Exodus 22:17
“If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins.”
What does Exodus 22:17 mean?
This verse is set in ancient Israel's legal code and addresses a situation where a man has seduced an unmarried woman and wants to marry her, but her father refuses the union. Rather than forcing the marriage, the law required the man to compensate the father with a bride price, roughly equivalent to what a dowry would have been if the woman had married normally. While this system seems foreign to us now, it actually protected vulnerable women in that culture by ensuring they weren't abandoned after being seduced. The compensation acknowledged real harm and loss to her family, and it prevented men from exploiting women without consequences. It's less about buying a person and more about requiring accountability when someone has damaged a family's interests and a daughter's marriageability prospects.