A distinct reference to the proofs of chastity, in the blood-stamped
cloth, is found in the Bible record of the ancient law of Israel. “If
any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, and lay shameful
things to her charge, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I
took this woman, and when I came nigh to her, I found not in her the
tokens of virginity: then shall the father of the damsel, and her
mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto
the elders of the city in the gate: and the damsel’s father shall say
unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth
her; and, lo, he hath laid shameful things to her charge, saying, I
found not in thy daughter the tokens of virginity; and yet these are the
tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the garment [or
cloth, Hebrew _simlah_] before the elders of the city.
“And the elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him; and
they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them
unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name
upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her
away all his days. But if this thing be true, that the tokens of
virginity were not found in the damsel: then they shall bring out the
damsel to the doors of her father’s house, and the men of the city shall
stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in
Israel, to play the harlot in her father’s house.”[667]
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Footnote 667:
Deut. 22 : 13–21.
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