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Age of Consent Laws

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sun

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I want to know what is the biblical age of consent? Why was it OK for a teen girls to marry men ten years older than them 100 years ago like 17 years old and 27? Love also knows no age limit. It is normal for men to be attracted to attractive teen girls 15 to 18. What are people's thoughts on this.

Studies show that men view the ideal age of beauty of a woman to be around 22-19 depending on the study. Historically a woman who was 30 would be considered older and past child bearing years. Women also tend to be most fertile at that 16-22 range so it is likely just biology at work her. Men are probably subconsciously attracted to younger women due to them having more signs of fertility and therefore being better potential mates.



https://sandtonjournal.wordpress.co...-consent-needs-to-be-lowered-and-this-is-why/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/...quences-older-men-younger-women_n_887205.html
 
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It's still ok for 17 year olds to marry 27 year olds, in most parts of the world (a few jurisdictions don't allow marriage until older), so I'm not sure what your point is, unless you happen to live somewhere where that is illegal? The minimum legal marriage age here is 16, which aligns exactly with the optimal years of fertility you just mentioned. In France it is 15.

There is no Biblical age of consent, however at Biblical Families we very strongly recommend people wait until at least 18 to marry, because it is such a serious matter that you need a certain level of emotional maturity for, and because this age is in keeping with the law of the land virtually anywhere in the world (Romans 13).
 
Personally I think it's a terrible idea for teens to marry, as FH said, if for no other reason than to get a bit more life and knowledge under their belts and be better able to make wise decisions on who they should spend the rest of their life with.

I'd also make the argument that back when the common marriage age was lower, life spans were typically shorter. So if people of today wait until mid 20's they still have basically lived the same % of their life before getting married than they used to.

As far as age gap goes, well, there are exceptions, but generally speaking the cultural differences between people who are more than 10 years different in age tend to pile up and make relating more difficult. Again, there are exceptions, people who are "old souls" or "young at heart", and of course the later in life you talk about the less pronounced the gap. A 37 year old and a 27 year old may still have a fair bit in common, but a 27 year old and 17 year old are unlikely to.
 
This is just my opinion but a woman needs to be done growing before any pregnancies. Certainly many 16 year olds might fit this standard but waiting a few years more seems like a good idea. Also I agree with everyone who says 10 years starts to be too long of an age gap.

I would throw out two more considerations. The first is that you don't want a wife who is too close in age to your sons. There is enough temptations without creating new ones.

And in fact if you have sons of age you should be securing good wives for them, not you.

Secondly, too young of a woman might have more needs than an older guy can meet. That can also only encourage negative things.

An older guy who marries a younger woman might also risk dying before her children are grown.

All in all, young women should be left to young men. An old guy should look in the 25-35 range if he wants more children, higher if that's not a priority.
 
I wouldn't be as firm as to say that "it's a terrible idea for teens to marry", there are general guidelines of what we might think would be better as a general rule - and then there's YHWH's plan for our lives, which may completely shatter the boxes we've built up in our own heads. Some of the strongest married couples I know married when at least one spouse was 17-19 years old. So 18 is simply a good guideline, and the local law is a firm line.
 
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I have met 60 year old children and also 12 year old adults. I believe you'll find that the Biblical age of consent is 12 years for a girl and 14 years for a boy, however; a boy becomes a man at 20 years and a girl becomes a woman around 12 years according to the Scriptures. Today, in "The United States of America", a man should be very careful who he picks for a wife, at any age. Properly trained, properly home schooled girls, usually make good wives, at any age. The age of the man should make no difference in a marriage, other than someone else's opinion. The most distanced in age couple I know is now 87 and 55, they've been married more than 30 years, and right now have a 16 year old daughter, and 2 sons in their 20's, so age, in marriage, is a matter of opinion. I, am 67, my wife is 53, we've had a beautiful 32 years. The only negative thing I've observed over a long period of time concerning marriage ages, is if a man marries a woman more than 1, or 2, years older than him, it hardly ever works out very well. Marriage, is a lifetime job, you better be prepared for it, or you'll fail, and age distance has nothing to do with win or loose, if the 2 people are in it for the right reason.
Pick a woman that obeys the Torah 100%, preferably a virgin, or a widow. A divorced woman can remarry, according to the Scriptures, if she has been given a Bill of Divorcement by her Husband, "not just by a court". Today, this is one of the biggest troubles in this country, the people don't care who the choose to marry. According to the Scriptures, a high percentage of people today, commit Adultery with someone else's wife every day, and probably don't even realize it. It makes NO difference what we think, only what the Creator's Law is.
NEVER, choose a wife from an Adulterous marriage, you'll regret it all your days.
 
The women in my family are 8, 17, and 18 years younger than I am. If we're going to make up rules, let's do it from actual experience. Better yet, how about a rule that says "marry whomever the Spirit tells you to, and don't be too concerned with what other people think"....
 
Years ago I heard a thoughtful pastor say: "we should be raising our daughters to be mature enough to be married at 16 - that does NOT mean we will be marrying them off at 16". Of course, very few men or women in our society today are mature enough to marry with full understanding of who they should be as a spouse, at 18, let alone younger.

Most importantly: I will take exception to only a small part of this of discussion - you cannot (don't even try here) make a Biblical case for a supposed need to marry younger then the government minimum age of consent/marriage. It is NOT the same as the plural marriage case: where we believe that marriage belongs to God, not Caesar, therefore we do not break Caesar's marriage laws (i.e. 2 marriage licenses), instead we operate outside their domain, contracting our marriages before God only. Caesar can set guidelines for the protection of society, that we are bound to obey if they don't conflict directly with God's law. Let us be clear that we WILL obey those laws, because there is no compelling Biblical reason not to do so. If you have a need to discuss it anyway, I respectfully request that you take it elsewhere.

BTW, I can think of at least 2 Biblical Families friends where the wife was 20+ years older then the husband, successfully - in fact, one was praying for plural just because she loved him so much and wanted him to have the children she could no longer give him. So it seems like plural can make this type of marriage less problematic, also.
 
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Thankyou Nathan, well put.

Regarding age differences, I think the issue we strike here is that all humans naturally think we know what is best for everyone else, and what we think is driven by our culture. That's why everyone else thinks we should all be monogamous, because that's what they've grown up with.

The same issue is confronted by all of us who have more (or less) children than the Western cultural norm of 2-3. Everyone has an opinion, and many are willing to state their opinions very vocally. But these opinions are culturally derived and unscriptural, and come from the same judgemental spirit.

But we are not perfect, we too can fall into the same trap. Each of us needs to carefully examine ourselves to see whether we still hold the same sort of attitude in other areas. As soon as the topic of marriage age differences comes up, for example, everyone has an opinion, everyone wants to throw out their own idea of what is sensible and what is just "weird" or "wrong". But we need to remember that these opinions too are purely culturally derived, they are based solely on what we have seen in our lives, not on scripture (e.g. 1 Kings 1:1-4). Some of it might be useful advice were we counselling someone pre-marriage and their situation was very similar to another we saw that failed in a way directly related to a large marriage age difference - but that is a rare and very specific situation. We must stick very carefully to scripture, and where scripture is silent refrain from setting our own arbitrary rules.

It really comes back to the speck in our brother's eye / log in our own eye parable - how can we criticise wider society for culturally objecting to our views on the number of wives, if we turn around and object to the views of others on marriage age differences, numbers of children, or any number of other issues, based purely on the same culture?
 
Directly addressing age of consent law: Note that there are two different laws that are relevant, (1) the minimum age of state marriage, and (2) the age of consent for sexual intercourse. Having rejected the need for state marriage licences, all rules around such licences have become obsolete (not just bigamy). However, the age of consent for sexual intercourse is a completely separate matter, unaffected by our position on state marriage licences, and these laws still apply and will be enforced by the government. And we will obey these laws in accordance with Romans 13.

We can certainly accept that these laws are simply the opinion of man. They are relatively recent in history (in general they are only around 100 years old). They were introduced to reduce teen pregnancies, and as we look around us we can hardly conclude anything but that they have been an abject failure. They vary from country to country since the opinions of men vary. Having been set by one generation of politicians, it would be entirely reasonable for another generation of politicians to re-examine them and alter them (in either direction). But as Nathan says, this is not the place for that discussion. We are law-abiding people, who encourage others to obey the laws in their jurisdiction, provided it would not be sinful to do so. As laws change in various countries, we will encourage others to obey the new laws. The government's legitimate role is to protect individuals from being harmed by others, and laws regarding statutory rape are entirely within this legitimate scope, whether or not the details are perfect in any particular jurisdiction the laws themselves are legitimate and to be obeyed.
 
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Twenty years of age is the scriptural age of accountability. I think scripture tells us that Isaac was forty when Rebekah moved in with him. Jasher says she was ten. However scripture does not tell us when they began having intercourse. We are only told that Isaac found comfort with her in the loss of his mother. Because of the lack of the normal language such as "went into her" I assume that there was no intercourse for several years. Rebekah had a choice. She was asked if she wanted to go be Issac's wife.
 
ke4ke said:
Twenty years of age is the scriptural age of accountability.
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Twenty years is the age at which males could serve in the army, and would have to start paying the temple tax. I see nothing in scripture about this being an "age of accountability" as we understand that term legally. I also see nothing to suggest that this would relate to the age of marriage. It certainly has nothing to do with women at all. Historically it is very clear that women generally married much earlier than this throughout history, and generally continue to today except in some Western cultures. But do you have a scriptural reason to relate this age to marriage, that I have missed?
Rebekah had a choice. She was asked if she wanted to go be Issac's wife.
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She was not given a choice on the marriage, her father and brother agreed this with Abraham's servant purely on his testimony about how God had orchestrated it all, without consulting her. But the servant then wanted to leave immediately, while her father and brother thought she should have another 10 days with the family. She was asked whether she was happy to leave early, and she agreed to this - but by this point the marriage had already been arranged, she was just asked about a detail.
Jasher says she was ten.
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Jasher could well be correct about her age, it's quite plausible based on history and the practices of tribal cultures today. Correct or not though, it's just of historical interest, it doesn't change our need to obey the law of the countries we live in.
 
FollowingHim said:
Twenty years is the age at which males could serve in the army, and would have to start paying the temple tax."
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Hi, Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear, but you misunderstood. Twenty years is the age of accountability, but I wasn't necessarily tying that to marriage. In the desert anyone less than twenty was not held accountable in the matter of Joshua and Caleb with their report. Also be wary of relating new testament times with those of old testament Israel. They were not the same and in the NT did involve non-Israelites. My comments will generally always be from scripture concerning God's Law and it should be rare if I get out into other cultures.

"She was not given a choice on the marriage"
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It's ok to disagree with this, but I would suggest that one should not go beyond the base statement. They did not ask her if she was ok with leaving early. The statement just asks if she is willing to go. You may be right, but always be careful of going beyond the base text.

Do you know about God's marriage to Israel?

Have a nice evening,

Tim
 
Good point regarding accountability and the report of the spies, I hadn't considered that.

Regarding Rebecca's consent, I was being very careful to not go beyond the base statement, that's why I made the comment I did! In Genesis 24, the marriage was arranged in verses 50-51. Then the servant wanted to leave early (v54-56), and Rebecca was asked "wilt thou go with this man" (v58). To stick strictly to the text, she was only asked if she would go with the servant. She was not asked about Isaac at all. If she had said "no", she would not have been saying "no, I won't marry Isaac" (that had already been finalised and she'd even been given gifts to confirm it, v53), but rather "no, I don't want to leave today and travel to Isaac with this particular man", quite a different matter. The question she was asked related purely to the practical arrangements.
 
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