Skeptics sometimes object to the display of the tokens of virginity in Deuteronomy 22:13-21, assuming that, like modern Western cultures, this was an individualistic society where the young woman would be subjected to personal embarrassment by such things. Beyond that, one may object that the man gets off lightly if he is wrong, and indeed, bears false witness as forbidden in Deuteronomy 19:16-21. Given the "eye for eye" equation, one might argue that the husband ought to be stoned, since that is the fate his slandered bride would have endured; hence women are being treated unfairly.

Drawing upon the context of ancient Near Eastern (ANE) law shows how there is a remarkable degree of congruence between the passage about the slandered bride and the law of false accusation.

1. The authors of the text do not portray the husband as seeking his wife's death when he makes his accusation. Rather, he seeks the monetary damages and punishment on the wife that ends up being put on him.
2. The legal systems of the ANE allowed the same infraction to be punished with different penalties. The wronged party often had the right to choose which penalty or penalties to impose on the offending party. A husband who had been wronged by pre-consummation sex plus deception thus had a range of penalties from which to choose, including death, but also lesser penalties.
3. The provisions in biblical and cuneiform law collections dealing with the commission of a wrong typically list only the most severe penalty allowed by law and leave other possible penalties unmentioned. Deuteronomy is not a literal handbook, but is really intended to be didactic—a book of case law.

The penalties inflicted on the husband essentially match the penalties he was seeking to impose on the other party—the father of his bride—thereby satisfying the law of false accusation. He sought to humiliate the family; hence he is humiliated (with the flogging). He sought to keep the dowry; hence he pays it back. He sought to divorce the woman; hence he is not permitted to do so—and this would require him to sustain her for his lifetime, enforced by the elders of the village and the family.

Divorcing a wife in the ancient Near East was a legal act that involved a man's declaring the dissolution of the marriage and sending the woman away from the household, either to fend for herself or to return to her father's household. If the husband in the passage wants to send his new bride away, he would in essence be returning her to her father and forcing the latter to support her. Typical divorce may not be the husband's intention here; he is taking action against the father-in-law. When a father failed to make good on an inchoate marriage agreement, he was often required to return to the original groom twice the amount that was paid as the bride-price.

The husband claims his bride's father has broken the marriage agreement by allowing the young woman to have sex with another man and then deceiving him. He seeks to dissolve the marriage and request compensation, namely, twice the amount of the bride-price. If the bride-price was fifty shekels, he is requesting a payment of one hundred shekels from his wife's father.

The flogging is correspondent to the public shame of the accusation, and perhaps other shaming devices that the man may have performed on the wife. This would humiliate not only the woman but her family as well, particularly her father.

Thus, the punishments are a remarkable mirror image of the man's original intentions:
First, instead of seeing his wife and her father publicly humiliated, he undergoes a form of public humiliation himself.
Second, the financial penalty enforced against the man is one hundred shekels of silver, the exact amount the man would have received if his charges had been believed.
Finally, instead of being rid of this woman forever and forcing her father to care for her, he must bring her back into his household and be permanently responsible for her support.

Regarding the stoning of the woman who actually was guilty, victims could ask that the harshest penalty allowed by law be imposed, or they could accept something less severe. In the case of murder, the right to demand death could be commuted into a money payment. The text specifies lesser penalties for the man, and the harshest penalty for the bride, because the picture is of a man trying to make money. Since his actions were deceitful, asking for the woman's death (the harshest possible penalty) would not serve his goal of financial gain. The law assumes that partial measures were permitted.

Thus any charge of inconsistency or unfairness is dissolved.