Rape
Rape is viewed as a serious crime in the Old Testament. Two basic questions were taken into account when judging rape cases:
- Was the woman married or unmarried?
- Could she have called for help?
If the Woman was not Married
If a man raped a young unmarried woman, he had to marry her and would never be allowed to divorce her. In addition, he had to pay the woman’s father 50 shekels
If the Woman was Married
If a man raped a married woman, he had to be put to death. The woman was also killed, unless she had been raped outside the city. The idea behind this was that in the city she could have called for help. If no one heard her, perhaps she consented to sex, and that was not rape but adultery
Stories about Rapes
There are not only laws about rapists in the Old Testament, but also a number of stories in which women are raped. The best-known of these are:
- the rape of Dinah by Shechem (Genesis 34
); - the gang rape of the concubine of a Levite by the inhabitants of Gibeah (Judges 19
); - the rape of Tamar by her half-brother Amnon (2 Samuel 13
).
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