Numbers 21:13-24
This passage tells the hebrews what is required of the priests. They have to marry a virgin. A priest cannot take a widow or a divorcee or a harlot or a "profane" woman. He has to take a virgin of his own people. He cannot take a virgin outside the tribe.

This passage begins to set up an expectation that only virgins are valuable and worthy of marriage to a priest. A widow, or divorcee simply cannot be considered even though she may have excellent character. The bible is replete with the "worship" of virgins. 2,000 years after the birth of Christ, Mary, the virgin mother is worshipped. Mary had to be a virgin in order for Jesus to be considered worthy of the title of prophet, thus the preoccupation with a virgin birth.

It is not that I am against the practice of abstinence if that is the choice for either a young man or young woman, but to lend to them a "higher" human value because of that choice seems to devalue all humanity. We are either equal and of equal value or we are not. Westerners are troubled by muslims demanding and fantasizing over virgins, and yet our culture and the religions of judaism and christianity are equally preoccupied with attaching worth to virgins and removing worth from people with a different lifechoice or experience. Women have value whether they are a virgin, a divorcee, a widow, a prostitute or a lesbian. Only with this worldview stronly intact can this world progress to a more humane planet.