When Deuteronomy 22 was written, there were few sexual protections for women. This law therefore moved culture forward by giving women some protection, creating a counterculture in its wake. It held the man responsible for the consequences he created in his sin against the woman. He had to pay her father a price worthy of the woman he violated, and he could never divorce her. The law required him to remove the victim’s public shame and restore her to a position of dignity in her community through marriage. The abuser was made to value what he took by force.
Many women, including me, endure the tragic experience of Scripture being misused against them, often by men. It can be difficult to untangle Scripture’s truth from man’s manipulation. But even when the Word is handled rightly, some passages are difficult to engage as a woman. They seem unfair or even cruel.
Could any passage be as troubling for women as Deuteronomy 22?
A decade ago, Rachel Held Evans raised this passage in A Year of Biblical Womanhood. To be biblical, Held argued, women had to marry their rapists. To be biblical, Christians should stone anyone caught in an adulterous affair. To be biblical, Christians should kill a woman who didn’t cry out as she was being raped. To fully engage Evans’s argument would require dealing with her definition of “biblical,” which is outside the scope of this article. Nevertheless, she raised legitimate questions: How should we understand Deuteronomy 22? And does its inclusion in the Scriptures mean the Bible cannot be trusted to guide and direct women today?
These questions can’t be completely answered in a single article. But we can begin to make sense of them by considering both history and hermeneutics. We’ll start by looking at the specific situations described in light of their historical context. Then we’ll zoom out to consider this passage in Scripture’s larger story. As we do, please keep in mind that this article is addressing a specific textual question rather than offering counsel for victims of sexual assault.
Questions about Deuteronomy 22—as much as questions around eschatology, soteriology, or ecclesiology—require a hermeneutic. We need a holistic way of reading Scripture’s long story to understand this chapter. Jesus is that hermeneutic, the lens through which we must read the Bible. Let’s consider what Deuteronomy 22 says and then seek to understand what it means for women today.
Laws on Sexual Ethics
Deuteronomy 22:13 begins a section of the law on sexual ethics. It first deals with a husband’s false accusation that his wife had sex before marriage. Verses 15–19 outline a process for the wife to prove her innocence and, if this is found true, for the husband to be punished. The law protected women in this situation from false accusations.
Verse 22 then deals with a man and woman caught in adultery. They must have been found in the act, so they’re protected from false accusations based only on hearsay. The penalty was stark—the couple would be stoned to death—but it was the same for both the man and the woman.
Verses 23–27 then deal with the rape of a woman engaged to another man. The man who raped her was to be stoned to death. The Scriptures say violating a woman in this way is akin to a man murdering his neighbor. If the sexual act occurred outside of town, it was assumed the woman didn’t consent and she was protected from punishment. But here’s where the tricky part comes in—if the act occurred within the city, it was labeled as rape only if the woman cried out. This is worth a brief excursion.
Remember the Law’s Purpose
A 2023 New York Times article highlighted the number of women who, as a response to the trauma of rape, shut down rather than cried out during the act. Though I’ve never experienced rape, I’ve had this response to other trauma in my life. I sink into myself and have been accused of not caring in times of crisis. But sometimes I can’t process what’s happening. Mentally, I descend into a bunker and close the door, slowly opening it inch by inch over time to take in the circumstances that forced me into my mental fortress.
Not everyone reacts this way to trauma, but many naturally do, and it can be a helpful coping mechanism in some situations.
At first reading, Deuteronomy 22 seems unfair for requiring a woman to cry out. But it’s important to remember the law wasn’t only given to prescribe punishments for violations; it was given to teach God’s people how to live before the violation ever happens. Deuteronomy 6 explains that these commandments, rules, and statutes were given to God’s people so that “it may go well with [them]” and “that [their] days may be long” (vv. 1–3). Parents were instructed, “Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (v. 7, CSB).
When my sons were 2 and 4 years old, we attended a cooperative preschool. The teachers taught a safety curriculum, and one lesson was on abduction. We taught the kids to yell and scream nonstop until someone came to help. We practiced, and we repeated the instructions. Similarly, in Moses’s time, if Jewish moms and dads were teaching their children God’s law, their daughters were taught through Deuteronomy 22 to cry out if they were taken against their will.