The Seventh Commandment: Sacred Ownership
Regulating Desire, Preserving Ownership
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.” — Exodus 20:14
By the seventh commandment, the pattern is no longer subtle. What appears to be a moral rule about fidelity is, on closer inspection, a boundary around ownership. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is not a universal ethic of mutual loyalty. It is a restriction designed to protect male authority, regulate women’s sexuality, and preserve lines of inheritance. Desire is not condemned — it is controlled.
A Law About Property, Not Equality
In its original context, adultery was not defined as any form of sexual unfaithfulness. It had a narrower meaning: a man having sexual relations with another man’s wife. The violation was not symmetrical. It was not primarily about betrayal between partners — it was about infringing on another man’s household.
A married woman’s sexuality was tightly controlled because it carried economic consequences. Questions of paternity affected inheritance, lineage, and the stability of family structures. Adultery, then, was treated less as a moral failing between equals and more as a property violation with social repercussions.
This imbalance is not subtle — it is embedded in the system itself. As Carolyn Pressler, a biblical scholar and author of The View of Women Found in the Deuteronomic Family Laws, notes; “the laws are concerned with the interests of the male household head.” Adultery, in this framework, is not primarily a violation between two equal partners, but a disruption of male-controlled structures of inheritance and authority.
Deuteronomy 22: When the Law Is Spelled Out
The broader legal framework makes this even clearer. In Deuteronomy 22, sexual laws are detailed with striking specificity — and striking imbalance.
If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both are to be put to death. On the surface, this may look equal. But the surrounding cases reveal a different logic entirely. If a man sleeps with an unmarried woman, the response is not execution — it is compensation and forced marriage. The offence is reframed as damage to the woman’s father, not a violation of her autonomy.
Even more revealing is the distinction based on location in cases of assault. A woman attacked in a city may be punished for not crying out, while one attacked in the countryside is presumed innocent. The burden of proof shifts onto the victim, reinforcing the idea that her role is to protect her status, not that the system exists to protect her.
As Tikva Frymer-Kensky, author and biblical scholar, observes: “a woman’s sexuality was under the control of her family.” The laws of Deuteronomy 22 reflect this assumption clearly. The concern is not mutual consent or personal autonomy, but the regulation of status, lineage, and household integrity.
These laws are not concerned with consent in any modern sense. They are concerned with maintaining order — ensuring that property, and male authority remain intact.
What the Commandment Does Not Condemn
If the seventh commandment were truly about sexual ethics, we would expect it to address exploitation, coercion, or inequality. Instead, it remains silent on many practices that were widely accepted.
Polygyny — the taking of multiple wives — was not prohibited. Concubinage was permitted. Sexual access to slaves was assumed within the social structure. None of these fall under the prohibition of adultery because they did not threaten another man’s household in the same way.
This silence is revealing. The commandment does not establish a consistent sexual ethic. It draws a boundary around a specific type of violation while leaving other forms of imbalance untouched. What matters is not fairness or mutuality, but the preservation of a particular social order.
From Ancient Law to Lasting Double Standards
These underlying assumptions did not remain confined to the ancient world. They shaped centuries of interpretation and application.
Women accused of adultery have historically faced harsher consequences — social, legal, and sometimes violent — while men’s behaviour has been more readily excused or overlooked. This is not simply a later distortion of an otherwise neutral rule. It reflects the same asymmetry present in the original framework.
Even in modern contexts, echoes of this imbalance remain. Expectations around sexual purity are still often applied unevenly. The language may have changed, but the pattern persists: control is stricter where power is weaker.
A Commandment of Control, Not Consistency
Stripped of its cultural context, the seventh commandment is often presented as a timeless moral truth. But examined more closely, it reveals something narrower and more pragmatic.
It is not a universal statement about fidelity between equals. It is a rule designed to protect household structures, regulate women’s sexuality, and safeguard lines of inheritance. Its moral authority rests not on consistency, but on its role within a system that prioritised stability over equality.
What presents itself as a universal moral rule is, on closer inspection, a reflection of a system structured around male authority and control. The commandment does not emerge in isolation — it reflects a world in which, as Pressler notes, legal concern centres on the household head, and where, as Frymer-Kensky observes, women’s sexuality is regulated within that structure.
If the aim were genuine ethical clarity, the commandment would speak to consent, mutual responsibility, and fairness. Instead, it reflects a world in which these concerns were secondary to control.
And that raises an uncomfortable question:
Is this a moral principle meant for all time — or a rule shaped by the needs of a society determined to preserve its own hierarchy?
Sources:
Blenkinsopp, Joseph. The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Coogan, Michael D. The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories. New York: Schocken Books, 2002.
Levine, Baruch A. Leviticus. JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989.
Matthews, Victor H., and Don C. Benjamin. Social World of Ancient Israel 1250–587 BCE. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993.
Meyers, Carol. Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Pressler, Carolyn. The View of Women Found in the Deuteronomic Family Laws. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993.
Westbrook, Raymond. Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Law. Paris: Gabalda, 1988.
Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004.A Law About Property, Not Equality