Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Epley
Dan some abominations were abominations UNTO THEM NOT God however ALL the abominations to God are yet abominations to day. I have taught on each of these many times.  |
Sir ... but the reference you make to the abomination in
Deut. 22:5 is sandwiched in between other ceremonial laws .... furthermore this scripture is particularly addressing an abomination UNTO THEM ...
Source:
BEWARE ... Text without Context is PRETEXT
For those with a religious background
Deuteronomy 22:5 tells us that a woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment (RSV). First, this edict was written in a period when there were many wars. There were men who didn't want to be part of the war and would dress as women to avoid being sent, and there were women who wanted to, and, to get around the ban on women fighting, made themselves out to be men.
At the time there was little difference between the outer garments worn by men and those worn by women, except for colour and decoration. To the Hebrews of the time this passage was meant to make them think more than twice before trying to pass themselves off as a member of the opposite sex to avoid, or be involved in, conflicts. Given that men already wore skirts/dresses it could hardly be an indictment against them doing so. Cross-dressing (ie making out you're of the opposite sex, not just wearing something usually worn by them) was banned in the Hebrew camp as one way in which the people could retain their distinctiveness from the surrounding tribes.
Deuteronomy 22:5 also speaks of cross-dressers as an abomination before the Lord your God, a phrase which was used on several occasions by the writers/editors of that part of the Bible to reflect a theological stance against a particular action.
What's more in this case, the Hebrew of
Deuteronomy 22:30 refers to a man discovering his father's skirt and has no reference to abomination. If we are to take
Deuteronomy 22:5 literally then it can also be claimed that, according to that verse, every woman who has ever worn trousers/slacks is an abomination before God. I think there would be very few uncondemned women! Whereas there isn't a single man in the whole of the bible who didn't wear skirts every day, trousers were invented for men, and were exclusively menswear throughout the world until about 60 years ago. For those who want to exclude the women and slacks issue from this passage by claiming slacks are womenswear it's sobering to remember that that wasn't the case until quite recently.
The early pioneering women had to wear trousers designed, made, and sold for men, and were subject to the same passage of scripture being thrown at them. I wonder if anyone has apologised for calling them abominations before God in the same way as I wonder if anyone will, in a few years, apologise to the increasingly large number of men who wear skirts as menswear for taking this passage out of context and trying to label us abominations. The rationale for a great number of the 613 mitzvot (commandments or "essential behaviours") extracted from the Torah (of which this is but one) was based on practical, political considerations. There is no absolute prohibition on the wearing of dresses or skirts, because everybody wore them. When people talk about prohibiting specific articles of clothing, they too often forget that the centre of gravity here is constantly shifting. In the time of Henry VIII it was the MEN who showed off their legs, not the women.
Requiring passages such as
Deuteronomy 22:5 to be taken literally, and binding on all of us for all time because it's in the bible also requires that unmarried women who have been raped have to marry their rapist with no opportunity for divorce (
Deut 22:28-29). This was part of ceremonial law.
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