DEUTERONOMY 22:13-21

Q: If a husband slanders his wife and claims she was not a virgin when they married, the girl’s parents are supposed to bring “proof” of her virginity in the form of a cloth they display to the elders of the town. What is the formal process for the parents to acquire this “proof?”

This regulation was designed to protect newly married women from being slandered by their husband. The issue was so important that the bride's parents would take great pains to insure that their daughter's reputation was not injured by such accusations. There was also an economic incentive for the parents to get such proof so that they would not have to refund the dowry money and have a subsequently unmarriageable daughter on their hands. The main question is: What kind of proof was required? And here scholars differ.

The usual answer is that the proof consisted of blood-stained bed linen following the first night of intercourse. In some Mediterranean cultures even today, the bed linen is publicly displayed right after the wedding night as proof of the bride's virginity. Alternatively, the linen could have been given by the bride to her parents to keep for future proof, if needed.

The problem with such “proof” is that it is not really an infallible test, as pointed out by several commentators. Therefore other possibilities for the so-called proof have been proposed:

1. George Wenham feels that since the key word simla in the text usually refers to a garment, it cannot be a bed sheet. He suggests that it may be an undergarment worn by the bride just before or soon after her marriage showing menstrual stains, thus proving that she was not pregnant by another man at the time of marriage. (New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, Vol. 1, p. 784)

2. J. A. Thompson, however, mentions the possibility that the girl's hymen was ritually broken right before the marriage, with her bloodstained clothing then serving as the needed proof of virginity. (Deuteronomy, Tyndale Commentaries, pp. 235-236)

In all of these possibilities, it would be up to the bride and/or her parents to obtain and retain the required proof.