The Ninth Commandment

Slander Within Marriage

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 17

Track: 104

Dictation Name: RR130BE104

Date: 1960s-70s

“Slander Within Marriage,” Deuteronomy 22:13-21:

“13 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her,

14 And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid:

15 Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate:

16 And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her;

17 And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.

18 And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him;

19 And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.

20 But if this thing be true and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:

21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.”

At first glance, this law strikes people rather badly. It is an unusual law. The language is very ancient and Hebraic. Moreover, there are certain aspects of it that disturb some people. In every trial under this law, a conviction inevitably followed. Either the husband or the wife is found guilty. So that this involved the kind of trial where there is a conviction. In other words, the plain fact is, when a marriage reaches this point, a penalty is inescapable.

Another aspect is that the law seems to reverse the normal procedure in court cases. In Biblical Law, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. It is the duty of witnesses to provide evidence of guilt and in effect to prosecute thereby. In this case, the wife must prove her innocence. The reason for it is that this case involves a double prosecution. Once such a case was set into motion, there was a double prosecution. On the one part by the father of the bride (and the bride with him), and on the other side by the husband, so that there was suit and counter-suit. It is out of this law which over the centuries had altered greatly, that we have the divorce law that we did until recently, whereby a divorce action usually involved suit and counter-suit, in effect a double prosecution. This of course has now disappeared also from California law. But our older law did involve a relic, however remote, of this law.

The husband [father] of the accused wife is prosecuting with his daughter, and the husband files countersuit to provide counter evidence. As a result, both sides must bring forth witnesses and evidence.

Now, the fine in this case and there is, if the man is guilty, physical punishment; chastisement, (probably a whipping) but more important, a very heavy fine—a hundred shekels of silver. Now let’s analyze what that meant, in terms of Biblical Law.

In Biblical Law, a quarter shekel of silver as a gift to a notable man was a very important gift. The annual poll tax for all males in Israel 20 years old or older, which supported the government, was half a shekel. Under Nehemiah, this tax was cut to a third of a shekel since the Persian government was also taxing. Now, to impose a fine of a hundred shekels was indeed to impose a very considerable fine. It was equivalent to 200 years of taxes on a man—a very heavy tax. In fact, all you can say is that in most cases, 9 out of 10 cases, the man would be wiped out economically by this fine, which was payable to his wife’s father who held it in trust for his daughter and her children. Moreover, he lost all rights to initiate divorce thereafter. On the other hand, if he were right, the bride paid for her unchastity by death.

Now what was the significance of this law? This is case law, as all the various laws apart from the Ten Commandments are. In this case, what is illustrated? The point here, very specifically is, that slander is forbidden within marriage. It is regarded as the most vicious, the most serious kind of slander. In other words, slander within marriage by husband and wife of one another, is more serious than the slander of any other person apart from God. But if slander with respect to chastity carried so heavy a penalty—the equivalent of 200 years of taxes, which would wipe out most men, and/or death, then proportionately, any lesser slander also had a high penalty. Now, slander was forbidden, then of course the implication is that violence was also forbidden. This is a significant fact.

In every culture the world over, we do find that wife beating is commonplace in the background of that people. Whether you go to any of the countries in Europe or Asia or Africa, or the tribes of Indians in the Americas, you find that wife beating (and sometimes husband beating) is not unusual. It’s commonplace. The only place you do not find this sort of thing at all is in the biblical traditions. This is a significant and an important fact.

And you find that even slander, let alone violence is so severely punished, because in terms of Biblical Law, the family is the central institution of society. In other words, the language used by husband and wife with respect to one another, must be more seriously watched and guarded than with respect to anybody else. In other words, here you have to be more careful than elsewhere, because the issues are more important, the issues involved are more important. You can begin to see why the Jewish family has survived through the centuries and been so strong. The law concerning marriage and the relationship of husband and wife is so serious, and slander within marriage is regarded so severely. It is not, in other words, an area of ‘letting your hair down.’

Marriage is precisely the area where every word is most important. There is an old Russian proverb that illustrates something of what Biblical Law is trying to say. And it says, a dog is wiser than a woman. He won’t bark at his master. Now, there’s a good point there. And of course you can apply that to both men and women because men and women bark at each other. And a dog has better sense than to bark at his family. And this is the whole point of course, of this law. It forbids slander within marriage. Moreover, it makes it clear that slander within a family is not merely a private matter, it is a criminal offense. It is a major breech of public order. The family being the central institution of society, according to Biblical Law, every word spoken in marriage is therefore all the more important.

The husband is fined, the wife is not. A fine on the wife would be a fine on the husband, and of course, evidence of his inability to govern his own home. Moreover, it is his duty to protect the family, not to slander it. If he defames the family, then he is doubly wicked and invites disgrace upon himself.

I cited a while ago a Russian proverb coming out of the Russian Church. There’s another one that is equally good which says, if the father is a fisherman, the children know the water. This is an important statement. In other words, it says the father’s rights have a major teaching function. And as the father conducts himself, ultimately, so the children do. When the father fails to set a pattern of responsibility of thoughtfulness, of care in the use of his language, the children are deprived of a major stabilizing and educating force. Moreover, a husband can slander his wife not only by speech but by distrust. If he refuses to allow her those privileges and duties which she is competent to administer, he has defamed her.

I knew a couple some years ago in which the husband, for weeks on end, in fact for over a year, really, used to drag in at every available opportunity, a story about a very silly mistake his wife had made with respect to her checkbook. And he used this to belittle his wife’s financial competence. Now, there was no question about the incidence, it was true. But I also knew that it was not a real report of her character. In fact, she operated a little gift shop and had, because of the money she had made there, twice saved him from serious trouble in his own business, and her funds had once saved him from losing his building; course, he never once said anything about his own bad investments. This was slander therefore. He was telling the truth about a checkbook error, but the truth was being used to defame her because it was not representative.

Now the law says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” And this case law makes clear that our most important neighbor is our husband or our wife. As a German scholar of a century ago said, “man is free only as he maintains veracity. The lie destroys his true freedom.” And this is especially true in the home. When slander invades, when false witness invades the home, the home is turned into a prison.

We dealt with the fine in this case earlier, that it was a hundred shekels of silver, equal to 200 years of taxes for a man, state taxes to maintain the civil government. This fine indicates the seriousness of slander in marriage. But let’s look at this fine again from another perspective. In Deuteronomy 22:29, we find that the fine for rape or seduction is 50 shekels, half as much as slandering a wife. Now in both cases, the fine is very heavy. Fifty shekels was a very considerable amount, equal to 100 years in taxes. But the difference was that at least the girl who had been seduced or raped, with that money—the equivalent of 100 years in taxes—could go ahead from that unhappy experience into a marriage with a rich dowry. She could make a good life, but the wife who had such a husband who had slandered her had a sad future ahead with a vicious husband and the fine was heavy to make both the man and the wife careful.

For lesser slanders of course, there were lesser fines. But the law clearly indicates that in every case of abusive language within marriage, the fine was extremely heavy.

This law is a strange one for modern man, because in terms of modern Humanistic law, there is virtually an open season on slander within marriage, and the results are predictably bad. As one husband said on one occasion when I had to speak to him, with regard to what he was saying about his wife, he said, well she’s my wife and I can say what I please about her. And I’ve heard women say the same about their husband. In other words, no sense of responsibility, when precisely the place for the utmost responsibility is the family, the marital relationship. Thus, the commandment, “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” places at the top of the list of all neighbors those who are nearest to us—our husband or our wife as those against whom any slander in the sight of God is most serious.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy Word. And we thank Thee our Father that Thou hast established the centrality of the family and made it, oh Lord, Thy central and most important institution. Teach us, oh Lord, so to regard our household, our loved ones, and to be circumspect in every word we speak, so that we may bear no false witness against one another but may in all things honor one another according to Thy Word. Bless us in this, Thy calling, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson?

Yes.

[Audience] The relationship with your mother {?} ….according to the Bible… {?}

[Rushdoony] Exactly.

[Audience] Why is it the woman, with respect to her husband … {?}

[Rushdoony] In this case, if the husband is true in his report, then she has been guilty of adultery, in effect, before marriage, and the penalty for adultery is death, so that the penalty in this case is not for slander, you see, but the penalty on the husband is for slander.

[Audience] Why isn’t he penalized by death? …. {?} putting her to death, having believed him and—

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, because in this case, this is what the scripture specifies.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right. He would die, too.

Yes.

[Audience] … {?} not a question but my mother sometimes said, the best possible manners, if they are good enough for a family, {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good statement. Right, because it does illustrate precisely what this law is setting forth. The best possible manners are none too good for the family.

Yes.

[Audience] Is the wife, as an {?} of the husband, how would that {?} I mean … {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. In that case, the father takes over and does the prosecuting for her.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well then the nearest male or some official court. In other words, the burden of prosecution is not placed upon the woman. A man must assume it for her.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes they did. But you see, according to the law to this day, the real prosecutor is the witness. To this day, there is no prosecution until a witness or a, files… you have to have a complaining witness. Now in certain cases, the law required him to file. But basically, the real prosecutor is always the witness, so that while there were attorneys, and of course you find references to the scribes and lawyers in the New Testament repeatedly, and they go back to Old Testament time, in terms of the law, they are not essential. The real prosecutor is the witness..

Yes.

[Audience] You mentioned today’s {?} uh, divorce, that there’s more {?} today to ruin a marriage... {?}

[Rushdoony] Ah, yes, there was the practice of it, and now the laws were being given with respect to it.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well here of course, the necessity was one thing was cited here, but this is just case law. We know from the Talmud and other sources, he had to bring forth evidences of his slander, and then as far as possible her innocence. Well, the husband had to produce positive proof of her guilt, you see. So there would be a long array of testimony on both sides.

[Audience] Well … {?} follow that … {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes. My point was, as I stated earlier, most people think her is an exception, apparently she’s guilty until proven innocent but what they fail to see is that it was a double-prosecution on both sides, both prosecuting the other. Suit and countersuit.

Yes.

[Audience]{?}

[Rushdoony] Were they not what?

[Audience] Prosecuted. {?}

[Rushdoony] No, the court was at the gates of the city, in a public place so that everyone could hear the proceedings. It had to be public, so the most public place was the square near the gates of the city where everybody came and went.

The law, moreover, had to be such that everyone could follow the proceedings. In other words, this is why the lawyer is not mentioned. This is public law in the sense that the public had to understand it, to be able to follow the proceedings.

This is why in New England, the colonies at first stipulated that there could be no professional lawyer who made a living out of law because what they wanted to do was first of all to establish the law on a thoroughly biblical basis, have it clear and plain and obvious so that every man could understand it, and follow it and then lawyers were permissible. This is why there was a jury system. It was law for the public at large so that everyone could listen, everyone could judge, everyone could follow it. And this type of law prevailed in the United States up to the Civil War.

[Audience] Apparently then {?} time, women {?} … action they want taken {?} today they’re not going to understand what was going on in the {?} system. {?}

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, they couldn’t interrupt the proceedings but you see, since it was Biblical Law which was dealing with matters of basic moral concern it was easy to follow. Today when the law deals with statue law, details of definition and involved things that had no relationship to any reality of morality, it becomes impossible to follow the law.

Yes.

[Audience] How do you expect them to determine whether … {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The shekel was originally not a coin, but a particular weight of silver and a particular weight of gold, and we really don’t know. There have been all kinds of guesses as to the actual number of ounces of silver and ounces of gold that were involved. But at a later date, again we don’t know when, they became coined. For a long time, and you can still find this in all the textbooks, it has been held that the first actual minting or striking of coins was in the Greek kingdom of Lydia, something like 600 B.C. They now know this is not true, that coins were much earlier, that the Assyrian Empire, for example, actually did mint coin. Moreover, in excavations of Ur of the Chaldeas, from the Assyrian period, they found in one of the rooms they excavated, a coin collector’s collection. So way back then, there were coin collectors.

[Audience] When they see the {?} then, you don’t know what they meant, a silver shekel or a gold shekel?

[Rushdoony] They usually specify in the Bible which it is so that we usually know whether it’s a silver or a gold shekel. Now there’s an interesting thing. In the days before Solomon, the silver shekel was worth more. It was worth at one time approximately 10 times the price of gold because silver was extremely rare. Then in Solomon’s day, as the Book of Kings tells us, silver became as common in Jerusalem as the cobblestones in the street. They had located vast silver mines. Now where were these mines? That’s quite a question! And there are some who maintain, and with some evidence, that they discovered at that time, the silver mines of Mexico. And we are told that it took three years round trip for Solomon’s and the Phoenician ships to go and come. This is in the Bible, which sounds like Mexico. Then there are so many traces in the Aztec culture of the presence of some foreign people, white peoples, a century earlier, so that there have been a few books written on this thesis, that Solomon’s silver mines were the mines of Mexico which had been very extensively mined when the Spaniards landed. Solomon’s gold mines were in what is now Ethiopia. They’ve also been located, plus the roads and all that was built.

So you see there was far more advance then than we realize. His copper mines have also been located and the places where they did smelting.

[Audience] Is it possible that {?} at that time? {?}

[Rushdoony] No, the problem was not that. The smelting processes were known before that, quite a while before that. The Hittites certainly knew them. The problem was that most of the sources of silver are in the New World and in other parts of the world there’s virtually no silver, so that this is another reason why there’s no way of accounting, really, for Solomon’s silver apart from the New World.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] There is a book by a man named Johnston which P. Robert Ingraham has reprinted in St. Thomas Press which deals with this subject, the Mexican source of Solomon’s silver. Very, very interesting reading.

Any other questions?

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I can’t hear you.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What was the title again?

[Audience] {?} … of the Americas?

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh. I’m familiar with that thesis and I think it’s nonsense. Yes. The Mormons have been great propagators of that thesis.

Before we continue, I have a couple of announcements.

First, on May 27th at 8 p.m. in the evening at the Ferdinof Home in San Marino, Gary North will speak on “A Christian Perspective on the Stock Market and Inflation.”

And then on May 23rd at 6 p.m. with a dinner meeting, $2.50 for the speech and dinner, for the speech only $1.00, at the Women’s University Club in Los Angeles, 540 S. Catalina, Herman H. Dinsmore speaking on “Distorted, Omitted and Fabricated News.” Now, this is important in terms of what we’ve been dealing with the matter of false witness, in that Dinsmore was on the foreign desk of The New York Times for many, many years, for several decades; from the 20s to 1960 and in his book, All the News That’s Fit he has written an important account of precisely this kind of management of news.

Then, another little item I’d like to share with you, perhaps some of you saw the picture the other day of the member of the Federal Commission who had a pie tossed into his face by an angry young man who was of the Underground Press Syndicate and a student. The man who got the pie was Commissioner Otto N. Larson, a professor of Sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Now, we are told that as the cream pie slid down the right side of his face and onto his shirt and tie, he did not raise his hand or voice in protest. The professor said later on, “what he wanted was outrage. I refused to engage in physical interaction. The man was quivering. His mouth, his eyes, his lips were quivering. I’ve had classroom confrontations with militants before. I try to engage all kinds of people in serious dialog. These people have something important to tell us.” Now if that isn’t a case of total moral bankruptcy, I don’t know one—somebody throws a pie in your face and you say they have something meaningful to say and we’ve got to engage in dialog with them? It’s a perfect excuse for moral bankruptcy and cowardice.

We have time for one more question if anyone has one. If not, let’s bow our heads for the benediction.

And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.