly concoct. It seems like it's rooted in verses like this. Yeah. And, and it's

41:56rooted in this, this long-standing patriarchal idea that the value of a woman is found in her,

42:01her purity and her, and which is really like the, the objectification of, of what this is so

42:11rooted in the object, objectification of women. Because nothing changes about a woman physically.

42:17No. Once she's had sex, virginity is an abstract. It is a conceptual category that we have created.

42:24It is a social construct. It means nothing biologically except that there has been a penis

42:33in this vagina. That is all that it means. And so to say that this somehow sullies a woman

42:41is to say that she is property and the property is no longer in pristine new condition. It is now

42:50used and therefore it is less valuable. It is literally treating a woman as property.

42:56There is, there's not really a legitimate way to conceptualize it other, other than to say that

43:04we want these organs to be fresh and new and have that new car smell. And any use of this is,

43:14you know, it means it's damage goods, means it's used property. And that's, that's just awful. But

43:22the notion, and I understand what that rhetoric is trying to do. It's trying to emphasize how

43:29important this is. But when you try to escalate the importance by saying, oh, oh, you should be

43:36willing to fight to the death before that, what it's saying is that that purity is more important

43:42than your life. Right. And so if someone has been sexually assaulted or even engages

43:49consensually in premarital sex, the message is you don't deserve to live. Yeah. And there are people

43:57who have taken their own lives because that's the message they hear. Your respective of what the

44:02person who communicated that message thought they were communicating. That's what people hear. And

44:08that has resulted in people taking their own lives. And that is abominable. Yeah.

44:14Elizabeth Smart, the, the kidnap victim from here in Salt Lake City speaks very eloquently

44:21about all of this. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, there's more bad, bad laws coming up. Let's get to those.

44:29So there's a, there's a threefold division between verses 22 and 29. First, we're going to talk

44:34about a married woman, then we're going to talk about a betrothed woman. And then we're going to

44:38talk about an unmarried unbetrothed woman who is obviously, she is, I don't know, she's gone

44:46through puberty. Yeah. Buckle up for that. Yeah. So verses 23 and 24, if there is a young woman,

44:54a virgin already engaged to be married and a man meets her in town and lies with her,

45:01you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman

45:06because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife.

45:12So you shall purge the evil from your midst. And here, the fact that this is a property crime

45:18against a man is made explicit. Yeah. The other man is put to death, not because

45:24he victimized a woman, but because he violated the property rights of another man. Right. But then,

45:33and this is the part that that people have been arguing about this for generations.

45:36But you shall stone the young woman to death because she did not cry for help in the town.

45:44Yeah. And this is, there's, there are a lot of assumptions that have to be made here.

45:49And the people who wrote this are making a bunch of assumptions. For instance,

45:55it seems to be saying if he, if it happened, that means she did not cry out. It doesn't seem to

46:03allow for the possibility that she did cry out. And nobody heard. Right. She did cry out. And the

46:10neighbors were like, not my business. Right. She did cry out. But because she was paralyzed

46:17with fear, maybe she could not cry loudly enough. Maybe he was choking her. Maybe he threatened her.

46:26And she was scared. There are any one of a number of reasons why this could have been non-consensual.

46:32And she could not have put a stop to it. Right. But what this law seems to be doing is,

46:39it seems to be performing the ability to consider the agency of the woman by saying,

46:46well, let's offer two different scenarios. If it happens in a town, then she didn't cry out.

46:52This is not how actual jurisprudence on the ground plays out. This is, this is just somebody

47:00abstractly kind of making up a scenario. Let's just say that if it happens in a town,

47:06that means she didn't stop it. That means she gets killed. And I don't think it's,

47:11I don't think it's about her agency, whether she wanted it or not, or if it was consensual

47:16or not. I think it's just saying she didn't stop it. That's where that's the fulcrum on which all

47:23of this pivots is whether or not she stopped it. Because in the next verse, it says, if the man

47:29meets the engaged woman in the open country and the man seizes her and lies with her,

47:35then only the man who lay with her shall die. You shall do nothing to the young woman. The young

47:40woman has not committed an offense punishable by death. Because this case is like that of someone

47:45who attacks and murders a neighbor. Since he found her in the open country, the engaged woman.

47:50Okay. Now the NRSV says may have cried for help. And that is not what is in the Hebrew.

47:57Interesting. Yeah. Because the Hebrew just said, and Sa'akah

48:04cried out, the young woman. So the engaged woman cried out, but there was no one to rescue her.

48:13So the NRSVUE is doing some, some rehabilitating here of this text. Because this is the opposite

48:21side of the coin. If it happened in the city, she didn't cry out. Why? Because it happened.

48:26Because we're assuming that if she was unwilling, then she would have cried out,

48:31and it would not have happened. He would not have. All of the everyone's would come running.

48:36Right. And they would arrive before he was able to actually do anything.

48:40And so this is the other side of the coin. Oh, if it happened in the open field, she did cry out.

48:46Yeah. And so this is a performance of the ability to be compassionate and to consider the agency

48:56of the woman in an awful way, in a way that would not stand in any courtroom, ancient or modern.

49:02But it's saying, hey, let's show them that we can consider the agency of the woman.

49:08And then we get to the case of the woman who has not married or engaged. In verse 28 and 29,

49:15it says, if a man meets a virgin who is not engaged and seizes her and lies with her,

49:21and they are discovered, the man who lay with her shall give 50 shekels of silver to the young

49:26woman's father, and she'll become his wife, because he violated her, and he shall not be

49:31permitted to divorce her as long as he lives. So, which lots of stuff going on here to wolf.

49:37Yeah, that was really rough. Can we start with just, and this is a question I had actually earlier

49:42in the chapter, the word virgin here, we understand that one way. I know that the word virgin has

49:49in history been used to just mean a young woman, and hasn't been a reflection of her sexual past at

49:58all. What are we thinking on this? So, Batula is the word here, which generally is a little more

50:08tightly focused on virginity. Nara is the word for young woman, and this just means a young woman.

50:17You do have alma, which is a woman who is of marriageable age. And so, alma is not really

50:24marked for virginity or not virginity, it could be either or. Alma usually is, you're an alma

50:31between puberty and having your first child. So, a married woman who has not yet pregnant

50:39could be referred to as an alma. So, it's, at least as far as we know, again, language does what

50:47language is going to do. So, we can't really put rules on these things, we can just observe tendencies,

50:52but Batula is much more closely associated with a modern concept of a woman who has not had sexual

51:01intercourse. Now, it says he seizes her, and this is where a lot of apologists get upset,

51:07because one of the things that to note here is that, again, this is about a property crime,

51:15not about rape. And not because it's not the sexual assault of a woman, it's because they

51:22didn't have the category of rape, because they didn't care about the woman's agency.

51:28And one of the ways that we know this is because the punishment for raping a woman

51:33is different depending on whether or not she's married, because here, he rapes this woman who is

51:40not engaged or married, and the punishment is, oh, now you got a merrier, whereas if she's betrothed

51:47or married, he dies. So, it's only a death penalty if she's married, because that contractual relationship

51:56is considered to be sacrosanct in this society. When she's still in her father's household,

52:03she is a potential money. She is a potential bride, but she still, the father still stands to profit

52:15from her marriage. So, there is a, there is monetary loss that takes place because of this.

52:22But the word therefore seizes her is different from the word in the previous account, where it says,

52:28the man seizes her and lies with her in verse 25. There, let me pull up verse 25.

52:34There, the verb is kazak, which means to grab, to grasp, to seize. And in verse 28, the verb is

52:45tafas, which also means to grab, to grasp, or to seize. Now, the reason that, that apologists think

52:52that they have an out here is because tafas can be used to mean to handle or to hold. And so,

52:58they're like, it's talking about, you know, just caressing this woman, not seizing her. The problem

53:04with that that none of them ever seem to note is that it only ever means to handle or to hold

53:12when the direct object is an inanimate object. Right. Every single time this verb is used with

53:18a person as a direct object, it means to grasp, it means to hold them against their will.

53:25It means to physically restrain them. Okay. So, so this unquestionably is referring to sexual

53:31assault. And a lot of people will say, well, does that mean that it is consigning a victim of rape

53:39to marrying her rapist? That that's kind of taking this law and turning it around. And there are a

53:45couple of things to say here, kind of, because the as a victim of rape, she's, she is now tainted

53:53goods in in the eyes of this society. And so she is not eligible for proper Israelite marriage anymore.

53:59And that's why the punishment is that the man must marry her and cannot divorce her as long as she

54:04lives. Because he has, when it says violated her, that's the verb anah. And and this, in my opinion,

54:13it's used to mean humiliated, humble, all these kinds of stuff. In my opinion, this verb has to do

54:17with the violation of her virginity, her, her sexual purity or something like that. And so,

54:25saying that that has been violated is saying she's no longer eligible for for proper Israelite

54:32marriage. And so he has to marry her so that she is provided for it is providing a way for her to

54:38be taken care of. She's going to be a part of a household. She's not going to be a drain on her

54:45father's house anymore. She's going to be a part of another household and be taken care of.

54:49Which seen purely through the lens of economy is a boon. Yeah, it's, it's not the lens. I think

54:58that most modern people would see this through absolutely. And again, coming back to the fact that

55:03the authors of these passages are writing this for propagandistic purposes. These are not laws

55:09that are ever going to see the inside of a courtroom. These are laws. This is, this is this 10 command

55:13is being posted on the outside of the courtroom. They have nothing to do with what goes on inside

55:18the courtroom. They're for show. These are the show laws. And so these are being written by people who

55:23don't know anything about this, which is why they're like, Oh, yeah, if it happens in the city, I mean,

55:28it means she didn't stop it. She didn't cry out because if she cried out, obviously somebody would

55:33have stopped it. So these are not people who are taking this incredibly seriously. These are not

55:40laws that will function within the jurisprudence on the ground. However, we do have something in

55:48in Exodus 20, I think it's 22 16. A very similar law where

55:55it says that if a man seduces a virgin, and the word for seduce is pata, which means to entice to

56:08deceive. If he seduces her and and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her

56:18his wife. But if the father refuses to give her to him, he shall pay an amount equal to the bride

56:24price for virgins. Now, if we go back to Deuteronomy 22, I think it actually says it's

56:30much higher than the bride price.

56:3250. I don't know what you'd have to give us some context for how much 50 shekels is worth and

56:42what a bride price is and stuff. So an enslaved person was 30 shekels. That's the standard. The

56:47bride price was probably 20 to 30 shekels. 50 shekels might be double the bride price.

56:53And so it's not just the father is getting his bride price. He's getting the bride price and then

57:00some, at least in Deuteronomy 22 in Exodus, it's a little different. But because Exodus uses this

57:06verb that means to entice seduce deceive, it's not clear that this is sexual assault. It might just be

57:14seduction. Although there is overlap in the semantic range of the concept of rape and the

57:25concept of seduction, including in the way it was used. But notice that in Exodus, the father can

57:33refuse. The father can be like, Nope, I'm just going to take the money and I'm going to hold on to

57:37my daughter, you bastard. So that's an option, according to Exodus. And again, this stuff in Deuteronomy

57:47is never going to see the inside of a courtroom. But if it did, almost certainly every father would

57:53be like, no, she's not going with him. And so the law would be would be overruled. That way,

58:02Exodus, same thing, these were not laws meant for the inside of a courtroom, but they provide an

58:08out so that it is not required that a rape victim marry her rapist. And when this kind of stuff

58:14happened, I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that 999 times out of 1000 times, the woman stayed

58:22in her father's household. Yeah, I mean, okay, that's an interesting speculation. It's still

58:28abominable that this is even here. Yeah, like the problem is that this is here and that people now

58:35take it seriously. You know what I mean? Like, even if they would never dream of

58:40marrying their child against her will to her rapist, the fact that it's there and that people

58:51think about it as though it is a serious thing is is the deeply problematic thing. Yeah. And it

58:59leads to some of that thinking that we talked about earlier, it leads to people saying awful

59:03things to their daughters about being, you know, who wants a chewed piece of gum or whatever, like,

59:08it all it's all sort of part and parcel with that. Yeah, it is. Unfortunately, because it's still

59:17there because it's considered authoritative, it's in it influences the rhetoric it influences how

59:23people think about these issues. But you know, you have an awful lot of apologists who just try to

59:31deny it and just try to argue, no, this is this is about consensual sex. This isn't about sexual

59:36assault. And that's their attempt to negotiate with the text to make it a little more amenable to

59:42their particular moral outlook. And in 2020, whatever year it is 2024, the 21st century,

59:52we really need to be able to recognize when the text of the Bible is not just wrong, but is just

60:00abominable is morally despicable. And this is this is an instance of that. And I don't think it's

60:08because they were doing these things. I think it was just because this was the rhetoric they

60:13were using in their day for their propagandistic purposes. And because they were deeply patriarchal,

60:20not incredibly thoughtful or compassionate set of writers, the Deuteronomists, particularly of

60:25this part of Deuteronomy, they were just like, yeah, whatever, we'll just say it like this.

60:29But yeah, and I think I guess that that's the important takeaway right here is that you,

60:36a believer is is I think I think we can say it is the editorial position of this podcast that it is

60:44safe and and moral to jettison this from our belief systems, at least in terms of like having

60:51any control over how we think about things now. Yeah, I think it is a moral moral imperative to do

60:57so. I think it would be immoral, not to do so. And yeah, the people who want to argue with that

61:04are are going to try to turn the text into something that it is not in order to try to get around

61:11that. So that's a problems with these texts are deployed.

61:18Well, there you have it friends. Thank you so much for joining us. If you would like to continue

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