Was fornication condemned in the Old Testament?
Question:
Is it true that fornication with a prostitute/pagan was permitted in the Old Testament, while with a believer, one had to marry her, and that this was only forbidden in the New Testament? A commenter on YouTube said that God permitted it in the Old Testament for the hardness of hearts, just like divorce and polygamy were permitted until our Lord Jesus Christ forbade it in the New Testament. Is there any truth to that?
Answer:
Prostitution is condemned in Leviticus 19:29; Jeremiah 3:2; 13:27; Hosea 2:5; 4:13-15; and Nahum 3:3-4. These passages condemn both the women who were prostitutes and the men who sought out their services.
Fornication between unmarried couples carried a penalty, requiring a dowry of 50 shekels of silver. A silver shekel was worth what an unskilled laborer could earn in 40 days of work. The price of dowry needed would be roughly what an unskilled laborer could earn in seven years (assuming he had to live on some of his earnings). In addition, he was required to marry the woman with whom he had sex with no allowance for a future divorce unless her father objected to the marriage (Deuteronomy 22:28-29; Exodus 22:16-17). This sin would also require a guilt offering to be made.
Even prior to the Law of Moses, people knew fornication was wrong. After Shechem had sex with Dinah, her brothers were upset. "Now the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it; and the men were grieved, and they were very angry because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done" (Genesis 34:7).
Israel was to put tassels on the corners of their garments as a reminder. "It shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, so as to do them and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot, so that you may remember to do all My commandments and be holy to your God" (Numbers 15:39-40). It didn't serve them well because not long after, "While Israel remained at Shittim, the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab" (Numbers 25:1). Along with worshiping Baal (a male fertility god), Israel caused God to be furious with them. "Then behold, one of the sons of Israel came and brought to his relatives a Midianite woman, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, while they were weeping at the doorway of the tent of meeting. When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he arose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand, and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and pierced both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman, through the body. So the plague on the sons of Israel was checked" (Numbers 25:6-8). If you think for a moment, Phinehas speared the man and the woman while they were lying down together to have sex.
