The story goes like this:
Your army won a battle and brought back the booty. Among them were women taken as captives. You see one of them that strikes your fancy and you lust for her. So you take her for yourself. The rules state that after she is in your house, she will remove her hair and clothes and will do something with her nails. She will then mourn the loss (or death) of her parents for a month, and after that, you are then permitted to take her for your wife and come to her if you desire. If you don't, then you can send her on her way.
The final verse is chilling:
וְהָיָה אִם-לֹא חָפַצְתָּ בָּהּ, וְשִׁלַּחְתָּהּ לְנַפְשָׁהּ, וּמָכֹר לֹא-תִמְכְּרֶנָּה, בַּכָּסֶף; לֹא-תִתְעַמֵּר בָּהּ, תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר עִנִּיתָהּ.
21:14 "And it will be that if you will not [any longer] desire her, you will send her away to be her own person, and you will not sell her for money and you shall not put her to work [as a slave], because you had [sexually] abused her."
But wait...what sort of abuse are we talking about?
Later on, initah (עניתה) appears again in this Torah portion, about a man who rapes a woman, and he can never divorce her because he [sexually] abused her.
Here is the NIV translation of that verse, which correctly uses "violated".
When it comes to anything dealing with lust, with sex, with taking a woman against her will, and עינתה is used as a verb - she was raped. If there is no sex involved, it is "simple" abuse and possible torture.
In other places we find this expression as well (2 Sam 13:22 and Ezekiel 22:11 on the raping of one's sister).
I talk more about Biblical Rape in another blog post.
The Rashbam agrees, but few people who study this text will ever cite him. Instead, they will cite some of the typical apologists.
Apologetics
So let's talk about the typical apologetics on this one.
Not just Christian, but Jewish translations of this text will use "humbled" in place of "violated" or "raped", simply because it is not very comfortable to read that someone was permitted to take another against their will and exerted his will upon her. ArtScroll is an example of a Jewish publication company that has done this.
So how do you justify that God permits a man to take a woman against her will, knowing full well what will happen?
The Rambam wrote that God gave this commandment because men are lustful in times of war, and it was a way to reduce what was natural for them. Also, if God forbade this, men would do it anyway, and so this is a way for God to reduce the sinful nature of man.
Rashi concurs with this. Rashi goes further to say that she likely dressed well when captured in order to attract her male captors, which is why she is commanded to remove her clothing and remain in her captors house.
Yes, apparently, according to Rashi, she was asking for it.
One apologetic I read was that the man initially raped her to satisfy his lust, and after the cooling down period, he is free to let her go. He only took her once.
That doesn't help.
But why would the text demand that she remain in her captors house?
The Sifrei is bothered by this and, responding to this question, Rashi wrote that by remaining in the man's house, she will become repulsive to him. Perhaps he means because she is crying without any hair.
This doesn't answer the question: how is this moral?
One more thing to throw into the mixture: if, after a month in his household, the man wants to keep her and make her his wife, can she say "no!"?
The woman has no choice. And as with verses 22:28-29, the woman is condemned to be owned by her rapist all the remaining days of his or her life.
One last thing.
The woman is called an ayshet yophat to'ar. It is commonly translated as a "woman of beautiful form". But in the Tanach, an ayshet usually refers to a married woman. And so, from this the general interpretation is that even if she was married, she is now the property of her new master.
(Note: ba'al means "master, owner, lord, etc.", and is also a term that is translated as "husband".)
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