If there’s one sin that the Christian world is almost unanimous in condemning, it’s premarital sex (the act of having sexual intercourse before marriage). Even many liberal Christians tend to view sex as something only meant for the confines of marriage. However, it seems that few actually delve into the biblical texts and their historical context to find support for or against this view. Given the prevalent focus on this sin, and other sexual sins, one might think that it’s condemned repeatedly and emphatically throughout the Bible. But the truth is far more complicated and less straightforward.
In this post, we’ll look at the teachings of the Old and New Testaments on premarital sex, for the purpose of clarifying the Bible’s varied stances on this subject (without making a judgment as to whether or not it is actually a sin).
Premarital sex in the Torah
First, let’s take a look at what the Mosaic Law (found in Exodus through Deuteronomy) tells us about premarital sex. This law compiles all of God’s commandments to the nation of Israel. Although the New Testament abrogated many of the laws and commandments of the Mosaic Law, neither Jesus nor any of the NT authors ever added new commandments to the Law. According to David, “the Law of Yahweh is complete [tamim]” (Ps. 19:7 cf. Deut. 4:2), and so if we want to find God’s most stringent stance on any subject, the Mosaic Law is the place to look.
As it just so happens, the law to Israel contains two lengthy sections describing each and every forbidden sexual sin, in Leviticus 18 and 20. See the following passages:
None of you shall approach any blood relative of his to uncover nakedness; I am Yahweh. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, that is, the nakedness of your mother. She is your mother; you are not to uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife; it is your father’s nakedness. The nakedness of your sister, either your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether born at home or born outside, their nakedness you shall not uncover. The nakedness of your son’s daughter or your daughter’s daughter, their nakedness you shall not uncover; for their nakedness is yours. The nakedness of your father’s wife’s daughter, born to your father, she is your sister, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s sister; she is your father’s blood relative. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister, for she is your mother’s blood relative. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s brother; you shall not approach his wife, she is your aunt.
You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law; she is your son’s wife, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and of her daughter, nor shall you take her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter, to uncover her nakedness; they are blood relatives. It is lewdness.
You shall not marry a woman in addition to her sister as a rival while she is alive, to uncover her nakedness. Also you shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness during her menstrual impurity. You shall not have intercourse with your neighbor’s wife, to be defiled with her. You shall not give any of your offspring to offer them to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God; I am Yahweh. You shall not lie with a male who lies with a female; it is an abomination. Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion. (Lev. 18:6-23)
If there is a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, one who commits adultery with his friend’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. If there is a man who lies with his father’s wife, he has uncovered his father’s nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death, their blood is upon them. If there is a man who lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed incest, their blood is upon them.
If there is a man who lies with a male who lies with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them. If there is a man who marries a woman and her mother, it is immorality; both he and they shall be burned with fire, so that there will be no immorality in your midst. If there is a man who lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; you shall also kill the animal. If there is a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them.
If there is a man who takes his sister, his father’s daughter or his mother’s daughter, so that he sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace; and they shall be cut off in the sight of the sons of their people. He has uncovered his sister’s nakedness; he bears his guilt. If there is a man who lies with a menstruous woman and uncovers her nakedness, he has laid bare her flow, and she has exposed the flow of her blood; thus both of them shall be cut off from among their people. You shall also not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister or of your father’s sister, for such a one has made naked his blood relative; they will bear their guilt. If there is a man who lies with his uncle’s wife he has uncovered his uncle’s nakedness; they will bear their sin. They will die childless. If there is a man who takes his brother’s wife, it is abhorrent; he has uncovered his brother’s nakedness. They will be childless. (Lev. 20:10-21)
These two lengthy lists cover every sexual union that was forbidden for the Israelites. They condemn adultery between a man and another man’s wife, bestiality, incest, and sex with a menstruating woman, among other forbidden sexual acts. However, any mention of premarital sex is conspicuously missing [1]. This is certainly odd; if premarital sex is one of the most serious sins, forbidden under all circumstances, then why is it not mentioned even once in the only two lists of sexual sins of the entire Mosaic Law?
The answer to this question is that, at the time that the Mosaic Law was written, premarital sex was simply not considered an issue of morality. Instead, it was considered entirely a civil issue. To understand why, it’s necessary to understand the historical and cultural context surrounding marriage and sex during the Old Testament period.
At the time that the Old Testament was written, it was required that the groom pay a certain amount to the father-in-law of the bride before marriage. This was known as the bride-price. Today, the bride-price is considered antiquated, seen as commodifying women, but in ancient times it was meant to secure the future of a wife and her children in cases of divorce where the husband was at fault. Furthermore, the bride-price for virgins was somewhat larger; it was usually about three years’ wages, or fifty silver shekels (Deut. 22:29).
This helps to explain why premarital sex was considered a civil issue in the Mosaic Law. If a man had sex with a virgin without marrying her and paying the proper bride-price, then he was in essence stealing money (fifty silver shekels) from the girl and her family. For this reason, a man who had sex with a virgin in ancient Israel was legally required to either marry her and pay the full bride-price, or pay the bride-price without marrying her. This law is set out in both Exodus and Deuteronomy:
And if a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed, and lies with her, he surely will pay the bride-price for her to be his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he will pay money, according to the bride-price of virgins. (Exod. 22:16-17)
If a man finds a young woman, a virgin who is not betrothed, and he lays hold of and lies with her, and they are discovered, then the man who laid with her will give fifty silver [shekels] to the father of the young woman, and she shall be his wife; because he has afflicted her, he is not able to divorce her all his days. (Deut. 22:28-29)
These passages make clear that premarital sex was considered to be a civil issue, rather than a strictly moral one, in virtue of the extra bride-price of virgins (fifty silver shekels).
There is one last passage to consider from the Mosaic Law which deals with the issue of premarital sex. This is Deuteronomy 22:13-21, which is sometimes considered to be prescribing the death penalty for instances of premarital sex:
If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then turns against her, and charges her with shameful deeds and publicly defames her, and says, “I took this woman, but when I came near her, I did not find her a virgin,” then the girl’s father and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of the girl’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. The girl’s father shall say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man for a wife, but he turned against her; and behold, he has charged her with shameful deeds, saying, ‘I did not find your daughter a virgin.’ But this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” And they shall spread the garment before the elders of the city. So the elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him, and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give it to the girl’s father, because he publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. And she shall remain his wife; he cannot divorce her all his days.
But if this charge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin, then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house; thus you shall purge the evil from among you. (NASB)
Oftentimes, this passage is read as saying that (1) brides were expected to be virgins; (2) if a bride is thought not to be a virgin, this is grounds for divorce; (3) hymeneal blood is an effective indicator of virginity; and (4) execution is the divinely prescribed penalty for women who have premarital sex. Since these views are morally outrageous and sexist (and in the case of hymeneal blood, scientifically incorrect), this passage is often appealed to by atheists as an example of the Bible’s moral blameworthiness.
However, this interpretation leaves many unanswered questions. Neither premarital sex, nor lying deserve the death penalty according to the Mosaic Law elsewhere (in fact, in Exod. 22:16-17 and Deut. 22:28-29, there is no punishment for the woman engaging in premarital sex). And why does this passage focus so much on the role of the parents, if the sin is solely on the daughter?
The fact is that, if we read this passage in its proper cultural context, it is clear that the entire scenario deals with family honor rather than premarital sex. By accusing his bride of not being a virgin, the man charges both the daughter and her parents with fraud, accusing them of making him pay the full virgin bride-price when his bride was not a virgin (this is the “shameful deed” mentioned in v. 14). The parents are not the defendants of their daughter, but are actually prosecuting their son-in-law for slander before the city elders, as vv. 16-17 makes evident.
It’s true that hymeneal blood is a faulty indicator of virginity, but in fact, this was already known in the ancient world [2]. So what could the author have possibly meant by including this clause, if they knew that hymeneal blood wasn’t an indicator of virginity? It’s likely that the hymeneal blood clause was included to allow the parents to more easily prosecute the offending husband, since hymeneal blood is easily faked. In fact, fake hymeneal blood was a common trope in ancient folk literature, with suggestions that it could be faked using bird or other animal blood [2].
If the husband was found guilty of slander, the punishment was severe; not only was he forced to remain married to the woman that he wanted to divorce, but he was also required to pay double the virgin bride-price (one hundred silver shekels) and would be unable to divorce his wife throughout his whole life (v. 19). This triple punishment would be a great deterrent to husbands who would otherwise divorce their innocent brides by slandering their families.
But if vv. 13-19 of this passage are entirely about family honor and prosecuting slanderous husbands, why is the death penalty prescribed for the guilty bride in vv. 20-21? After all, the death penalty was never prescribed for premarital sex or lying elsewhere in the Mosaic Law. But what was considered deserving of death was defaming one’s parents, whether through outright cursing them (Exod. 21:17, Lev. 20:9) or through repeated subversive action (Deut. 21:18-21). If the parents discovered that their daughter actually was acting as a prostitute in their house (“playing the whore in her father’s house”), this would be seen as a defamation of family honor, and deserving of death. The daughter would be stoned in front of her parents’ house.
So, Deuteronomy 22:13-21 is a passage not primarily about virginity and premarital sex, but instead about family honor. If a son-in-law slanders his bride’s family by claiming that she is not a virgin, then he is greatly punished. Likewise, if a daughter defames her own family’s honor by acting as a prostitute in their house, she is deserving of death, just as the son who acts as a glutton and drunkard in his parents’ house (Deut. 21:18-21). Regardless of whether one thinks that such emphasis on family honor is moral or not, this interpretation (which is backed by much Jewish scholarship [3]) is far better than the other common interpretation.
In summary, the Mosaic Law has surprisingly little to say about premarital sex. Not even a single mention of premarital sex can be found in the Leviticus 18 and 20 lists of sexual sins (which include every sexual union forbidden for Israelites). This is because it wasn’t considered a solely moral issue, but a civil issue, due to the greater bride-price for virgins. Since the Torah is the complete book of God’s Law to Israel, it doesn’t seem that premarital sex is considered a moral sin to God, nor to the ancient Israelites (see Deut. 4:2). But what does the rest of the Old Testament have to say about it?
Premarital sex throughout the Old Testament
In addition to (or perhaps as a consequence of) the ambiguity of the Mosaic Law on the issue of premarital sex, there seem to be multiple instances in the Old Testament where premarital sex is looked upon neutrally. There is not a single instance in which a premarital sexual union is condemned in the Old Testament in virtue of being pre-marital (although there are cases of premarital rape and incest that are clearly condemned).
First of all, in Genesis 16:1-4, Abraham has premarital/extramarital intercourse with his slave Hagar, with the permission of his wife Sarah. Although Sarah comes to regret this decision later on, and twice banishes Hagar from her husband’s nomadic group (Gen. 16:6, 21:10), God looks upon Sarah’s hatred of Hagar with scorn and promises Hagar that her and Abraham’s son Ishmael will grow to become a great nation (Gen. 16:10, 17:20, 21:18). For this reason, it appears that God condoned Abraham’s premarital/extramarital affair with Hagar (though not explicitly affirming its legitimacy).
Another example is Genesis 30:1-13, in which Jacob has premarital/extramarital intercourse with his two wives’ slaves Bilhah and Zilpah, with the permission of his two wives. The four sons born of this affair grow up to become patriarchs of the nation of Israel, and God never condemns Jacob’s premarital/extramarital affair.
In Genesis 38:6-10, Judah commands his son Onan to have premarital intercourse with Tamar, his late brother’s wife. When Onan ejaculates on the ground to avoid having a child with Tamar, God punishes him by killing him. This shows that God implicitly affirmed the premarital affair between Onan and Tamar, by condemning Onan’s failure to produce a child from the union.
Another instance of (possible) premarital sex is found in Judges 16:1-3, in which Samson is said to spend the night with a prostitute. It seems that whatever he did was not particularly sinful, for he remained a Nazirite (one set apart to God) with the strength of God upon him (cf. Judg. 13:5). However, it’s not entirely clear that Samson actually had sex with this prostitute; it’s possible that he merely went with her to scout out the city, similar to what the two Israelite spies did with Rahab the prostitute in Jericho (Josh. 2:1).
Finally, it’s worth noting that all throughout the Old Testament, many patriarchs and kings had concubines, a practice which was never condemned. For example, see Gen. 22:24, 25:6, 36:12, Judg. 8:31, 19:1, 2 Sam. 3:7, 5:13, 15:16, 19:5, 21:11, and Song 6:8. Concubines are defined in Jewish law as “a woman dedicating herself to a particular man, with whom she cohabits without [marriage]” [4]. If sex were truly only meant for the confines of marriage, it seems strange that God never condemned the practice of keeping concubines.
In other cases where a sinful sexual union in mentioned in the Old Testament, God never hesitated to punish those involved and make an example of them. He punished David’s adultery with Bathsheba by causing their first child to die (2 Sam. 12:10-14), and Amnon’s rape of Tamar was punished when he was killed by Absalom (2 Sam. 13:28-29). Yet it appears that consensual premarital sex was never condemned or looked down upon throughout the Old Testament. What does the New Testament have to say about this? In the next post, we'll take a look at the NT teachings about premarital sex.
Part 2: https://universalistheretic.blogspot.com/2023/06/premarital-sex-and-bible-part-2-of-2.html
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[1] Furthermore, if as many conservative Christians assert, sex is only meant to be within the confines of a heterosexual marriage, why did God not just say that and be done with it? Why outline every single forbidden sexual act, instead of merely saying that any sexual act outside of marriage is forbidden? Unfortunately, these questions are outside the scope of this blogpost.
[2] See Koller 2010, “Sex or Power? The Crime of the Bride in Deuteronomy 22,” pp. 280, 283.
[3] See the reference from footnote 2, as well as Fleishman 2008, “The Delinquent Daughter and Legal Innovation in Deuteronomy XXII 20-21”; Edenberg 2009, “Ideology and Social Context of the Deuteronomic Women’s Sex Laws”; and Pressler and Sakenfeld 1991, “The View of Women Found in the Deuteronomic Family Laws.”
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