Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 112

Laws About Marriage

¹³ If any man takes a wife and has sexual relations with her and then rejects her, ¹⁴ and accuses her of impropriety and publicly defames her, saying, “I married this woman, but when I had sexual relations with her, I found her not to be a virgin,” ¹⁵ then the father and mother of the girl must produce evidence of the girl’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. ¹⁶ The girl’s father must say to the elders, “I gave my daughter to this man to wife, and he has rejected her. ¹⁷ What is more, he has accused her of impropriety, saying, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ However, this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.” And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. ¹⁸ The elders of that city must take that man and punish him, ¹⁹ and they must fine him a hundred shekels^[a] of silver and give them to the father of the girl, because he has publicly humiliated a virgin of Israel. Then she is to remain his wife. He may not divorce her all his days.

²⁰ But if the accusation is true, and the evidence of virginity does not exist for the girl, ²¹ then they shall bring the girl out to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones until she dies, because she has brought disgrace into Israel, to act like a whore in her father’s house. In this way you may purge the evil from among you.

²² If a man is discovered lying with a married woman, then both of them must die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman. In this way you may purge the evil from Israel.

²³ If a girl who is a virgin is engaged to a man, and another man finds her in the city and has sexual relations with her, ²⁴ then you must bring them both out to the gate of that city and you must stone them with stones until they die, the girl because she did not cry out even though in the city, and the man because he has violated his neighbor’s wife. In this way you may purge the evil from among you.

²⁵ But if a man finds an engaged girl in the field, and the man forces her and rapes her, then only the man that raped her shall die. ²⁶ However, you are to do nothing to the girl. There is no sin worthy of death in the girl, for just as when a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this matter. ²⁷ For he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her.

²⁸ If a man finds a girl who is a virgin who is not engaged and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered, ²⁹ then the man who lay with her must give fifty shekels^[b] of silver to the girl’s father, and she shall be his wife because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.

³⁰ A man must not marry his father’s wife and in this way dishonor his father.

Questions About Marriage

7 Now concerning the things about which you wrote to me: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” ² Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. ³ Let the husband render to the wife due affection, and likewise the wife to the husband. ⁴ The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. ⁵ Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer. Then come together again, so that Satan does not tempt you for lack of self-control. ⁶ I speak this as a concession and not as a command. ⁷ For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man has his proper gift from God, one after this manner and another after that.

⁸ I say to the unmarried and widows that it is good for them if they live even as I am. ⁹ But if they cannot restrain themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.