The seventh commandment is, "You shall not commit adultery"(5:18).
"Known elsewhere in the ancient Near East as the Great Sin,' adultery epitomizes all that impurity means, whether in family, social, political, or religious life."246
Adultery involves mixing people in a way that they should not mix, so the antithesis is keeping things properly apart separate. The prohibitions against mixing seed, animals in yoke, and fibers in clothing (vv. 9-11) seem to have had a double significance. They taught the Israelites the importance of purity and keeping things distinct ". . . because the order of the world must not be endangered."247They also illustrated the importance of remaining separate from the Canaanites. God had told the Israelites not to mix their human seed with the seed of the Canaanites. The Israelites regarded the ox as a symbol of themselves and the ass as a symbol of the Canaanites. Wool was the fiber from which the Israelites made their clothing. However the Canaanites, especially the Canaanite priests, dressed in linen.248Tassels (v. 12) were also visual aids (cf. Num. 15:37-41).
"One of the ways the purity of the people is to be maintained, one that sounds rather strange in the contemporary world, is the insistence that things be kept in order and not mixed up inappropriately."249
Moses considered seven types of cases in these verses.
The first case (vv. 13-19) is of a man who marries a woman and then falsely charges her with being a harlot (not being a virgin when he married her). If the girl could prove her virginity, her husband would have to pay a large fine (cf. 2 Sam. 24:24) to her father and remain married to the girl.250The evidence of the girl's virginity was the blood on her dress or bedclothes on the wedding night. Some Bedouin and Moslem parents still retrieve and keep these to prove virginity if necessary.251
The second case (vv. 20-21) involved a similar case, but in this instance the girl was not a virgin. She would suffer stoning for being a harlot, a capital offense in Israel. These verses reveal that sex before marriage was sinful and serious in God's sight (cf. 1 Cor. 7:1-2). Premarital sex presumes to seize the highest privilege in marriage (i.e., intimacy through sexual union that results in the "one flesh"relationship). It does so without shouldering the responsibility, namely, permanent commitment to one another (expressed as "cleaving"in Gen. 2:24). It therefore perverts marriage, the basic institution of society. It presumes to dictate to God by altering His plan. Not everyone who has engaged in premarital sex has thought this through, but this is the basic reason premarital sex is wrong. To the engaged couple committed to one another and tempted to have sex before their marriage I would say postpone sex until the marriage has taken place. Scripture regards sex as the consummation of marriage, what takes place after the couple has completed everything else involved in the establishment of marriage (cf. Gen. 2:24).252
The third case (v. 22) decreed that a man who committed adultery with a married woman would die with the woman.
The fourth case (vv. 23-24) dealt with a man who had intercourse with an engaged girl in a city. Both individuals would die by stoning. Israelites regarded engaged girls as virtually married and even called them wives (v. 24). Thus they treated the man as having committed adultery, as in case three. The girl died because she did not cry out for help. She consented to the act. Apparently Moses was assuming that if she had cried out someone in the city would have rescued her.
The fifth case (vv. 25-27) involved a situation similar to case four, but the intercourse took place in an isolated field. In this instance only the man died assuming the girl cried for help but no one heard her. Presumably if it was clear that she did not cry out she would have died too.
The sixth case (vv. 28-29) had to do with a man and a virgin who had intercourse before they became engaged. In this case they had to marry and could not divorce. The man had to pay a penalty to his father-in-law too (cf. Exod. 22:16-17).
The seventh case (v. 30) Moses stated in terms of a general principle. God forbade incest in Israel. "Uncovering the skirt"is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. To uncover means to encroach on another person's marital rights. To cover in this sense represents committing to marry (cf. Ruth 3:9).
"One of the most important and difficult tasks in the interpretation of the Scriptures in general and of the passages that deal with women and marriage in particular, is the need to discern which elements are cultural, temporary, and variable, and which ones are transcultural, timeless, and universal."253
God designed these laws to stress the importance of monogamy in a polygamous culture.
Marital ". . . purity and fidelity are essential to the well-being of society."254
God's people need to keep sex in its proper place in relation to marriage (cf. Heb. 13:4). The focus of this entire chapter is how to apply love.
In the preceding chapter Moses explained the proper types of marital union. In this chapter he set forth the proper types of union of individuals with the covenant community.
This section of verses (vv. 1-8) deals with people who were not born in Israel but wished to worship with full members of the nation.
"The assembly' (qahal) refers here to the formal gathering of the Lord's people as a community at festival occasions and other times of public worship and not to the nation of Israel as such. This is clear from the occurrence of the verb enter' (bo') throughout the passage (vv. 1-3, 8), a verb that suggests participation with the assembly and not initial introduction or conversion to it."255
God excluded eunuchs (v. 1) because lack of wholeness symbolized lack of holiness and perhaps because the Canaanites practiced castration as part of their worship (cf. vv. 17-18). A Canaanite who had submitted to this operation may have been such a strong devotee of Baal that he would not be acceptable as a worshipper. Likewise God excluded an illegitimate child--probably one born out of incest, adultery, or the union of an Israelite and a Canaanite (v. 2; cf. Zech. 9:6).256This restriction would have discouraged Israelites from marrying Canaanites since their children could not participate in public worship. Such a category may have included the offspring of Canaanite temple prostitutes.257"To the tenth generation"(vv. 2, 3) means forever.258
"One was an Israelite and therefore a member of the covenant community by birth. Only by some act of his own will could he lose that privilege. On the other hand, Israelite birth did not automatically qualify one for full participation in community worship, the very point of vv. 1-2."259
The Israelites were to admit no Ammonite or Moabite into public worship (vv. 3-6). The Ammonites and Moabites were descendants of Lot through his incestuous relationship with his daughters (Gen. 19:30-38). Evidently Ammonites, Moabites, and any other peoples could join Israel as proselytes to Yahwism (cf. 2:9, 19; Exod. 12:38; Ruth 4:10; 1 Sam. 22:3-4). The Ammonites and Moabites could not participate in the public worship of Israel, however.
The main reason for the exclusion of the Ammonites and Moabites was the extreme hostility that these nations demonstrated toward Israel when Israel was approaching the Promised Land. Evidently Ammon participated with Moab in resisting Israel's passage, in seeking to curse the Israelites with Balaam's assistance, and or in corrupting the Israelites through sacred prostitution (Num. 22-25).
God treated the Edomites and Egyptians less severely. The great-grandchildren of people from these nations could become worshippers with Israel (vv. 7-8). The rationale again lay in Israel's relationships to these two nations in her history.
Even though not all these people could become worshipping citizens of Israel they could, of course, trust in Israel's God and experience personal salvation. Many individuals who were not even members of the covenant community enjoyed personal salvation (e.g., Melchizedek, Job, the widow of Zarephath, the "God-fearers"among the Gentiles in Jesus' day, et al.).
"Disbarment from the assembly was not synonymous with exclusion from the covenant community itself as the one example of Ruth the Moabite makes clear. . . . There can be no doubt that Ruth was welcomed among the people of the Lord as one of their own though presumably never with access to the assembly."260
From these verses we learn that God's people should be careful about whom they allow to worship with themselves and admit to full privileges among themselves (cf. Rom. 16:17-18).
Various practices, most of which we have discussed previously, rendered the Israelite encampment ceremonially unclean. The laws in these verses applied to Israel after she entered the land and, specifically, while her armies engaged in battle. The connection with the seventh commandment is what is unseemly, especially in the area of sexual associations.
The Israelites were evidently to regard human waste products as unnatural and therefore unclean.
"There was nothing shameful in the excrement itself [v. 14]; but the want of reverence, which the people would display through not removing it, would offend the Lord and drive Him out of the camp of Israel."261
The Israelites were to acknowledge God's presence among them by keeping their camp free of human refuse. This would hallow His name as He walked among them.
". . . much of the information found in the [ancient] Egyptian medical texts was medically hazardous. For example donkey feces were used for the treatment of splinters, which probably increased the incidence of tetanus because of tetanus spores present in feces. Crocodile feces were used for birth control. In contrast Moses wrote that God instructed the Israelites to cover their excrement because it was unclean' (Deut. 23:12-13). At no time did Moses resort to adding the popular medical techniques of his day, though he was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians' (Acts 7:22), which certainly included their medical wisdom."262
God's people should conduct themselves in view of God's presence among them (cf. Eph. 5:3-4).
Israelites were not to become or to dedicate their children as cult prostitutes as the Canaanites did. They were not to offer to God money earned by prostitution to pay for a vow to Him either. The "dog"(v. 18) was a male sanctuary prostitute (cf. Rev. 22:15). Such men were common in Canaanite religion.263The Hebrew terms used here to describe cult prostitutes (qedesaand qades) set them off from regular Israelites who practiced prostitution (zonahand keleb). Obviously any type of prostitution violated the spirit if not the letter of the seventh commandment.
God's people should not rationalize immoral behavior by thinking that it will result in the greater glory of God (cf. Rom. 6:1-2; Acts 5).
