Bird's-eye view
This verse lays down God's law concerning consummated adultery between a man and a married woman. The statute is stark and severe: both guilty parties are to be executed. This is not presented as a private matter of personal betrayal, but as a public crime, an "evil" that defiles the covenant community of Israel. The stated purpose of the death penalty is therefore not merely retributive, but purgative. The law aims to protect the central institution of marriage, which is the bedrock of a stable society, and to maintain the corporate holiness of God's people. The equal penalty for both the man and the woman underscores the biblical principle of equal moral agency and responsibility before God's law, refuting any notion that women were treated as mere property without culpability.
In short, God treats the marriage covenant with the utmost seriousness. An attack on a marriage is an attack on the foundational structure of the nation, and consequently, an attack on God's established order. The severity of the punishment is designed to match the gravity of the crime and to function as a powerful deterrent, thereby purging the corrupting influence of such covenant-breaking from the midst of the people.
Outline
- 1. The Crime and the Punishment (Deut 22:22)
- a. The Offense: A Man Found with a Married Woman (v. 22a)
- b. The Sentence: A Symmetrical Death Penalty (v. 22b)
- c. The Rationale: The Purging of Evil from the Covenant Community (v. 22c)
Context In Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy 22 is part of a larger block of case laws (or casuistry) that applies the general principles of the Ten Commandments to specific situations in Israel's life. This particular chapter deals heavily with laws that protect social boundaries and maintain distinctions, including the separation of sexes in dress, the protection of animal life, and building codes. The latter half of the chapter, where our verse is found, focuses intensely on sexual purity and the protection of the marriage bond. It provides rulings for cases of a bride's virginity, seduction of an unbetrothed virgin, and adultery with a betrothed virgin. This verse, dealing with adultery with a fully married woman, is the capstone of these laws, addressing the most direct form of assault on an established marriage covenant. The surrounding context makes it clear that God is concerned with establishing a society where sexual relations are rightly ordered within the covenant of marriage, thus ensuring clear lines of inheritance, social stability, and covenantal faithfulness.
Key Issues
- The Sanctity of the Marriage Covenant
- Capital Punishment for Adultery
- The Principle of Equal Culpability
- The Concept of Corporate Sin and Purification
- The General Equity of the Law
The Covenantal Cancer
Our modern, sentimental age reads a verse like this and immediately recoils. We have reduced adultery to a therapeutic problem, a private mistake, a "messy situation" that calls for counseling and perhaps a no-fault divorce. The Bible, however, treats it as something far more sinister. It is not a private peccadillo; it is a public crime of the highest order. It is a form of treason against the family, which is the fundamental government of any society. God does not see adultery as a regrettable lapse in judgment, but rather as an evil that must be excised from the body politic like a malignant tumor. If you fail to cut out the cancer, the patient dies. And God intended for the nation of Israel to live.
The penalty is not prescribed out of some kind of divine bloodlust, but rather out of a fierce, loving protection of the institution that makes life, liberty, and happiness possible. Without stable marriages, you cannot have stable families. Without stable families, you cannot have a stable society. By treating the violation of the marriage covenant with ultimate seriousness, God is protecting everyone. The law is a guardrail at the edge of a cliff, and the sign does not say, "Have a nice day." It says, "Danger: Deadly Fall."
Verse by Verse Commentary
22 “If a man is found lying with a married woman...
The first thing to note is the evidentiary nature of the law. The phrase is found implies that this is not a matter of suspicion or rumor. There must be evidence; in the law of Moses, this required at least two or three witnesses. This is not about establishing a surveillance state or a system for thought-crimes. This is a public crime that has been publicly established. The specific act is "lying with" a woman, a standard biblical euphemism for sexual intercourse. The woman is defined as "a married woman," literally "a woman owned by an owner," which refers to her status as a wife under the authority and protection of her husband. This is the critical factor that makes the act adultery and not simple fornication. An existing covenant is being violated.
...then both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman...
The penalty is unambiguous: death. And it is applied with perfect symmetry. Both the man and the woman are to be executed. This is crucial for two reasons. First, it demonstrates the gravity of the offense. In God's economy, to violate the marriage bond is to commit a capital crime. It is a sin that forfeits the right to life within the covenant community. Second, it establishes the full moral agency and responsibility of the woman. This is not a law that treats the woman as a passive piece of property whose defilement must be avenged. She is a full covenant member, and if she willingly participates in the adulterous act, she is held fully accountable for her treason. The law is radically egalitarian in its assignment of guilt and punishment. Modern feminists who critique the Bible as patriarchal must run aground on verses like this, which assume a woman's moral responsibility as a matter of course.
...thus you shall purge the evil from Israel.
Here we have the divine rationale for the severity of the law. The purpose is to purge the evil. The Hebrew word for purge, ba'ar, can mean to burn up, consume, or eliminate. The sin of adultery is not a private failing; it is a corrupting agent, a spiritual contagion that, if left unchecked, will defile the entire nation. Israel was called to be a holy people, set apart for God. Tolerating this kind of high-handed covenant-breaking in their midst would be to tolerate a poison that would inevitably sicken the whole society. The execution of the guilty parties functioned as a radical corporate act of purification. It was a declaration by the community that they would not tolerate this evil among them, thereby reaffirming their own commitment to God's covenant and cleansing the land from the defilement of sin. This principle of purging evil is central to biblical governance, both in the civil realm and, by extension, in the church through the practice of excommunication.
Application
So what do we do with a law like this today? We certainly do not gather stones. Under the New Covenant, the specific civil and ceremonial applications of the Mosaic law have been fulfilled in Christ. However, the moral principle, or the general equity, of this law remains. And that principle is this: adultery is a damnable sin of the highest order, and it is destructive to the common good.
First, this law should drive us to the cross. Spiritually, we are all adulterers. We have "gone a-whoring" after other gods and broken our covenant with the Lord. The wages of our sin is death. This law tells us what we deserve. But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ came and was executed in our place. He took the death penalty for our spiritual adultery so that we, the guilty party, could be forgiven and welcomed back as His pure and spotless bride.
Second, this law must reform our view of marriage and divorce in the church. We have allowed the world's casual and flippant attitude toward marital fidelity to seep into our congregations. We treat adultery as a sad mistake instead of a vicious act of covenantal treason. While the church does not wield the sword, it does wield the keys of the kingdom. A refusal to enact meaningful church discipline against unrepentant adultery is a refusal to "purge the evil" from our midst. We become a community that tolerates the very cancer God commanded Israel to cut out.
Finally, while Christian nations may not implement the precise penalty of stoning, a society that wishes to be blessed by God must recognize that adultery is not a victimless crime. It is a public evil that destroys families, harms children, and destabilizes the entire social order. A Christian civil magistrate should therefore treat adultery as a crime, not simply a lifestyle choice. By criminalizing it, even if the penalties are less than capital, the state teaches the public that marriage is a public good that is worthy of public protection. This law reminds us that God's standards for a just society are far more rigorous, and far more protective, than our own.