You get free food, you get a place to live, you work, maybe, 4 or 5 times in your life, and people come bring you portions of their crops and cash for their firstborn.
And if someone wants to be pure so that he or she can get close to God (or so she can have relations with her husband), then you are the person to go to.
Ah, the life of a priest!
In this week's parashah, you read about a small downside if you happened to be born female. As a priest's daughter, rather than being paid 100 shekels (the going price for a virgin bride), the father is paid TWO-HUNDRED shekels. Apparently, a priest's daughter was highly in demand, and so the price was doubled.
Ah, the life of a priest!
I never really understood that pricing structure, actually. After all, what does the non-priest husband get out of it? He can't eat the food, or the holy portions of the priest. He can't get a job in the Temple. I suppose it could be a status thing, and it might open a few doors if people want a priestly favor.
Now, under normal circumstances, if you are married or engaged to a woman who is not a kohain, and if she has relations with a different man at either point, then that woman and the lover are to be stoned to death.
Understand that when a woman is paid for, and erusin (engaged) is completed, he is the mans property, even though he has not taken possession of her yet. That is why she is to be stoned if she takes on a lover, since it is adultery, whether or not nisuin (marriage) is completed or not.
Here's the text:
"If the daughter of a man who is a kohain profanes through harlotry (zonot) she has defiled her father - she will be burned with fire."
Now from this verse it does not appear that it is speaking of a married or engaged woman, but any daughter of a kohain who acts in the way of a harlot, unattached or not.
The Sages (Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 51b) declared that this cannot hold true for a girl who has not been purchased, but they did argue whether or not it would hold if she was simply engaged and not acquired.
Rashi parrots their statements.
This is an example of how the Sages reinterpreted the text in a lenient way, lest there be a mass burning of daughters of kohain who are discovered to be non-virgins.
This is also an example of what people will call "the Oral Torah", meaning, "Without the words of the Sages, you would not have understood what it really meant!"
We actually don't know if the text reflects the view of the Sages, or if the simple view was the intent of the narrator. The fact that we don't like the simple view does not make it more or less valid.
It is interesting that she would be burned, while others would be stoned to death. According to the sages, burning is less painful than stoning. How they came to that conclusion is unclear.
There is also an argument as to how this burning occurs. They believed that the verse indicates that the burning should take place from the inside-out. Therefore, burning metal (molten?) would be forced down the throat until the person would eventually die.
Or, that is how they interpreted it. Remember, none of these sages had ever witnessed these types of executions, and were discussing them as they believed they were done.
And so long as there is no Temple, all of the daughters of a kohain are safe from being burned to death!
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