@Keith Martin The trouble I see with your view is if it is bad enough to require the death penalty (sandwiched between mucho bad transgressions) but is speaking of something done in private that only the participants would know about, who among the guilty (all three are suposed to die) would ever reveal the sin? Is this just written to keep the hubby from boasting, or one of the women from blabbing about personal stuff?
I don't think that applies, here or elsewhere, when it comes to Scripture. Any form of moral training, from The Law on downward, is never meant just for situations in which people are
caught; by definition, that would be a sociopathic approach to morals, translated loosely as, "It's only wrong if I get caught." Therefore, any argument one way or another about right and wrong that asserts that something is only wrong if not done in private (or even doesn't deserve punishment unless not done in private) is consistently a red herring.
Laws, rules, policies, guidelines, etc. are not just for the purposes of meting out judgment or preventing gossiping or boasting -- but perhaps are primarily intended to engage
consciences. Their primary function is to
prevent, through inspiring the average person to recognizing that something tempting should not be pursued.
I see the spirit of Leviticus 18 more as encouraging men to have a protective view of mother in laws, step daughters, and of course their own daughters rather than looking at them with lustful intentions.
Now this I am
sort of 100% in agreement with you on, the only caveat being that I would assert that Leviticus 18 is intended to manage behavior, not intentions. We do, though, have to assume with your statement that it's being applied to situations in which the stepdaughters were present in a general sense from the time a man marries her mother. In that context, the man is responsible for protecting and providing for stepdaughters and should develop his relationship upon that supposition. Generally speaking, this would be understood to preclude having sexual intentions.
It's about boundaries, and the natural modesty and discretion that, unless damaged, exists in familial relationships.
'Boundaries', 'natural modesty', 'discretion' and 'unless damaged' are all very relativized sociopsychological constructions that I consider to inject indeterminancy into this or any other serious discussion. We can see in our own relatively-brief lifespans the degree to which such words and phrases have morphed from one accepted meaning to another as our culture has mutated. And every one of them can be used (and has been used) to demonize Biblical polygamy.
The aspect of this thread that speaks about whether or not Lot and his daughters might have been victims of limited choices points to the canard that familial relationships are 'natural;' if they were, we wouldn't need any guidelines, because the vast majority of people would do what was natural, and only those who strayed outside whatever you think natural family relationships are would need the effective tactics of shaming and reshaping. Leviticus 18 wasn't just preaching to the choir; it must have reflected a need for clarification. This many centuries later, we tend to take a lot of such guidelines almost for granted, but we shouldn't -- and the evidence that our culture doesn't take them for granted is seen in the turmoil of the culture wars, as well as in a continual string of bizarre attempts to reshape what is good and right (today it was the story about how a human being born as a woman but who identifies as a man wants compensation in the form of financial remuneration and legislation that penalizes 'cis' men for not having to go through periods; why? because she considers it unfair that she still has to menstruate when she doesn't consider herself to be a woman anymore -- and this kind of thing is taken somewhat seriously).
There's also nothing natural about 'modesty.' However one defines 'modesty' (and, whoa, I promise you the working definitions even in this small Biblical Families subset of humanity might run the gamut),
instilling that concept and its associated set of behaviors must be
taught, by parents, peers and authority figures; otherwise, a whole lot of people would just run around naked, because that's actually a lot more natural. The same can be said for 'boundaries' and 'discretion.'
And if you want to open up a can of worms, start trying to pin down what it means to be 'damaged.'
Too many men rationalize using and abusing step daughters because they aren't related, and too many men father children with their own daughters too. Would it really be any better for the girl to be taken as a wife by her step father, (or natural father) putting her into a perpetual familial relationship with her mother who is also a wife, if dad (or is that hubby?) just avoided bedding them at the same time?
I think YHWH put that law there to prohibit "cohabitating sexual relations" between people who should already have a non-sexual familial relationship. We call it marriage now, but back then the terms for wife and husband were not as clear and commonly understood.
Granted, those terms weren't as clear or commonly understood (although I wouldn't bet on them being that clear or understood these days, nor am I comfortable with having them legislatively pinpointed, given who would end up being in charge of creating the rules), but what I trust is that our Father felt compelled to lay down just as much Law as He thought appropriate, which means that He left room for what we could agree on would be some level of discretion on our part. Again, I consider the issue of men rationalizing abusing people for whatever reason to be a bit of a red herring, because it's a de facto mistake to create rules specifically designed to prevent sociopaths from doing what sociopaths do; all that gets accomplished is unnecessarily restricting those with a conscience in a misguided belief that sociopaths will stop being sociopaths (think the truism about how gun control laws have no effect on criminals).
You assert that the law was there to prohibit cohabiting sexual relationships between people who should already have a non-sexual familial relationship. I suspect stigma, in combination with the comprehensive list Father gave the Israelites in Leviticus, would generally keep most of those with a conscience in line, because any group would have little problem defining what it meant to "already have a non-sexual familial relationship." But asserting that something was clear enough to be a death-penalty offense when translation problems exist and we're not even the people with whom Father had that particular set of covenants is problematic. Think of it this way: we can probably all agree that it would be inappropriate, even heinous, to marry a woman with an 8-year-old daughter, then snag the daughter as a new wife on her 18th birthday after having functioned as a father figure for 10 years. But what about this alternative scenario: what if you're the same man, you marry a woman with an 18-year-old daughter who has herself just recently married. She married into a remote, separate clan and lives more than a day's journey away. 10 years later, her husband is killed in an accident, and no one in that remote clan is prepared to take on the stepdaughter and her now 4 children. You have never even met her -- just heard about her -- or maybe you've encountered each other briefly a couple times over the decade at family gatherings. Would it be a boundary violation in that case, or potentially damaging, for you to offer to marry her? Remember, this is still your wife's daughter, but without your offer she may go uncovered, unprotected and her children will lack the continual presence of a caring father figure.
I'm not asserting that such a scenario would be common, but I am asserting that it's questionable to lump all wife/mother - stepdaughter/daughter frameworks into one compartment that comes up looking creepy.
