BASTARDS

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California, U.S.A. · Oct 21, 1930

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 57, No. 41.

Mrs. H. A. Salton of Minnesota asks concerning the salvation of bastards.

In none of the Scriptures to which the questioner refers does the word “bastard” mean that “a child born out of wedlock will not be saved.” Because of the theocracy that prevailed in Mosaic and post-Mosaic times, whereby God directly ruled His chosen people and so gave civil laws to them, naturally such illegitimately born could not be entered “into the assembly of Jehovah.” Probably the term used here in Deuteronomy 23:2 denoted not generally those born out of wedlock, but the offspring of an incestuous union, or of a marriage contracted in violation of the prohibitions of affinity. See Leviticus 18 and 20.

The better marginal reading of Zechariah 9:6 in the American Revised, “bastard race,” indicates an allusion to the deterioration of the Palestinian population during and after the captivity (see Nehemiah 13: 23ff.), or to the mixed character of the people with whom the country had been colonized by its conquerors.

Hebrews 12:7, 8 illustrates a practice common in that day, that the father carefully disciplined his own sons. For the father not to do this would furnish proof that they were not his own offspring. Children born out of wedlock were left to themselves, since the father was not sufficiently interested in them to inflict upon them the discipline that would prepare his legitimate children for their place in the home. This the writer of Hebrews uses to show God’s interest in us as His children and consequent discipline to prepare us to be members of His family.