kurt vonnegut said:
I don't disagree with much of what you wrote above, but I still have trouble seeing the link between the passage and an explicit intention to protect the woman.
The expectation is clearly that the widow and the brother in law are to sleep together and have children. I don't see this as a commandment for her protection. In verses 8 and 9, it talks about what is to be done with a man who does not marry his sister in law and instructs the elders to tell him: ". . . This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother's family line." . . . He isn't admonished for not protecting the woman, but for not extending his brother's blood line.
I didn't mean to go this far down this path. . . . frankly, I think its a good thing if you believe that God wishes for women to be protected and not treated like chattel.
Yeah, kind of an esoteric point. More interesting as a way to learn about the culture at the time. Women were treated like crap, pretty much, during that time period.
I do think that a study of the OT, when comparing it to adjacent cultures, shows Judaism to show more protection of women than generally existed.
Some of that might have come from Egyptian influence; they were very progressive as to their treatment of women compared to the other non-Jewish cultures.