Is prostitution acceptable?

No.

The Bible doesn’t actually contain a law banning all prostitution, but it does tend to be disapproving of it.

When Judah found out that his daughter-in-law was “guilty of prostitution”, he thought she should be burned to death. And Paul thinks Christians should never be “united” with prostitutes.

What does God think of prostitution? He seems to disapprove of his people visiting the houses of prostitutes. He seems to think prostitution is a shameful practice, a horrible thing that defiles Israel. God said prostitution was leading his people astray and would cause them not to flourish. He said he was against someone because by being a prostitute, she had somehow enslaved nations and caused huge wars. The Bible implies that male shrine prostitution was one of the “detestable practices” that provoked God to try to wipe out the native inhabitants of Canaan.

Kings who expelled the male shrine prostitutes from the land were doing what was right in God’s eyes. God punished Jehoram for leading the people to “prostitute themselves”, though it’s not clear whether that’s literal or a metaphor for idolatry.

God had his prophets tell several allegorical stories portraying his people as a prostitute. He describes her prostitution as a wicked act of rebellion. He doesn’t want his wife back after she becomes a prostitute. God punishes the land when she defiles it with her prostitution and wickedness, and he thinks she ought to be ashamed. He also disapproves of her killing his children, but just the prostitution would have been bad enough.

And then there’s Ezekiel 23, where Israel and Judah are both prostitutes, which God thinks is depraved, defiling, disgusting, and shameful. So he hands them over to be stripped, mutilated, and killed, in order to put a stop to their prostitution.

So it sure sounds like God hates prostitution, though it’s possible he just hates idolatry, which is what those parables are really about. That’s a problem with a lot of these passages. It’s hard to tell whether the Bible is really talking about prostitution or not, since it so often either uses it metaphorically, or conflates it with other behaviors like adultery.

Anyway, God also has a few laws on the subject of prostitution. He never completely outlaws it, but he does have some laws concerning more specific scenarios:

Yes.

God said Abraham obeyed him and kept his commands and did everything he required of him. And what exactly did Abraham do? One thing he did was apparently to try to pimp out his wife to a Pharaoh. So apparently that’s exactly what God wanted him to do.

Judah, the guy who thought his daughter-in-law should be killed for being a prostitute, later changed his mind and thought being a prostitute wasn’t so bad. He said it was no worse than refusing to let your son marry someone. And even before he changed his mind, he never seemed to think he had done anything terribly wrong when he had sex with a prostitute. (Embarrassing, maybe, but not a crime or anything.)

The book of Hebrews says the prostitute Rahab was not killed with those who were disobedient. But why would the prostitute not be one of the people who disobeyed God? Because God never forbid prostitution.

Solomon didn’t have a problem with prostitutes. When two prostitutes came to him for help settling a disagreement, he helped them. He didn’t punish them for being prostitutes. In fact, Solomon wisely suggests hiring a prostitute as a much less costly alternative to the deadly sin of having sex with another man’s wife.

God decided not to punish the women of Israel for being prostitutes. His reasoning was that prostitution happens, therefore prostitutes don’t need to be punished. In the same sentence where God says prostitution is one of the reasons his people won’t flourish, he implies that people who engage in prostitution should be expected to flourish because of it.

If God hates prostitutes so much, why did he marry two of them in one of those allegories he told? And in that same story, God says of one of his wives, “Let them use her as a prostitute“. If God commands it, it can’t be a bad thing, right? God also had one of his prophets declare that a rival prophet’s wife would become a prostitute. Sounds like God is making her do it, so it can’t be a bad thing to do, right?

Sexually immoral people and other wrongdoers will not enter the kingdom of God. But prostitutes will! They wouldn’t be able to do that if they were sexually immoral wrongdoers.

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