By Kerwin Holmes, Jr.

A mind that constantly considers its steps is a mind that is surer to walk firmly in them and to know its own paths.

So this post will be a repaso, which is Spanish for “review” or “revision,” on a topic that I wrote about several years ago while studying the Bible and also listening to skeptical voices…both of which I still do in my free time (listening to skeptical voices less frequently, since studying the Bible is more important for people like me).

Sometimes we need to revisit past trails in order to get to better ground.

The title, if you cannot tell, is taken from a previous post that is named: “Never Hide from Critics.” It was inspired by my viewing an episode of The Rubin Report by Dave Rubin wherein he had two other non-believers (in the Christian sense) on his show in what was supposed to have been a discussion on religion and politics broadly speaking, but which rapidly became a bash-Christianity-fiesta (and not so surprisingly so, since Rubin starts off with an idiotic claim concerning the evidence for God and Jesus). You can catch that episode and the full journey that it inspired in the previous post.

In a quick recap: I basically sat down and pondered one of the questions raised by one of the atheists (aka athelists) in the show: whether the Bible had a verse condemning rape (known euphemistically in some circles as “sexual assault,” but in honesty sexual assault is such a broad category of crime that it cannot be definitely limited to the intention of rape).

I went down the path which concluded via linguistic data that Deuteronomy 22:25-27 does indeed condemn rape, and that the Mosaic punishment for a rapist was execution after conviction by public trial. See the previous post “Never Hide from Critics” for the full journey and justification. I am not the only one who has reached this conclusion. The Orthodox Presbyterian American philosopher Dr. Greg Bahnsen also reached this conclusion on the Hebrew text, as seen cited here in this apologetic material.

For those who know Biblical Hebrew, here is the full text of the Deuteronomy passage: https://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0522.htm.

I then began to end the post with the following statement:

“I may still be wrong, people can say.  Who knows?  We must study more.  I see through a glass darkly, and God is not through maturing me yet (I’m not yet dead).  But I am glad that I serve a God who allows me to question Him so and to get down to the root of the issue, no matter how high my personal heroes from among the Bible’s sinners may be in my own sight. “

Thankfully, having some bit of foresight and leaving room for correction has recently proven fruitful for myself. A few weeks ago, I was discussing this issue with a friend of mine who is also a Christian. We were having a nice bout of intellectual and spiritual discussion per usual, and the conversation of the hashtag #MeToo Movement (something that has occurred since I took my hiatus) came up. Very quickly he challenged me on my stance on the just adjudication of a rape case, as I took the law from Deuteronomy 22:26 to state that when a rape victim informed the authorities, the woman’s testimony along with the physical evidences of her having been raped were enough to punish the man. My friend pointed out succinctly that this was reckless thinking along the caliber of the song “Reckless Love,” and that any woman would then be able to accuse any man of having raped her by simply tearing some clothes here and there and then claiming that a man she despised, be it stranger or lover, had sexually assaulted her in that way.

Now, I already knew that the Mosaic Law stood against such false accusations, and I knew that not by my own emotive response to this particular injustice, but from the Law itself. The sexual violation laws in Deuteronomy 22 actually begin much earlier than verse 25, and those demonstrate that a woman would not be simply able to claim “rape” when she was caught in an adulterous act with another man. In addition to this, Deuteronomy 17 and Deuteronomy 19 both have verses which describe how the judgment process is to be meted out, with the accusers (at least two) personally testifying against the accused before a group of judges who adjudicate the case. Not a single accusation in any crime could be upheld without at least two witnesses. Some may argue that circumstantial evidences amounted to another witness, but the Torah seems pretty clear here to denote actual persons who can incriminate another. This is repeated in the New Covenant for Christian conduct within Messiah’s Church (Jesus, Paul, and the writer to the Hebrew Christians repeat this).

But my friend’s challenge was pertinent. The MeToo Movement has resulted in a lot of controversy and even apparent false accusations. One does not have to go far in history to see how damaging this has been. The most controversial one perhaps would be Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing, something that, although ending late last year (with the news coverage finding something better to do by earlier this year), seems to have been a total national embarrassment in terms of the lack of the assumption of innocence, the lack of any actual trial, and the apparent total lack of credible witnesses. It all seemed to have been a political (sham)ing effort to get Kavanaugh disqualified for the Supreme Court. Once that didn’t work, all charges were suddenly dropped. It was as if the witnesses lost any interest of bringing “justice” to Kavanaugh, something that still would have been probable and still is possible to do in a court of law– should the evidence present itself.

So I went back and reread the Scriptures, and I noticed something. Though a strict situational reading can be read into the verses Deuteronomy 22:22-29, such a situational reading is not necessary. The red-handed discovery of a man sleeping with another man’s wife or vice-versa does not need to occur for Torah to be applied. The crime could also be verified by circumstantial evidences that lead to the conclusion, such as lack of alibis (human witnesses can attest to that), pregnancy where the father is very clearly shown in the physical appearance/characteristics of the child (human witnesses can attest to that), or the circumstances of a resultant pregnancy (think David and Uriah but if Bathsheba had been forced into that sexual situation…because it was not so in her case).

The reason for this is that the Law really has statements on what to do once the guilt has been determined. What we have with Deuteronomy 22:21-29 are not procedural statutes, but penal statutes. What we have here are not laws that detail how determining guilt should function, procedural statutes, rather we have laws that detail what the just punishments are for each crime and these give the reasoning behind the punishment meant to be meted out upon the guilty, penal statutes.

So then, what is the standard for justly convicting a man who is accused of rape in the Mosaic Law? What are the procedural statutes? Deuteronomy 17 and 19 have that answer.

One may ask: “But isn’t that impossible given that the situation described in Deuteronomy 22 actually states that there was no one else around to help, and hence no additional person to witness the cruel deed except the woman alone?”

Well, there are other ways to prove that the man was the one who raped the woman. For one, the man may confess to a friend who may (and should) report him, or another passerby may see the man fleeing the scene while the act was concluding, or the violated woman may become pregnant and the man could be proven to be the father. There are a myriad of ways to prove that the man is identified as the culprit. But, yes, in the case that the rapist cannot be determined in the criteria of the procedural statutes, there cannot be a punishment.

Many will decry this as injustice. And in the short-term, it certainly seems that way. But we must remember a crucial principle about justice in that we don’t establish justice. God alone establishes justice. This means that sometimes, “on this side of eternity” so-to-speak, the guilty will go free from penalty in our human penal system. We will have some people go free who truly are guilty…but the goal of justice also is to minimize or eliminate the situations in which people who are innocent become bound and punished. This is the protection given in the Torah, and it is one which we see reflects the mind of God, the Sovereign of the universe. Because to punish an innocent human being for a crime is its own injustice that also demands justice.

God the Just One connected rape to murder, marking it under the jurisdiction for human councils to exact the judgment that He declared to be just in Genesis 9. But this is a duty for punishment that God, Who alone has the inherent right of justice, gave to humanity (Adam, אדם). Even then, so early in the Torah, the principles of trial by peers, communal establishment of guilt, and the right for executing justice in human society as a restricted gift from God to mankind appear.

We do well to consider this principle of assuming innocence before guilt, and also the establishment of guilt by two or more credible witnesses.

We do well to consider the immense responsibility of our justice system.

We do well to consider our duty to uphold justice in our world; a duty on the ground that it is not forfeited because we did not ask for it or sign up for it. A duty is such a thing that it cannot be denied nor be given away.

And we do well to consider that our own mortal justice is limited, and that the hand of God reaches far beyond the ability of any criminal to hide and any court to punish. His arm of justice also requires payment from those who misuse His gifts of adjudication, whether by abdication or by abuse.

Finally, I still continue to grow. Thank you to my here-to-now unnamed friend (you know who you are) in helping me to consider this part of Torah more closely. Iron sharpens iron, mi gente.

Let’s continue to reason together humbly.

Artwork shown in the preview of this article is Hercules Killing the Centaur Nessus by Sebastiano Ricci, painted circa 1700