Those Sinful, Lustful Eyes (Job 31)

Chapter 31 completes the main part of the book of Job (the only thing left is Elihu’s speeches and God’s cameo). The one thing of note is this:

I have covenanted with my eyes
Not to gaze on a maiden
[...]Calamity is surely for the iniquitous;
Misfortune, for the worker of mischief
[...]Have I walked with worthless men?
Or my feet hurried to deceit?(31:1,3,5)

Job is supposed to be a relatively civilised book. And it’s true, so far it’s rarely got my blood boiling. But this bit–! Job is comparing the “righteousness” of not even looking at a maiden with being deceitful and associating with “worthless men”. And this isn’t some bit of comedic irony, this really was the reality back then (and continues to be a reality for hundreds of millions of people). Needless to say, there are as far as I know no passages in the Bible exhorting women to avoid lustfully gazing at young men.

Of course “protecting” women from men’s lustful gazes is pretty appalling. But the interesting thing is that it’s a great example of how pointless thought-crime is — and how easy it is to make a thought-crime restriction progressively more stringent. On the pointlessness, there’s the story of Judah and Tamar (Gen 38). Judah’s wife died and Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law heard that Judah was coming along the road. She covered her face and body and Judah thought she was a prostitute (since presumably that was the custom of prostitutes in the day) and solicited her. So even from the Bible itself, a burqa-like garb does not prevent what conservatives might call “sexual permissiveness”.

On the side of things getting more strict, we have this scriptural progression:

• In the Pentateuch, there is no direct restriction on women’s clothing for purposes of “chastity”. The closest is that women should wear “womens’ clothes”, ie. no cross-dressing, (Deut 22:5) and a presumption that a woman’s head was to be covered (Num 5:18) with the act of bearing the head considered as shaming an adulteress. (Previous posts)
• As far as I know for the rest of the Hebrew Bible, nothing explicitly forbids looking at women. David lewdly spies Bathsheba bathing. The Song of Songs revels in all kinds of perving. There are however little hints throughout the Hebrew Bible about not looking being virtuous conduct (eg. the Job passage).
• Then Jesus makes lustful gazing a thought-crime (contrary to those who think Jesus made the “Old Testament law” less harsh): “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Mat 5:28).
• Then comes the most extreme part: the rabinnic injunctions which are basically totalitarian. A man can’t be alone with a woman other than his wife (or a relative). There’s a charming Talmudic tale of a man who was so obsessed with his next door neighbour (an attractive woman) that he was on the verge of death. Doctors said he could be cured if he was allowed even one look at her through a fence. The rabbis said no. The doctors said even letting him talk to her through a hole in the fence would do. The rabbis said no because it might lead to immorality among Jewish women. So he died. (Sanhedrin 75a)

That’s the trouble with controlling thoughts: you reach out for more and more until there ain’t nothing left.