Today, I am reading and commenting on  Deuteronomy 21-23.

This passage contains several commands which are designed to protect women from sexual exploitation.  The first such command concerns women captured in war.  If a man takes such a woman as a slave and intends to have sex with her, he must give her a month to mourn her family and then he can take her as his wife.  If he decides that he no longer wants her as his wife, he must set her free.  He may not sell her or treat her as a slave.  Then there is the instruction concerning a man who has two wives, of whom he only loves one.  He may not treat the children of the one he loves preferentially over the children of his unloved wife.  Continuing in the passage there are laws concerning rape which assume that sexual acts between a man and a woman to whom he is not married is rape.  These laws meant that if a man seduced a woman, he would need to take care of her economically for the rest of his life.  While in our society today, such laws would punish women for the actions of someone else, in that society they protected them from abuse.  As importantly, they reinforced the idea that having sex with someone meant that you were married to them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.