5 Confusing Biblical Rules (and What They May Mean)
For my book, The Year of Living Biblically, I spent 12 months trying to follow every rule in the Old Testament. Even the obscure one-like stoning adulterers (I used pebbles) and never shaving your beard (I did a lot of itching). My challenge: to reconcile the Bible’s easy-to-grasp wisdom with some of its seemingly baffling laws. The following are a few of the more arcane rules I found along the way, with possible reasons behind them.
1. THE RULE: “…she shall put the rainment of her capitivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month; and after that thou shalt go in unto her and be her husband…” (from Deuteronomy 21:10-14)
THE TRANSLATION: If you capture a beautiful woman during war, and you want to marry her, you must first have her shave her head and trim her nails. Then you must live with her for a month without touching her. After that, she’s all yours.
POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: Think of it like gun control-it’s a mandatory waiting period. If you still want to marry a bald, short-nailed woman after a month of no sex, then maybe it truly is love.
Um... huh?
3. THE RULE: “…thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed; neither shall a garment of mingled linen and woolen come upon thee.” (Leviticus 19:19)
THE TRANSLATION: Don’t wear clothes made of mixed fibers. Wool-and-linen blends are particularly bad. Polycotton is probably OK.
POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: The Old Testament was obsessed with separating things. (Don’t wear mixed fibers; don’t mix milk and meat.) According to many biblical scholars, the idea was to drill the notion of separation into the ancient Israelite mind. This way, they would remain separate from teh pagans and not intermarry-a sin even worse than mixing wool and linen.