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The Seedy Side of Love
Ki Tetzei "When you go out"
DEUTERONOMY 21:10-25:19
ISAIAH 54:1-54:10
PSALM 32
MARK 12:18-27
Ki Tetzei, which translates, "When you go out..." describes a situation of "going out" to war:
When you go out (tetzei, H3318) to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive and you will see among the captives a beautiful woman [Yefat Toar], and have a desire [chashak] for her and would take her as a wife for yourself... (Dt 21:10-11)
This passage may seem outdated to modern readers, but in wars from ancient times until to day, conquering armies routinely rape the women and children of their foes. Israel, however, was not to give in to such a beastly behavior even in a time of war. This passage describes what modern Judaism would describe as conversion process. After a month of mourning in which her hair is shaved, her nails left unmanicured, and her beautiful eyes are red and swollen from weeping, the Israelite may find her more of annoyance, always underfoot, yet untouchable.
Ancient armies, like the Moabites and Midianites, would dress their most beautiful young women in fine garments, jewelry, and fancy hairdos, and then send them ahead of the army to seduce the enemy and distract them from the battle ahead. This tactic was used on the Israelites at Baal Peor, and without an arrow shot, the Israelites succumbed to adultery and idolatry.
Now this most beautiful young woman has exchanged her fine garments for ones of mourning, ugly sackcloth. At the end of the month, if the young woman has not agreed to abandon her foreign gods, then she must be given her freedom. If she agrees to cling to the Elohim of Israel, then she may be married to her "captor" and assume all the rights and responsibilities of any Israelite wife. Either way, the foreign woman loses her "captive" status and finds freedom. One kind of freedom sends her back into captivity to foreign gods. The other gives her freedom in the perfect Torah of liberty.
Tetzei is from the root yatzah, which means to go out or to bring out. Going out to war for an Israelite has a deeper meaning, especially since it may result in bringing a captive woman home to marry. Let's apply the Rule of First Mention and another significant context that use the root yatzah. On the Third Day of Creation:
The earth brought forth [totzei] vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. (Ge 1:12)
A couple of things stand out. First, trees are metaphors for human beings. What "went out" of the prophetic people even before the Sixth Day when actual human beings were created? Fruit with like-kind seed. Likewise, the plants are described as "mazria zerah," or "seeding seed" or "sowing seed (or making pregnant) after their kind." Elohim saw that when plants and people bear fruit with seed after their kind, it is tov, or good. When an Israelite warrior sees a beautiful foreign woman, what is in question is whether she will reproduce children with a "like kind" seed of the Word in them. If so, it will be good, or tov.
What Elohim sees as good, or tov, may not be what human beings see as tov.
With free choice, our view of tov may change.
But our view will never change what is tov.
The Torah recognizes the possibility of the seed to replicate after His image. The risk is that the young warrior is carried away by his passion, or chashak, which is the same word that describes the passion with which Shechem raped Dinah. It is based on outward form, image, or appearance, toar. In fact, some translations of the Bible don't translate the word that defines the trap of falling in love with a foreign woman. This is called the Law of the Beautiful Woman, Yefat Toar.
The captive woman is beautiful of "form," but is she also beautiful inside? The month of seeing her ugly on the outside may reveal the passionate warrior's true motivation. Is it love or lust? The prospective husband will not see her outer beauty for a full month, like the month of Elul when the law of the Yefat Toar is read in the annual cycle. Elul means "vain emptiness," and so the ugly captive will be on the exterior, and perhaps so is the warrior's heart, but the hearts will be revealed on the 1st of Tishrei, the Seventh Month at the new moon. It is the Feast of Trumpets, the resurrection of the dead each year in the annual cycle. While the captive's month of home confinement may not align in practicality, the Torah reading's position to the fall feasts teaches the principle.
Free will MUST be a part of the Yefat Toar marriage procedure to reveal the true "form" of the marriage. Dinah was not free. Shechem claimed to love her, but he did not permit her to return to her father and brothers while the marriage contract was negotiated. Instead, she was "loved" while at the same time chained to Shechem's coercion and chashak. She was an object on whom he placed his passion, but he didn't trust her with free will.
The captive woman is not just a captive of Israel. She has been chained to the idols of her heritage. For a full month, she distances herself from their idolatry. If she will not be like Ruth, a true convert, and leave her idols behind, she is not permitted as a wife and must go free back to the realm of death. Her seed will not be sown in Israel to produce a mixed field of the Word and tares. In a way, this weeds out the "seed of the woman" that will reproduce idolatry. A woman who converts to cling to the Land, Covenant, and People of Israel enters into true life and freedom.
In spite of the risk and warning of such a marriage producing mixed seeds, however, the Torah does establish this provision. Despite the risk of producing rebellious, idolatrous offspring, there is some redeeming possibility in marrying a Yefat Toar. When Boaz reminds Ruth that she could have any nice-looking young man she wished because of her beauty, it signals to us that she has ALREADY become a modest, virtuous woman of good reputation, a fact later acknowledged by the elders in the city gates of Bethlehem.
Marrying Boaz did not make her righteous; he married her because she WAS righteous. It is only AFTER he's noticed her beautifully Torah-informed hard work that he finally points out her physical beauty. Neither Ruth nor Boaz looked on the outward appearance, toar, but inside the heart for spiritual beauty. The righteous Israelite warrior looks for a spiritual spark of tov inside the captive woman IN SPITE of her outward beauty. The "ugly month" is as much to search his own heart as hers as she mourns the death of the religious heritage she inherited from her natural father and mother even as she embraces the heritage of her spiritual father and mother, Abraham and Sarah.
Yeshua sent his disciples to seek out the Yefat Toars scattered among the nations because of his passion for a foreign bride. This passion was not the desire of Shechem or Amnon for natural beauty, but a passion generated for the very reason that this torah was written for the marriage of a "beautiful captive." After 2,000 years, Yeshua still awaits a decision of free will. Not all foreign women are the same, just as Ruth and her seed was nothing like her idolatrous ancestresses and their corrupted seed who led Israel to idolatry at Baal Peor.
Judaism acknowledges the need for the Yefat Toar is placed in Torah in order to recover Israel from the nations due to the Assyrian deportations:
Even after all the laws of the yefat toar have been enacted, it is a sign that this woman was destined to be converted. (The Midrash Says to Devarim, p. 248)
Today we may marry gerim from all nationalities, since the conqueror Sancheriv dispersed the nations from their lands of origin, and therefore we can no longer identify restricted nations. (ibid, p. 266)
So if we've been captivated by a potential Groom, Step 1 has been completed. We've been saved from total idolatry and depravity. If now we sit in the Groom's House, mourning our "parents" and the things we left behind, then Step 2 is not a pretty picture. The Groom desires us anyway, even though we cry about so many things.
So now the decision is ours. Will we finish our funeral for what we left behind and bravely take hold of the Covenant, the Land, and its People? Was the place of our birth simply the starting place, but not our final destination? Will we "marry" a holy mission and resurrect at the Feast of Trumpets?
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