Tag Archives: prostitution

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.

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The Story of King Solomon
The Wisest Man in the World

When King David was old, he had trouble staying warm. His attendants solved that problem by finding a hot girl to lie next to him in bed. Her name was Abishag, but he didn’t shag her. One day, David’s wife Bathsheba came to his room with a complaint.

She said David had promised that her son Solomon would be the next king. But now another son of David, Adonijah, had made himself king. Then David had Bathsheba come to his room, and he declared Solomon to be the new king of Israel.

When Adonijah heard about that, he was afraid Solomon would kill him. Solomon decided not to kill his brother for trying to become king. But then when Adonijah tried to marry Abishag, Solomon did kill him, because he thought that meant Adonijah was trying to become king. After David died, Solomon also killed a man David had sworn would not be killed, because Solomon was a wise man.

One night, after Solomon sacrificed at an unauthorized altar, God offered to give him anything he wanted. Solomon asked for wisdom, because he was young and inexperienced and ignorant and didn’t know right from wrong. God was so pleased that Solomon hadn’t asked for money that he made Solomon the richest king of all time, and he also made him the wisest person of all time. Solomon later asked God to let him live as long as the sun and moon endured. But apparently God didn’t like that request as much.

After he became wise, Solomon suggested cutting a baby in half. Then he wisely decided not to let the baby be raised by a prostitute who thought his idea was a good one. (He gave the baby to a different prostitute instead.)

King Solomon ruled over many other kingdoms in addition to Israel. During his reign there was peace for Israel, except when there wasn’t. He wrote thousands of songs1 and proverbs, and studied plants and animals. People came from all over the world to hear his wisdom. But wisdom was beyond him.

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The Wisest Man in the World
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Discrimination by occupation

Here’s what the Bible has to say about how people were, or should be, treated based on their occupation:

Isaac’s favorite son was the one who was a hunter, because Isaac liked to eat wild animals. But his wife preferred the son who wasn’t a hunter. The Egyptians thought all shepherds were detestable. And Paul said gardeners are nothing.

Jacob’s son Judah thought prostitutes should be burned to death. But God only said you need to do that if the prostitute is a priest’s daughter. God doesn’t allow prostitutes to marry priests, either. He hates shrine prostitutes, and doesn’t want their money.

God does seem to think prostitution in general is wicked. Rahab was considered righteous despite being a prostitute. God told a story where he hated two sisters because they were prostitutes. But he married them both anyway, for some reason. And then he killed them, because he hated them. Jesus says prostitutes can enter God’s kingdom, though.

God said all mediums and spiritists had to be executed. So Saul got rid of all the mediums and spiritists in the land. Or at least he tried to. And he only tried to until he felt the need to consult one himself. He chose to leave that one alone.

High priests are only allowed to marry virgins. And other priests can only marry Israelite virgins or widows of priests.

The Israelites were required to continually give the best part of everything they had to God… but “the Lord’s portion” actually went to the priests. There are things God won’t let you eat unless you’re a priest, a member of a priest’s family, or a priest’s slave. Nobody but priests are allowed to burn incense for God, either.

The Bible tells how many people returned from the Babylonian exile. Then it tells how many slaves they brought with them, who were not counted among the people. And then it also tells how many singers they had, suggesting that singers weren’t counted as people either??

In the gospels, everyone takes it for granted that tax collectors are evil. Jesus also thinks waiters are inferior to the people they serve.

Paul says God seems to give evangelists the most brutal treatment of all. He makes a cosmic spectacle of those poor, starving, weak, dishonored fools.

Slaves vs free people

When Jacob saw hundreds of seemingly unfriendly men approaching, he made his servant-wives travel toward them in the lead, while his favorite wife got the safest spot in the back.

According to the laws of the Bible, if someone is bedridden because you injured them, normally you have to pay them for their time and make sure they recover. And you’ll be punished more if they can’t walk at all. But if the person you injure is your slave, you don’t have to be punished at all, unless the slave dies or takes too long to recover. And if you do get punished for injuring a slave, it won’t be as severe a punishment as if you had injured a free person. (Runaway slaves aren’t to be treated badly, though.)

If a man has consensual sex with a woman who is engaged to someone else, they both have to die… unless the woman is a slave. There’s still a punishment then, but it’s not death.

Hebrew indentured servants apparently have to work twice as much as hired hands. And if they happen to start a family during their servitude, God’s law forces them to either leave their family or be enslaved for life.

Wise Solomon thinks it would be terribly unfitting for a slave to rule over princes. Or even to get a horse to ride. He thinks it’s a terrible thing for a land to have a king who used to be a servant. And foolish Agur agrees that the world can’t stand servants gaining authority.

Royalty vs commoners

Moses was raised as a prince, but once he grew up, he chose not to live as one, because that would be sinful somehow. (Or at least that’s what the author of Hebrews says, who also seems to think Moses was a Christian.)

God says the king of Israel isn’t allowed to collect a lot of gold, silver, horses, or wives. But there’s no rule against anyone else doing that.

King Lemuel was taught that it’s fine for poor, suffering people to drink wine and beer. But kings should never drink wine or beer, because of how much worse the consequences of combining drunkenness with power could be.

When Saul defeated the Amalekites, he killed almost all of them, but kept their king alive. Apparently God didn’t approve of him making that exception, though.

David killed tens of thousands of people, but he thought it was unacceptable for anyone to ever kill God’s chosen king (no matter how much God’s chosen king wanted them to).

Solomon (who happened to be the king) said nobody should ever even think anything bad about their king. He said if you’re a king, lots of people will naturally want to get on your good side. And he said it was evil for princes to have to walk on foot.

Paul thinks authorities can do no wrong, because they were all put there by God. He thinks rulers are never a threat to anyone but evildoers. And anyone who rebels against any authority is rebelling against God.

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The Story of the Battle of Jericho
Two Spies and One Hooker

Because Moses did a miracle the wrong way once, God had decided not to let him bring his people into the promised land after all. So when Moses was 120 years old, God sent him to the top of a mountain, where he saw the land from a distance, and then died. God chose Moses’s assistant Joshua to replace Moses as the leader of Israel.

Joshua sent two men to spy out the land of Canaan. They stayed in the house of a prostitute named Rahab, in the city of Jericho. She told the spies everything they needed to know.

The king of Jericho heard that there were Israelite spies in the land. He sent men to tell Rahab to hand over those men who had come to her house. But Rahab hid the spies and told the king’s men that the spies had already left. So they went to look for the spies elsewhere.

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Two Spies and One Hooker
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The Story of Judah and Tamar
Somebody Get Me Pregnant Already

Jacob’s son Judah had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. God killed Er because he thought he was wicked, so Judah told Onan to have children with Er’s widow, Tamar. But if Onan had children with Tamar, they wouldn’t be considered Onan’s children for some reason. So he refused to do it. God thought it was wicked to not impregnate your brother’s wife, so he killed Onan too. Tamar wanted to have children, but Judah wouldn’t let her marry his last son, Shelah.

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Somebody Get Me Pregnant Already
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