Promiscuity can have its consequences. In my medical residency we would serve as doctors for the women at the local correction facility. Some of them were incarcerated for prostitution and related charges. There was one particularly sad case of a woman who acquired HIV through her profession. This led to cervical cancer, which is six times more likely with HIV. And she was pregnant. She could have chosen to treat the cancer but it would have meant terminating the pregnancy. She chose to continue the pregnancy. Her baby went on to live; she went on to die. There are many laws about sex in the Bible, but no explanations of consequences, like disease transmission or cancer. The Bible is full of stories about unseen things like evil spirits but disappointingly silent on unseen realities like germs. It is almost as if addressing children: “Because I said so!” Better explanations for such laws might lead to better compliance; not perfect compliance, but better. Recall that when the HIV pandemic and its consequences became evident it did produce significant changes in sexual behavior. Anyway, there are plenty of examples in the Bible of poor compliance with the rules about sex.
In a previous post I pointed out the possibility that Cain obtained a wife through incest: she might have been his sister. I do not think the story tellers had that in mind when they invented a wife for Cain, but in subsequent stories of sex in the Bible incest plays a significant role, along with other perversities.
Let’s revisit Noah, after the flood. Noah and his family settle down. One of the first things Noah does is plant a vineyard and makes wine and this happens:
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He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it on both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. So he said,
“Cursed be Canaan;
A servant of servants
He shall be to his brothers.”
Genesis 9:21-25
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But all his son Ham did, supposedly, was see him in his drunken nakedness. How would Noah know that when he woke up? Noah then pronounces a curse not against Ham, but against his own grandson Canaan, a son of Ham. Why? I have two grandchildren; I can’t imagine putting a curse on them because of something my son did. There may be an element to the story that was bowdlerized (cleaned up).
In the Hebrew law uncovering someone’s nakedness is a euphemism for having sex. Leviticus 18 contains the prohibitions against incest and other sexual sins and it is clear in context that when it says “uncover the nakedness” it means having sex. More to the point:
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You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, that is, the nakedness of your mother. She is your mother; you are not to uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife; it is your father’s nakedness.
Leviticus 18:7, 8
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So, there are two possibilities of what occurred in the original story. First is the possibility that Ham sodomized his father; had sex with him. Upon waking Noah might have realized what had been done to him, the brothers making sure he knew who was responsible, and Noah cursed Ham’s son, knowing that would be even worse for Ham than a curse against him directly.
The other possibility is suggested from Leviticus 18:7 & 8; “uncovering your father’s nakedness” is equated with having sex with his wife. Note that verse 7 specifies “mother” while verse 8 is “your father’s wife,” since your father could be married to someone other than your mother (either polygamy or remarriage). So, maybe in the original story Ham uses Noah’s drunkenness as an opportunity to have sex with Noah’s wife, who is probably not his birth mother. Perhaps this is a pattern of behavior that gets condensed to one incident, with the more embarrassing aspects edited out. Ham impregnates Noah’s wife during this tawdry affair, producing Canaan. No wonder Noah curses Canaan! He is the product of a terrible betrayal by his own son and wife!
However, you interpret this story, there may be a simple reason for it. When the Israelites later flee Egypt for the Promised Land, that land is called Canaan; the residents are thought to be descendants of Canaan. The Israelites are told to wipe them out. This story may have been part of the anti-Canaanite campaign. Wipe those (literal) bastards out; they are the product of a disgusting sin and deserve their fate! Propaganda against the enemy always helps the war effort.
The great patriarch Abraham had a nephew named Lot. Most people know the story of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah and how God warned Lot and his family to flee the coming fire and brimstone. They were told not to look back; Lot’s wife does and is turned into a pillar of salt. Salt was a valuable commodity back then. I’ve always wondered if Lot took her along to make use of her. “Dad, can you pass the mom?” Most people don’t know the rest of the story. The husbands of the daughters refused to leave and so were destroyed. What are they to do without husbands to father children with them? In Biblical stories having children seems to be women’s main role, and their utmost desire. So, they decide:
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“Come, let’s make our father drink wine, and let’s sleep with him so that we may keep our family alive through our father.”
Genesis 19:32
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A creative idea to be sure. So one night they get Lot drunk and the older sister has sex with him; the next night the other daughter takes her turn. They both get pregnant by their father. How drunk do you have to be to have sex with your daughters?! Can you even perform when you’re that drunk?! Seriously, this is in the Bible.
And guess what the sons are named. One is Ammon, the father of the Ammonites, and the other is Moab, the father of the Moabites. As you might guess, both of these tribes are enemies of Israel. Once again, these products of incest deserve to be slaughtered.
What about Abraham, who is looked up to as the Father of Faith for the three major monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam? Well, twice he passes off his beautiful wife as his sister (Genesis 12 & 20), and in the second episode admits that Sarah (Sarai) actually is his half-sister. So incest creeps into the Abraham story, too. But that is not the worst of Abraham’s sex life.
God promises Abraham children, but as he is quite elderly he and his wife get impatient. Sarah gives Abraham one of her slave women named Hagar to have a child with. Hagar does not seem to have a choice; she is a slave after all, and other passages make it clear that slave women could be used for sex under their law (Exodus 21:7-11; Deuteronomy 21:10-14). So, Hagar bears a child, calls him Ishmael, but Sarah then becomes jealous of them, not being able to give Abraham a son herself. So, compassionate (not!) Abraham drives Hagar and Ishmael out into the desert where they will likely perish, although God intervenes and saves them. This is the man three major religions look up to?! Raping a slave and then abandoning her and the son he sired? Please don’t try to explain away this situation by suggesting that Hagar was a willing participant. That’s a form of victim-blaming, and the blame falls squarely on Abraham. We still see this attitude expressed in conservative Abrahamic sects that blame rape victims rather than the rapist. Great role model; no wonder religion is often so twisted, especially in regard to sex. In an earlier post we looked at Abraham’s attempt to kill Isaac. So, Abraham abandons one of his children and then tries to kill the other. Great father figure.
Abraham has a descendant named Jacob. Jacob’s story is one of the more interesting in the Bible, but let’s just concentrate on his sexual life. He ends up living with his uncle Laban and falls in love with one of his daughters, i.e., a cousin. Laban tricks Jacob by substituting his less pretty older daughter on the wedding night (I’m guessing drinking was involved in this situation, too!), so he ends up married to two of his cousins. They have a bit of a competition to see who can give Jacob the most sons. One runs dry so she gives Jacob one of her slaves to have sex with. Same thing happens with the other, so she also gives Jacob a slave to have sex with. Jacob ends up with twelve sons, who become the forefathers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Think about this: the Twelve Tribes are the products of incest (marrying cousins), bigamy, and rape (slave women had no choice in the matter). And they looked down on the other tribes living around them?! People who live in glass houses…
One of Jacob’s sons, Judah, has a particularly vulgar story (Genesis 38). A woman named Tamar marries one of his sons, but he “was evil in the sight of Yahweh, so Yahweh took his life.” So she is given to the next son (Onan, whom we’ll discuss in another post), but he also ticks off Yahweh and so is killed. Given this track record Judah is hesitant to marry any other son to her, so he puts her off. Feeling slighted, Tamar, knowing Judah’s sexual habits, hatches a plot. She disguises herself as a prostitute and meets him along the way as he is going out to tend to his flocks. He makes use of her and leaves her a ring and his staff as proof that he will pay her. To his credit, he sends her payment, but she can’t be found. Three months later Judah realizes his widowed daughter-in-law is pregnant. He calls for her to be burned. Burn the tramp! She brings out his ring and staff and asks if he recognizes them. Then Judah realizes what happened and spares Tamar. No wonder Thomas Paine, the Revolutionary War pamphleteer said the Bible was not fit reading for children. It’s a wonder that those who ban books allow the Bible in school libraries. Judah is the forefather of the tribe of Judah, from which the Jews get their name, and supposedly an ancestor of Jesus. Another excellent role model, to be sure.
Samson (Judges 13-16) is one of the best known stories in the Bible: have you seen the old movie with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr? Hedy makes quite the Delilah. Samson is a bit of an anti-hero. First, against his parent’s wishes he marries a Philistine (non-Israelite) woman. When that marriage goes sour it leads Samson to a cascade of destruction and killing. At one point we are told he goes in to a “harlot” (today we would use the more polite term, “sex worker”). Later he falls in love with the infamous Delilah. Of course, she gets him to reveal the source of his great strength, leading to him being captured and blinded. But in the end he brings the house down, literally. Samson is seen as a hero because he killed a lot of Philistines, enemies of Israel. So he seems to get a pass on his sexual hijinks. I wonder if people see that as part of his macho image. Perhaps that is part of the reason why a certain philandering politician is currently the darling of the Religious Right: it is a misguided understanding of manliness. Conquering women and destroying opponents is thought to make him a strong leader. Of course, there have been many “strong” leaders throughout history that were just terrible for their people.
King David, one of the most revered figures in the Bible, married multiple wives, had concubines (sex slaves) and still found it necessary to impregnate another man’s wife and then have him killed (Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, 2nd Samuel 11). Later David’s son Amnon rapes his half-sister, and because of this his brother Absalom has him killed. David’s son Solomon eventually inherits the throne and outdoes his father by having 700 wives and 300 concubines.
The prophet Ezekiel does not mind getting rather graphic when he condemns the sinfulness of Jerusalem and Samaria, comparing them to lustful women. He describes them as prostitutes and “their breasts were squeezed and there their virgin breasts were handled” (Ezekiel 23:3). Then he gets even more graphic [literal translations in brackets]:
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She lusted after their lovers, whose flesh [genitalia] is like the flesh [genitalia] of donkeys and whose discharge [semen] is like the discharge [semen] of horses.
Ezekiel 23:20
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You won’t hear that kind of phraseology in too many sermons today.
Going to the New Testament the first chapter (Matthew 1) is a genealogy of Jesus and five women are mentioned. Tamar, disguised as a prostitute to get pregnant by Judah, Rahab who is described as a prostitute (Joshua 2:1), Ruth a non-Israelite who seduces Boaz (detailed in a later post), the wife of Uriah who got pregnant by David, and finally Mary the mother of Jesus. Some preachers today try to make a point that these shady women showed how God can use anyone in His plans. It seems to me that many of the men in the genealogy are every bit or more promiscuous than the women mentioned. I mean, at least the sex workers weren’t involved in incest and raping the household slaves like some of the men. So I think the women get a bum rap here.
And why is Mary the mother of Jesus included in that group?! Some speculate that early Christians may have known rumors that Mary also had a checkered past. Perhaps the virgin birth was a cover story for how a single woman ended up pregnant? There was a story that the actual father of Jesus was a Roman soldier (possibly named Pantera). I think that gets a bit speculative, but it remains interesting that Mary is mentioned in connection with these other women. And if Mary truly was a virgin, then the Supreme Being used His position of power to tell a young woman already engaged to a man that she is going to have His baby, not her fiancé’s. Read the story carefully: Mary is never asked for her consent, and even if she had given it, how does one refuse a powerful god who is on record as destroying those who oppose Him? That is textbook sexual harassment. Yep, there are some wholesome family values found in the Bible.
Some will argue that all these disgraceful sexual situations simply show that God is able to use anybody, even the worst of us, to accomplish His purposes; no one is beyond God’s grace. I have no problem with that. In fact, throughout history turn-around stories where a scoundrel turns out to be a good guy have been quite popular, whether it is Jean Valjean in Les Miserables or Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls or Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi (I really hope by now that doesn’t need a spoiler alert!). But I don’t understand why some people shrug off all of the sexual hijinks in the Bible yet freak out it two dudes want to get married, in a committed monogamous relationship. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…
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Thinking exercises:
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1. Why do you think religion is so preoccupied with sex and sexual “sins” when there are so many other ills in the world, like war and avarice that have a much greater negative impact on society and individuals?
2. Explain why the patriarchs were allowed to have slaves, and to have sex with those slaves. Then, chastise yourself for making excuses for such terrible behavior.
3. Should Judah be excused for having sex with his own daughter-in-law because she was disguised as a prostitute after all?