Page 22 - The Marriage Covenant

they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give it to the girl's father, because
he publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. And she shall remain his wife; he cannot
divorce her all his days. But if this charge is true, that the girl was not found a virgin,
then they shall bring out the girl to the doorway of her father's house, and the men
of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in
Israel, by playing the harlot in her father's house; thus you shall purge the evil from
among you.

Note what a serious matter this was. There is no other law found in the Old Testament
whereby a man entered upon such dire consequences for making a false accusation than in
this matter of a woman’s virginity. To falsely accuse a woman who had kept herself pure,
would result in a fine of a hundred shekels of silver. This was a large sum of money. Yet if
the woman was proven to have played the harlot before she was married, she would be
taken out and stoned.
People of God, consider how far the church has fallen in esteeming as holy those
things that Yahweh says are holy! We live in the midst of a perverse generation, one which
calls evil good, and good evil. A man or a woman who has reached adulthood as a virgin in
many nations today is considered an object of pity. Youth are carelessly casting away that
which God has determined should be guarded with the greatest care, and preserved until
marriage. A Father in ancient times would jealously guard his daughter’s purity. It would
be a great disgrace to discover that she had “played the harlot.”
If we were to use the same language that the Holy Spirit inspired the prophets and
holy men of old to use in writing the Scriptures, would we not have to confess that the
streets of our towns and cities, and the very pews of the churches, are filled with whores?
Indeed, churches are filled with people who are continually practicing whoredom without
repentance.
The use of insulting words such as whore and harlot were employed intentionally by
the writers of Scripture. The Spirit was thereby signifying that a tremendous stigma was
attached to a woman who allowed men other than her husband to enter into her body,
treating that which was designed by Yahweh to be holy as a common and unholy thing.
Would not Yahweh be provoked unto great wrath for a man to enter into the Holy of Holies
in the Temple as if it were a common thing? Such a man would surely die.

Hebrews 9:6-7
Now when these things have been thus prepared, the priests are continually entering
the outer tabernacle, performing the divine worship, but into the second (the Holy
of Holies) only the high priest enters...

Even the High Priest was not permitted to pass beyond the veil except at the
prescribed time. If he entered at the wrong time, he would die.

Leviticus 16:2
And Yahweh said to Moses, "Tell your brother Aaron that he shall not enter at any
time into the holy place inside the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark, lest
he die.”

In a parallel to this, man is not to enter into sexual union with woman, except at the