APPENDIX TO CHAP. I.
Containing farther Thoughts on Exod. xxii. 16, 17.
THIS scripture is usually understood very evidently to contain a law, that he who enticed, &c. a young woman, should be obliged to marry her. To understand it in any other light, is to divest the most intelligible and plain words of their certain and obvious meaning. But it is to be observed, that the damsel must be entirely disengaged from any betrothment to another man; for if she were betrothed to another, then the man who defiled her could not marry her, but both he and she, if she consented to the defilement, were to be put to death, according to Deut. xxii. 23, 24; otherwise it is here said, ver. 16. he shall surely endow her to be his wife, or for a wife to himself, as—לו לאשה—may be more literally rendered. So Josephus—Ὁ φθείρας παρθένον, &c. ἀυτος γαμεὶτω.—"He who defiles a virgin, the same shall marry her." That is, shall pay the dowry, and so recognize and confirm the marriage-obligation,
which had been created by his antecedently taking possession of her person.
From the 17th verse it is usually understood, that, if the father refused to give her to him, the man was to pay a satisfaction in money for the injury and disgrace he had done her: and though the law, ver. 16. appointed the marriage, both as a punishment to him that had done the wrong, and a recompence to her that had suffered the wrong: yet that there was an express reservation of the father's power (ver. 17.) if he refused his consent, it must be no marriage; only the money to be paid as τὴν τιμὴν τῆς ὕβρεως—a satisfaction for her reproach, as Josephus speaks.
The Jewish doctors were very lax in their interpretation of this passage of scripture, who would not have it to be a command (ver. 16.) that he should marry her (though that was best) but only that he should make satisfaction for taking away her virginity; which was by paying so much in the nature of dowry as would render her fit to be his wife if both of them could agree.
This interpretation of the 16th verse, is one of those arbitrary expositions of the Talmudists, which by robbing the text of its plain meaning, leave us to the uncertainty of human imagination, which being various in various men, must render the scriptures totally uncertain as to any determinate meaning whatsoever.
The 17th verse says nothing of the marriage, whether it shall or shall not be binding, on the father's refusal; but only—"If the father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins." Here I take the words according to our translation—"If," &c. and supposing it (for argument's sake) to include a reservation of the father's authority, so that he might, even where matters had gone so far as described ver. 16. invalidate the contract, by witholding his consent—which, though insisted on by the Talmudists, is hardly reconcileable with the peremptory and positive command, ver. 16.—yet this does not affect the principal point which I contend for, and which is contained in ver. 16; namely, that it is the taking possession of the woman's person which creates the contract, or marriage-obligation. Therefore, no man, agreeably to the divine law, can entice a virgin, defile her, and then forsake her at his own will and pleasure, as is done every day among us in this Christian land, where the law of God is supposed to be the rule of right and wrong, but is, in truth and in fact, put entirely out of the question.
I thought fit to lay these several expositions of this scripture before the reader, that he might the better judge how far I may be right in my views of it, which are before submitted to his consideration, p. 25–28; and, at the same time, form his own judgment of the matter, from that which appears to him to be most agreeable to the context, as well as to the rest of the scripture.
The apostle tells us, Rom. iii. 19. Whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, therefore no Jew, who by circumcision was a debtor to do the whole law (Gal. v. 3.) could be exempt from any part of it. For a like reason, the believing Gentiles, who are compared to the olive-tree wild by nature, but grafted into the good olive-tree (see Rom. xi. 24.) and become members of God's church by the circumcision made without hands (Col. ii. 11.) are certainly under the law as a rule of life, and therefore subject to its moral precepts in every instance. From hence it ought to be concluded, that Christians are as much bound by Exod. xxii. 16. and Deut. xxii. 28, 29, as the Jews are. No reason can be given to the contrary, which will not equally apply to their exemption from the ten commandments; for these were at first delivered, and immediately and particularly addressed to the Jews, as appears from the short preface, Exod. xx. 1, 2. But can there be found a man, mad enough to suppose, that because they were emphatically addressed to the people which God brought out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, no others have any thing to do with them?
References:
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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