“He called his personal servant and said, ‘Get rid of this woman for me! Throw her out, and lock the door after her!'”-2 Samuel 13:17
There is a mistranslation in verse 17.
After raping Tamar, we read Amnon saying…
“Get rid of this woman for me!”
That’s not correct.
The Hebrew word for woman is ISHAH, and it doesn’t appear in this verse.
Instead, Amnon refers to his sister as ET-ZOT.
It means “this one.”
He’s telling his servant to throw this one out as if Tamar were a piece of trash to be discarded or something.
Boy, that Amnon is a despicable bastard, ain’t he?
I have my doubts if people were following the laws of Moses concerning sex and marriage in David’s time…
But let’s check out what the Torah says.
Take a minute to read the following excerpt from the Book of Deuteronomy:
“If a man marries a woman, has sexual relations with her and then, having come to dislike her, 14 brings false charges against her and defames her character by saying, ‘I married this woman, but when I had intercourse with her I did not find evidence that she was a virgin’; 15 then the girl’s father and mother are to take the evidence of the girl’s virginity to the leaders of the town at the gate. 16 The girl’s father will say to the leaders, ‘I let my daughter marry this man, but he hates her, 17 so he has brought false charges that he didn’t find evidence of her virginity; yet here is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity’ — (18 ) and they will lay the cloth before the town leaders. 18 (19) The leaders of that town are to take the man, punish him, 19 and fine him two-and-a-half pounds of silver shekels, which they will give to the girl’s father, because he has publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. She will remain his wife, and he is forbidden from divorcing her as long as he lives.
20 “But if the charge is substantiated that evidence for the girl’s virginity could not be found; 21 then they are to lead the girl to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her town will stone her to death, because she has committed in Israel the disgraceful act of being a prostitute while still in her father’s house. In this way, you will put an end to such wickedness among you.
22 “If a man is found sleeping with a woman who has a husband, both of them must die — the man who went to bed with the woman and the woman too. In this way, you will expel such wickedness from Israel.
23 “If a girl who is a virgin is engaged to a man, and another man comes upon her in the town and has sexual relations with her; 24 you are to bring them both out to the gate of the city and stone them to death — the girl because she didn’t cry out for help, there in the city, and the man because he has humiliated his neighbor’s wife. In this way, you will put an end to such wickedness among you.
25 “But if the man comes upon the engaged girl out in the countryside, and the man grabs her and has sexual relations with her, then only the man who had intercourse with her is to die. 26 You will do nothing to the girl, because she has done nothing deserving of death. The situation is like the case of the man who attacks his neighbor and kills him. 27 For he found her in the countryside, and the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her.
28 “If a man comes upon a girl who is a virgin but who is not engaged, and he grabs her and has sexual relations with her, and they are caught in the act, 29 then the man who had intercourse with her must give to the girl’s father one-and-a-quarter pounds of silver shekels, and she will become his wife, because he humiliated her; he may not divorce her as long as he lives.”-Deuteronomy 22:13-29
So the big thing I want you to catch is the difference in consequences that a man and a woman will pay for their infidelity.
The consequences for a man are mainly financial.
He’s gotta cough up some hard-earned cash, and that’s it.
However, the consequences for the woman are much more dire.
A woman would be an outcast for life, and depending on the circumstances, could suffer the death penalty.
See, quite unlike our modern times, in the Biblical era, no man desired to marry a girl who wasn’t a virgin.
Men sometimes married widows or those who had been divorced.
But a woman who had lost her virginity due to sexual immorality was seen as cursed or damaged goods, to stay far away from.
Or another way to put it:
An Israelite girl’s financial worth to her family dropped to zero if she were single but not a virgin.
Ya feeling me here?
So I think you can see the no-win situation Tamar had been put in due to no fault of her own.
The Torah laws governing incest (Leviticus 18:6-12) forbid marrying a half-brother.
This is a stipulation that cannot be overridden under any circumstances.
On the other hand, she is now unable to marry anyone else.
Why?
As I just said, no Israelite male would even think about marrying a non-virgin.
He would lose his standing in society if he did.
So Tamar has become an outcast.
She might as well have been a leper.
She’ll never be able to marry and start a family.
She’ll always be seen as a girl who had committed incest with her brother…
Even if it wasn’t her fault.
So here’s your takeaway for today.
Tamar was thrown out like trash and forgotten by the men who should’ve protected her.
Her rapist called her “this one,”not even worthy of being named.
Her father, King David, got angry but did nothing.
And society?
They left her to rot in shame for a crime she didn’t commit.
She was used, discarded, and silenced.
But God didn’t forget her.
Even though we don’t read of any justice in her lifetime…
The fact that her story is in Scripture…
Raw and uncensored…
Tells us something powerful:
God saw her.
He made sure her pain wasn’t buried.
He didn’t erase her like Amnon tried to.
He preserved her name and her voice…
Even when everyone else tried to shut her out.
So if you’ve ever felt like Tamar…
Violated, unheard, or labeled for something that wasn’t your fault…
Know this:
God sees…
God remembers….
God will judge…
Tamar may not have gotten justice in her time…
But God wrote her into eternity…
And He won’t forget you either.
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