Homosexuality and the Old Testament

Homosexuality, Marriage, and the Church

Seventh-day Adventists prioritize the Bible's authority in Christian faith and practice.
Biblical understanding guides the church's approach to ministry, counseling, and public policy.
While academic theories and policies evolve, the church's foundation remains in God's enduring word $(\text{Isa. 40:8})$ .

The Divine Design for Sexuality and Marriage

Genesis 1:26-27 highlights the creation of humankind (hā'ādām) in God's image, portraying the sexual distinction between male and female as fundamental to human identity.
Karl Barth: "We cannot say man [humankind] without having to say male or female and also male and female. Man [humankind] exists in this differentiation, in this duality."
Heterosexuality is proclaimed as the order of creation $(\text{Genesis 1})$ , finding expression in heterosexual marriage.
Genesis 2:24 presents a theology of marriage: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh".
The "therefore" (['al-ken]) indicates Adam and Eve as the pattern for all future human sexual relationships.
The reference to "a man [i]…and…his wife ['ištô]" denotes a heterosexual marriage as the Edenic model.
Deviation from this norm is negatively portrayed as a distortion of the Creation norm.
The study assesses the continuing validity of the biblical witness regarding homosexual practices today, within the context of their Ancient Near East (ANE) background.

Homosexual Practice in the Old Testament

Ancient Near Eastern Background: Summary

Homosexual practice is documented in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Egypt, with varying degrees of acceptance and disapproval.
In Mesopotamia, homosexual activity within the cultus was apparently accepted.
Middle Assyrian Laws prescribed castration, not death, as the maximum penalty for homosexual activity.
Early Egyptian culture seemed more tolerant of homosexual behavior compared to later periods.
The biblical material exhibits major differences in attitudes toward homosexuality compared with elsewhere in the ANE.

Homosexual Practice in the Pentateuchal Narratives

Ham's sin: a homosexual act?

Genesis 9:20-25 recounts Ham's sex-related sin with his father, Noah, who was drunk and "uncovered" (wayyitgal) himself.
Verse 22: "And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of [wayyar 'ēt 'erwat] his father, and told his two brothers outside."
Interpretations of Ham's act vary: disrespectful voyeurism or sexual relations (homosexual or heterosexual with Noah's wife).
Voyeurism: filial irreverence in exposing/viewing and bragging.
Sexual activity: homosexual or incestuous heterosexual activity.
While Leviticus 20:17 equates "see the nakedness of" with "uncover the nakedness of" (sexual intercourse), there are grammatical differences with Genesis 9:21-22.
Leviticus 20:17 includes yiqqah (from lāqaḥ, "to take")…ra'â 'erwat ("to see the nakedness of"), whereas Genesis 9:21-22 has rā'â 'erwat alone without laqaḥ.
rā'â 'erwat by itself never denotes sexual intercourse in the Hebrew Bible.
gālā ("to uncover") in Genesis 9:21 is hitpa'el (reflexive), meaning "to expose oneself," unlike the piel form in Leviticus 20:17.
Most commentaries conclude that "see the nakedness of" in Genesis 9:21-22 does not mean "have sexual intercourse with" as in Leviticus 20:17.
Verse 23 contrasts Ham's action with his brothers: "Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father [waykassû™ Pēt 'erwat 'abîhem]; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness [we'erwat 'abîhem lō' rāû]."
Cassuto: "If the covering was an adequate remedy, it follows that the misdemeanor was confined to seeing."
Wenham: "The elaborate efforts Shem and Japheth made to avoid looking at their father demonstrate that this was all Ham did in the tent."
Ham's "seeing" was a lack of discretion and filial loyalty.
The narrator contrasts Ham's irreverence with his brothers' care to preserve modesty and respect.
Genesis 9:24-25 underscores the seriousness of Ham's action and implies irreverence in Canaan: "When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be [verb implied] Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers".
'āśâ ("to do, make") refers to Ham's failure to cover up his father's nakedness and disrespectfully relating the event to his brothers, not sexual abuse.
The verb "to be" in verse 25 should be translated as "Cursed is [not 'be'] Canaan," with the second clause as a future: "A servant of servants / He shall be to his brothers."
Leupold: "The evil trait, displayed by Ham in this story, had, no doubt, been discerned by Noah as marking Canaan, the son, more distinctly. Canaan's whole race will display it more than any of the races of the earth."
Noah's experience parallels Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Events of the flood and aftermath parallel the Creation week.
Noah is the new Adam, recommissioned in God's image and commanded to be fruitful and multiply.
Noah's sin in the vineyard (9:20) parallels Adam's sin in the Garden (3:6).
He is naked like Adam after the Fall (9:21; cf. 3:7), and his sons cover his nakedness as God covers Adam and Eve (9:23; cf. 3:21).
Adam and Noah’s falls were not sexual sins; the result was physical and shameful exposure or nakedness.
Ham's sinful response to Noah's nakedness (failure to cover) parallels Adam's response to his nakedness (unsuccessful attempts to cover with fig leaves).
Though no incestuous homosexual rape occurred, intertextual echoes link Genesis 9 with Leviticus 20.
The narrator implies illicit sexual overtones through the expression rã³â 'erwat.
rã³â with an accusative of person can mean "to look at (searchingly)."
Leupold: Ham's "seeing" "is not a mere harmless and accidental and he saw,' but 'he looked at'.
..or 'he gazed with satisfaction.' What ordinary filial reverence should have restrained is given free rein. The unclean imagination feeds itself by gazing."
"He told his two brothers" means "and he told with delight."
Ham's sin included impure, homosexual, lustful thoughts and imagination.
Repetition of "Ham was the father of Canaan" points to a kinship of mind, sharing an inclination to uncleanness.
This harks back to the condemnation of humanity after the flood: "the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth" (Gen. 8:21).
The passage emphasizes that not only the homosexual act but also lustful thoughts are sinful.

Sodom: homosexual lust or inhospitality?

The story of Lot and Sodom (Gen. 19:1-11) is the origin the term "sodomy".
Some argue that the Sodomites' request to Lot"Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them" (Gen. 19:5)did not refer to homosexual activity, but was simply to question the foreigners “bona fides”.
Bailey et al. argue that the word yada, “to know,” used in verse 5 does not refer to sexual activity but simply means “get acquainted with,” and the request of the Sodomites is to “know” the strangers in the sense of “inquire into their bona fides”.
As plausible as this hypothesis may sound, the traditional understanding of this passage seems to fit best the immediate context.
But the Achilles' heel of the argument of Bailey, Boswell, and others who see only issues of inhospitality in this narrative is the use of "to know" in the immediate context.
In verse 8 the verb yāda is used in connection with Lot's daughters and unmistakably refers to sexual intercourse. The close proximity of its usage in verse 5 to this clear sexual meaning of yāda in verse 8 makes it very difficult to conclude that it has a different, nonsexual meaning in the former.
The literary structure of the text demands a homosexual meaning for the sin of Sodom.
Most modern interpreters acknowledge that homosexual activity along with inhospitality are described in Genesis 19 but insist that the sexual issue is that of rape or violence and that thus this pas- sage gives no evidence for the condemnation of homosexual practice in general.
Hamilton concludes that this incident frowns on homosexual relations for whatever reason.
Thus, as Gagnon observes, "it is likely that the sin of Sodom is not merely inhospitality or even attempted rape of a guest but rather attempted homosexual rape of male guests".
The larger context of the later prophetic passages that refer to this narrative clearly indicates a sexual interpretation (Ezek. 16:43, 50; cf. Jude 6-7; 2 Pet. 2:4, 6-8) and a castigation of homosexual activity per se and not just homosexual rape.

Homosexual Practice in Pentateuchal Legislation

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13

The Mosaic law strongly condemns, and assigns the most severe sanctions for, homosexual activity.
Basic legislation appears in Leviticus 18:22: "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (we'et-zākār lō' tiškab miškěbê iššâ tôēbâ hiw').
Some translations (e.g., KJV and NIV) render zākār as "man" or "mankind," which could imply only an adult male or the entire human species, but the meaning of this term is clearly "male," denoting all members of this gender regardless of age. * The term "excludes all male sexual relations."
This passage is a permanent prohibition of all sexual intercourse of a man with another male (zākār). This would also prohibit pedophilia, since the term zākār refers to any male, not just a grown man.
Legislations in Leviticus 18 generally is considered from a man's perspective even Decalogue is addressed in the masculine singular, but this does not mean that it only applies to the male gender. The masculine singular is the Hebrew way to express gender-inclusive ideas, much the same as it was in English until the recent emphasis on gender-inclusive language.
Leviticus 20:13 repeats the essential information of Leviticus 18:22, but in the form of case law followed by the stated sanctions: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them."
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 reveal the underlying characterization of homosexual practice from the divine perspective: it is considered by God as tôēbâ, an "abomination."
Among the list of specific prohibitions of sexual acts in Leviticus 18, the word tôēbâ is mentioned only regarding homosexual intercourse.
The wide-ranging usage, however, of this term, tôēbâ, in the Torah and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible reveals that its meaning often goes far beyond ritual-cultic contexts.. * P. J. Harland aptly concludes that this word "refers to something which is utterly incompatible with the will of God and which is viewed by him with repugnance because of its evil."
Those who would link the prohibitions of homosexual practice solely to the idolatrous cult prostitution of surrounding nations uti- lize two main arguments from the context of the Levitical legislation in addition to the reference to the term tô'ebâ ("abomination").
Some consider Molech connected to homosexual practice. This argument falters, however, when one recognizes that the repetition of this prohibition in Leviti- cus 20 does not follow the reference to child sacrifice but is placed be- tween the prohibitions against incest and bestiality (Lev. 20:14-16).
Others state there is an oft-repeated warning against following Ca- naanite practices. It is true that the Levitical injunctions regarding homosexuality are placed within the wider setting of the Canaanite abominations. But the deduction of some recent studies-connected with pagan practice, therefore forbidden-does not properly inter- pret the scriptural context. Jensen turns the "pagan practice" argu- ment on its head when he points out that since much of Israel's cultic ritual coincides with pagan practice (altars, feasts, blood rites, and so on), therefore "where objection is raised to a pagan rite, some reason other than its pagan association must be sought". The context of Leviticus 18 and 20 provides just such a reason.
The legislation of Leviticus 18 constitutes universal moral law, not just ritual law pertaining only to Israel, is also evident from the fact that these laws are explicitly applied to the “alien” (NRSV) (or “stranger,