“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.  Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.”   -St. Matthew

It’s easy to understand how many details of the New Testament are ignored or forgotten but this is right at the beginning and part of the Christmas story.  Joseph was a just man, he wanted, wanted a new wife which he had a right to before God, but he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it and give Mary unnecessary bad press.  He prized virginity.  That doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore.  Recently it was made public that some music ‘artist’ made his daughter get regular virginity test.  He was mocked everywhere, and I don’t recall even hearing a response from the church.  We don’t value virginity as God would have us do.

The Appearance of the Angel to St. Joseph. Georges de la Tour. c. 1652. oil on canvas.

Joseph was just, also translated righteous and contrasted with evil and sinner.  From Webster’s 1828 Dictionary: “In a moral sense, upright; honest; having principles of rectitude; or conforming exactly to the laws, and to principles of rectitude in social conduct; equitable in the distribution of justice; as a just judge.”  There are some good connotations concerning justice in our culture.  ‘Social justice’ is seen as the highest good, though very few could define it.  But being a judge is almost the worst thing imaginable to us.  These ideas are almost always connected in scripture.  Wisdom is connected to judging rightly which is connected to moral character which is connected to faith in God.  The just man rules his home well Prov. 20:7.  Later in Matthew Jesus is referred to as a “just man”, during his phony trial before Pilate.

But there is something else in that definition “conforming exactly to the laws”.  Joseph conformed to the Law, the Old Testament Law and was praised for it. He was a true Jew, faithful to the Law of Moses and looking for the Messiah.  He was in the middle of acting wisely when and angel came to guide his steps and to ask more of him.  And Joseph trusted God further by obeying.   He didn’t sleep with Mary until after Jesus was born and he named his son ‘Jesus’.

Conforming to the Law, especially OT law is not real popular these days even in the church.  Obedience is branded as some sort of legalism and we replace it with warm fuzzy feelings we call love.  But God’s law has a lot to say about virginity, and in order to be wise judges and just like Joseph, we must study it.  The Hebrew word for virgin is often translated maid because the concepts were interchangeable.  To be young and unmarried was to be a virgin.  It is difficult to say whether this is a chicken or an egg.  Most cultures seem to prize virginity, but this Biblical respect could be driven by laws lain down by God through Moses.

Levitical priests were not allowed to marry anyone who was not a virgin Leviticus 21:7.  This didn’t apply to everyone but seems to indicate that there is a special purity about virgins duh, which God required for those who arbitrate between God and his people.  Now the main passage, Deuteronomy 22.  In this section a situation is proposed: a man dislikes his wife after their wedding nigh.  So he chooses to accuse her of not being a virgin.  Note this is the exact opposite of what Joseph does.  Then a trial must take place.  This is public business, this affects the entire community.  Evidence for the trial is to include proof of her virginity.  Which is the bloody bed sheet from the wedding night.  If this is produced, the man is a liar and he is beaten, he is to pay double the bride price to the father of the woman for trying to give them all a bad name, and he can never divorce her.  But if there is no evidence and it is found to be true that she was not a virgin, she is to be stoned, because she dishonored her father by whoring. This is starting to sound a lot like our modern rapper.  A girls virginity is a precious thing to be guarded by her parents.  Modern commentators like to explain this section away in all sorts of ways, because modern science teaches us that not all women bleed the first time they have sex. I am just wondering how many 14th Century B.C. Jewish women ‘science’ observed to come to this conclusion.  If you start with the basis that this is the Law of God as most Christians have, it’s not hard to find a way to make sense of things, and be blessed for it.  If you want to find something for your feminism to attack, it’s not difficult, but it is wrong. And it will result in causing harm.  This way of looking at the world, and deciding what is good or evil protects virginity, women, marriage, the resulting children and the entire community.  Men can’t just find some random defect, throw out a few accusations and then walk away.  The only reason for divorce is unfaithfulness.  There is some Jewish tradition that women were inspected by the grooms family for defects or disease prior to marriage.  This protected him, because when the day comes he can no longer work in the field, he would depend on his children.  Children were a blessing, from God but making a wise choice was also important.

Further verses in Deuteronomy 22 make some other situations clear.  Basically you go from virgin to wife or from virgin to whore, who is stoned.  Those are the only options, this is serious.  If a woman is attached either by promise or actual marriage defiling her results in death.  With this added protection for women: it is assumed if she was in the country, that she screamed for help, so she can live.  If she is unattached, the man who slept with her, must marry her and can never divorce her.  He also has to pay the bride price.  Virgins were valuable, they cost 50 shekels which is probably a year’s wages. It also makes you wonder why wasn’t she betrothed?  Did she have a defect? Did it make her think she might as well have some fun because she couldn’t marry?  Thinking through these things, God really makes end runs around our evil finagling.  And our legal developments should do the same, with Biblical basis.

Can we really say that our current system is better?  Newer always means better to most moderns, but actual science is pretty clear, children raised in traditional homes with one father and one mother, who stay married, do better in almost every category. Family innovation is family destruction, which is cultural destruction.  We currently have the highest  rate of children living in single parent homes of any country.  We also have the highest prison population of any country ever.  And most of those inmates didn’t grow up with both parents.  Today the term ‘baggage’ is a thing most women have.  While there is virtue in being a Boaz, it’s all most men can do to husband the wife of their youth.  It is a completely other and almost impossible thing to husband the amalgam of wives created by the various men who move through the life of the average American woman by the time she finally gets married at age 28 or 40.  Fathers now hand over brides with tire tracks all over their white dresses. Like those surrogate children born with DNA from three parents, it’s a mess.  We stand here in the bottom of a pit we dug daring to criticize the Word of God.  Who do we think we are?  Oh right god.

Joseph wanted to marry a virgin, God wanted the mother of Jesus to give birth as a virgin.  And God found a way to accomplish this and give Joseph something better than he ever dreamed.  Jesus opened the womb, Joseph became the father of the eternal king, who would save us all.