The Lord delights in the chastity of women

You bring up a very interesting perspective. The way the verse is written is definitely a reflection on the way women have been viewed in the long arch of the human history up until the 20th century. We still have a ways to go, especially in the non-first-world countries. But I believe it is the case that women have almost always and almost universally been seen as non-actors. In this view, they were neither capable nor responsible (and in religious terms, when they were, they were usually in a villainous role, like Jezebel, Delilah, Herodias and her daughter Salome.) To me, a very interesting example of a woman in ancient literature who doesn’t seem to be steering her own boat or responsible for what happens is Bathsheba. She’s a beautiful women accidentally seen naked by the King (David), who invites her over, sleeps with her, tries to conceal her pregnancy, has her husband killed, and marries her. David is portrayed as having succumbed and fallen, but Bathsheba seems to be given a pass. Yet, when she learned that she was pregnant with David’s child (Solomon), she conspired with David to formulate a plan to hide it from Uriah. She seems to me to be at least somewhat complicit, but she is portrayed as pretty neutral and matter-of-fact in the OT. I mean, it clearly seems that in the OT, she was a beautiful woman, so she was just caught up in the story like a plot device. The question of her own innocence or guilt is never even considered; responsibility falls fully on David. This verse in the BofM falls into that category, but remember it’s one of a million such perspectives on women in literature, and not unique to the BofM.

As for the focus of this particular verse, I do see it slightly differently. Jacob is addressing men. He tells them to honor the chastity of women. The implication is that they must themselves be chaste, but he’s putting it in terms not of them, but of how their actions affect others. It’s analogous to how current don’t-drink-and-drive campaigns don’t tell the target audience, “you might be hurt” but tell them, “you might hurt someone else”.

I recall one of the Roman emperors making strict laws about women having multiple sexual partners when he himself had many, many partners.

The first Roman emperor, Augustus, attempted to regulate the conduct of women through moral legislation. Adultery, which had been a private family matter under the Republic, was criminalized,[26] and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (stuprum) that occurred between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery when he had sex with a prostitute, slave, or person of marginalized status (infamis).[27]

I think it goes back to the idea of Women as exclusive sexual property.

A slave can only have one master. A slave (as property) cannot enter into a side arrangement with a neighbor to work for them while I do not have them otherwise occupied. Because I (as slave master) own all of the fruits of my slaves hands – the slave would not be able to enter into a contract with anyone else. To do so, the slave would be stealing his own labor from me – the slave master.

As a slave master I am in no way exclusively loyal to just one slave. I can have hundreds or even thousands of slaves.

The analogy is not perfect of course. Wives for much of history had a status that was better than a slave or a minor child but still under the control, power, and protection of the husband.

I believe this verse is essentially saying that God delights in women being sexually exclusive and loyal to only their husband. I also believe that this view is consistent with ancient patriarchal societies that were set up to benefit men.

Jacob 2:28 “For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts.”

Why only women? Does God not also delight in the chastity of men? (After all, it takes two to tango.) Or did He simply not think it was worth mentioning?…When women are mentioned so infrequently in the Book of Mormon, do you think it means anything that they are singled out in this verse?…And an interesting fact I discovered: the word ‘chastity’ pops up twice in the Book of Mormon (the other time is in Moroni 9:9, a scripture that’s problematic on its own), but it never appears in the text of the Bible. So unless my search results are glaringly wrong, the word ‘chastity’ wasn’t actually used in the KJV. Food for thought.

I never paid much attention to this scripture before but there’s no doubt that there is a double standard that has survived to this day to some extent where there is still a certain amount of “slut shaming” that goes on for women whereas men are typically given a pass or even admired for a similar level of sexuality that women are routinely condemned for. Who knows where this general attitude came from (evolution and/or culture)? But personally I wouldn’t attribute this to God anymore than racism or homophobia. It’s interesting to see how God sounded so ignorant (of scientific or historical realities) when the people claiming to speak for him were relatively ignorant and superstitious and that more recently God sounds like a chauvinist when there are still plenty of chauvinists around and on and on down the list. How much of this is really inspired and how much is simply a product of the people originally telling us what God supposedly thinks in various cases?

Actually, if anything the Law of Chastity is one area where I think the Church currently treats men and women more equally than many people in the outside world do in many cases nowadays because they definitely demand and expect men to toe the line in terms of the same strict rules as for women regardless of what the BoM says and it is mostly in the case of modesty, gender roles, etc. that women are still treated differently for whatever reasons. Personally I think chastity is overrated to begin with regardless of gender because pre-marital sex is often every bit as healthy and harmless if not more so than strict abstinence nowadays as long as people are responsible about the threat of unwanted pregnancy, STDs, etc. I don’t expect the Church to accept the current reality (outside the LDS sub-culture) anytime soon but it would be nice if they were at least a little more forgiving and not quite so hung up on strict obedience to the letter-of-the-law more like Jesus was and less like the Pharisees were according to the Bible.

I have long felt that the scriptures are simply the writings of men who believed they spoke for God, or who OTHERS believed spoke for God. We know the Bible was assembled by the Catholics, if my history is correct, and THEY decided what was included and what wasn’t. Heck if JS’s statement that all the other churches were “WRONG” and you are agnostic about whether JS was truly inspired or simply believed he was, then it throws into question the revelatory quality of all scripture. Particularly if it was assembled as inspired by a “great and abominable church” as Joseph Smith implied (even though JS altered parts of the bible that were mistranslated, he seemed to accept every book as belonging in the Bible). You can see the prophets were heavily influenced by the culture of their day given the chauvinistic comments in the Bible, right up to Brigham Young institutionalizing racism in the church.

I would take Biblical comments with a grain of salt. The prevailing culture is what really matters in the church — and I know it has problems – but I like DA’s observation that men get held to a pretty high standard for sexual sin in the church — there is no such thing as a conquest in our religion when it comes to sex, that is for sure.

I think we could agree that the Lord delights in the chastity of men too. I felt, as a Young Adult and new member, that I was “damaged goods” if I’d had sex before marriage. Now, we could criticize the depth of the shame we feel for such indiscretions (applied to both men and women in the church) but that is another story.

I agree with most of DA’s comment, but it is inaccurate to say that Jesus was lenient toward sexual sin, based on what we have written in the Bible. His recorded teachings actually were not different in most ways than those of the Jewish leadership of the time regarding sexual matters – and, in some cases, were even more stringent. (Equating lustful looking with adultery is a good example.) He was more forgiving than they were, perhaps, but, even in the case of the woman taken in adultery, he is recorded as saying, “Go, and sin no more.” …He appears to have had a problem with the way “sinners” we’re treated, but there is no indication he taught a relaxed version of sexual behavior.

I never said that Jesus was lenient toward sexual (or any other) sins as far as directly approving of supposed sins, all I was saying is simply that the Bible gives the impression that he was more forgiving and less obsessed with the letter-of-the-law than the Pharisees and that the LDS Church and culture currently reminds me more of the Pharisees than Jesus in terms of the general mindset and approach to religious practice. For example, in the Bible Jesus talked about turning the other cheek and forgiving people 70×7 times and it looks like not deferring enough to established traditions is one of the main reasons why the Pharisees were annoyed by him as much as they were (Matthew 15:7-14).

That’s why I don’t think it’s any major stretch of the imagination to think that if we try to ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” given the current situation where pre-marital sex is so commonplace that some of the harsh condemnation that continues to go on in the Church would be completely out of character for Jesus based on what we read about him in the Bible. Even given the existing LDS doctrines, if people have sex before they are married once they are married they are no longer sinning according to the Church simply by having sex. But how often do Church members really return to full-fellowship and Church activity in this case? Apparently not all that often because according to survey results reported in the fairly recent “Mormon Advantage” article only 14 percent of LDS “regular churchgoers” polled had pre-marital sex with their future spouse compared to 57 percent of evangelicals, 64 percent of Catholics, and 66 percent of “fundamentalist Protestants.”

As far as I can tell this article was trying to say this shows what a good job Mormons do of practicing what they preach but personally I think it also shows what a good job the LDS Church has done of weeding out and excluding Church members that don’t follow the very specific LDS life script of full-time missions and/or temple marriage. In theory there is nothing to stop LDS Church members that had sex before they were married from returning to full-fellowship after they are married but in practice pre-marital sex makes them unworthy to go on missions and/or get married in the temple and if these milestones are missed there’s a good chance they will fall away completely and never return. To make matters worse, there is the fairly prevalent notion that Church members that have sex before they are married are permanently “damaged goods” exemplified by the old “chewed gum” metaphor. How does any of that really fit with the official teachings that repentance and complete forgiveness should be possible?

I agree with most of DA’s comment, but it is inaccurate to say that Jesus was lenient toward sexual sin, based on what we have written in the Bible. His recorded teachings actually were not different in most ways than those of the Jewish leadership of the time regarding sexual matters – and, in some cases, were even more stringent. (Equating lustful looking with adultery is a good example.) He was more forgiving than they were, perhaps, but, even in the case of the woman taken in adultery, he is recorded as saying, “Go, and sin no more.” …He appears to have had a problem with the way “sinners” we’re treated, but there is no indication he taught a relaxed version of sexual behavior.

Jesus was more lenient toward sexual sin than the people of the day —- I remember the woman taken in adultery — everyone was ready to stone her and he made them go away. He told her to go away and sin no more. Whether there was any forgiveness or other consequences is not clear, but it seems to imply he was more into forgiveness than punishment than the leaders of the day.

One more point I would add here is that adultery is easily a notch or two higher as far as the level of seriousness in real life than pre-marital sex especially now that we have convenient and effective birth control available because it typically involves at least one other person that can be called a victim of betrayal whether they are aware of it or not but for pre-marital sex there is quite often no tangible harm or obvious injustice done to anyone involved. That’s why I would interpret the scriptures comparing “lust” to adultery as being more than simply finding someone other than your spouse attractive but actually seriously thinking about betraying your own and/or someone else’s spouse and personally I think it is basically saying that in that case your heart is already in the wrong place and you should repent of even thinking this way.

I realize that Bart Ehrman has popularized the fact that the account of the woman caught in the act of adultery (John 8:3-11) was not included in the “earliest and best” manuscripts and was apparently a later addition but personally I don’t attach too much significance to that because it could simply mean it was part of the oral tradition about Jesus so some scribes wanted to include it somewhere and eventually did. However, even if we assume Jesus actually said, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” for all we know he could have mostly meant something along the lines of, “Don’t push your luck” basically because if she did the same thing again she literally might not even escape with her life the next time.

Roy, I think you’re probably right.

I’ve also heard that given as an explanation for why men and women make different covenants in the temple. The wife gives herself to the husband and the husband receives her; he can’t give himself to his wife because that precludes him from giving himself to future wives. The wife hearkens to the husband; the husband can’t hearken to his wife because what happens if two or three or a thousand of his wives are telling him different things.

I don’t like it, but it makes sense. And while I like to think that it’s the imperfect church and not God that is sexist, the fact that stuff like this is canonized in scripture tells me that it probably is God.

This when I wonder about my future in the church, because the fact that it’s canonized scripture tells me absolutely nothing about God. If the Spirit ratifies what the men wrote, then I’ve at least picked up on God’s trail.