Passage

Deuteronomy 22.28-29

"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, then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days." (Deuteronomy 22:28-29, NASB95)

Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is one of the most-cited atheist objection texts in the Old Testament. Read out of context, it appears to mandate that a rape victim must marry her rapist. Read in the legal framework of Deuteronomy 22 and against its ANE backdrop, it functions as a victim-protection statute that uses the Hebrew verb taphas ("to seize / take hold of") rather than the violent-rape verb chazaq used three verses earlier in v. 25, and that locks in lifelong provision the woman would otherwise have lost in an honor-shame culture. The passage is the anchor case for the codex's Rape Only Condemned When Unmarried Objection Defeater argument.

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"26. but unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbor, and slayeth him, even so is this matter; 27. for he found her in the field, the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her."

"28. If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, that is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; 29. then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he hath humbled her; he may not put her away all his days."

"30. A man shall not take his father's wife, and shall not uncover his father's skirt." (Deuteronomy 22:26-30, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"26. but to the lady you shall do nothing. There is in the lady no sin worthy of death; for as when a man rises against his neighbor, and kills him, even so is this matter; 27. for he found her in the field, the pledged to be married lady cried, and there was no one to save her."

"28. If a man finds a lady who is a virgin, who is not pledged to be married, grabs her, and lies with her, and they are found; 29. then the man who lay with her shall give to the lady’s father fifty shekels of silver. She shall be his wife, because he has humbled her. He may not put her away all his days."

"30. A man shall not take his father’s wife, and shall not uncover his father’s skirt." (Deuteronomy 22:26-30, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"26. But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter: 27. For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her."

"28. If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; 29. Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days."

"30. A man shall not take his father's wife, nor discover his father's skirt." (Deuteronomy 22:26-30, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"26. and to the damsel thou dost not do anything, the damsel hath no deadly sin; for as a man riseth against his neighbour and hath murdered him, the life, so [is] this thing; 27. for in a field he found her, she hath cried, the damsel who is betrothed, and she hath no saviour."

"28. 'When a man findeth a damsel, a virgin who is not betrothed, and hath caught her, and lain with her, and they have been found, 29. then hath the man who is lying with her given to the father of the damsel fifty silverlings, and to him she is for a wife; because that he hath humbled her, he is not able to send her away all his days."

"30. 'A man doth not take his father's wife, nor uncover his father's skirt." (Deuteronomy 22:26-30, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: Moses, delivering his second-law sermons.
Audience: the second-generation Israelites assembled to enter Canaan.
Location: the plains of Moab, east of the Jordan.
Time period: events c. 1406 BC; composed c. 1406 BC.

Theological reading

Deuteronomy 22:13-30 is a single legal unit on sexual offenses. It proceeds case by case, distinguishing four scenarios by the woman's status and by what verb describes the man's action. Reading the passage as a unit is essential to interpreting vv. 28-29 fairly.

The four cases are:

Adultery with a married woman (v. 22): both die.
Consensual fornication with a betrothed woman in a town (vv. 23-24): both die, because she did not cry out.
Rape of a betrothed woman in the field (vv. 25-27): only the man dies; the woman is acquitted by analogy with murder. The verb here is chazaq (to overpower forcibly).
Sexual contact with an unbetrothed virgin (vv. 28-29): the man pays the mohar (bride-price), marries her, and is forbidden to divorce her. The verb here is taphas (to seize / grasp / take hold).

The lexical contrast between v. 25's chazaq and v. 28's taphas is load-bearing. Chazaq in v. 25 is paired with the woman's outcry unheard (rape). Taphas in v. 28 is paired with "and they are discovered" (i.e., they are both caught in the act, suggesting consensual but secret contact rather than a single-party violent assault). The contrast with the parallel statute in Exodus 22:16-17 confirms this: there the language is unambiguously seduction ("if a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged, and lies with her"). Most modern scholarly translations (NASB95 with "seizes," NIV with "rapes" notwithstanding) render taphas in ways that allow either reading; the lexical case for consensual-seduction-with-discovery is the historic mainstream Jewish and Christian one.

Why, then, the marriage requirement? Because in the ANE honor-shame culture, a non-virgin daughter could not be married and could not support herself; she would face destitution or prostitution. The statute does three things at once: it punishes the man (he must pay the full bride-price and lose his right of divorce, two significant financial and legal penalties); it protects the woman (she gains legal-wife status with lifelong support); and it gives her family veto power, since the parallel Exodus 22:17 explicitly gives the father the right to refuse the marriage and still keep the silver. Read together, Exodus 22:16-17 and Deuteronomy 22:28-29 are a protection statute against a man using a woman sexually and then abandoning her to ruin, not a license for that behavior.

The text does not endorse rape. The text three verses earlier (vv. 25-27) prescribes death for rape and explicitly exonerates the victim. The atheist-objection reading of vv. 28-29 collapses two distinct case-laws (vv. 25-27 and vv. 28-29) into one by ignoring the verb-shift and the legal context. The defeater unpacks all of this in full; see also the broader treatment under OT Sexual- Violence Laws and Hebrew Verbs for Sexual Contact.

Key words

H1330 - bethulah, "virgin"; the legal status that triggers this case-law.
H0001 - ab, "father"; the head of household who receives the bride-price and (per Exodus 22:17) may veto the union.

Theological themes

Victim protection. The statute prevents a man from sexually using and then abandoning a woman.
Lexical care matters. The verb taphas in v. 28 is distinct from chazaq in v. 25; conflating them is the engine of the objection.
ANE legal context. Comparison with surrounding ANE codes (Code of Hammurabi, Middle Assyrian Laws) shows the Mosaic statute as more restrictive of male behavior and more protective of women, not less.
Honor-shame economics. The marriage-and-no-divorce penalty is punitive against the man and protective of the woman in a culture where a non-virgin daughter could not be married.
Old Covenant case-law as ad hoc justice. This is a civil-law remedy in a tribal society, not a timeless ideal; the New Covenant abrogates the civil framework while keeping the underlying ethical principle of protecting vulnerable women.

Cross-references

Exodus 22.16-17, the parallel seduction statute with the father's veto.
Deuteronomy 22.25-27, the immediately preceding rape statute with the death penalty.
Deuteronomy 22, the full sexual-ethics chapter.
Deuteronomy 21.10-14, the war-captive marriage statute, often cited alongside.

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.