Sodomy

Two strands of biblical evidence are gathered under this heading: the homosexual acts attached to the Sodom and Gibeah narratives and to the Pauline vice lists, and the shrine-prostitute institution rendered in UPDV as "pagan whores" — the qadesh and qedesha of the Hebrew. The strands meet at the same verdict. What is "disgusting" in the Levitical code, what is "against nature" in Paul, and what the kings of Judah repeatedly purge from the land all sit under the same umbrella, and Sirach and Diognetus return to it from their own angles.

The Cry of Sodom

Before Lot's visitors are threatened, Genesis registers the city's reputation: "Now the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners against Yahweh exceedingly" (Gen 13:13). The judicial complaint follows: "And Yahweh said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous" (Gen 18:20). Two angels carry the verdict to the gate: "And the two angels came to Sodom at evening; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom" (Gen 19:1).

What that cry contained the night-scene then makes plain. The men of the city call to Lot, "Where are the men who came in to you this night? Bring them out to us, that we may have sex with them" (Gen 19:5). Lot answers, "I pray you⁺, my brothers, don't act so wickedly" (Gen 19:7), and offers his daughters in their place — "let me, I pray you⁺, bring them out to you⁺, and do to them as is good in your⁺ eyes: only to these men do nothing, since they have come under the shadow of my roof" (Gen 19:8). The angels then pull Lot inside and execute Yahweh's sentence on the city: "Then [the Speech of] Yahweh rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew on the ground" (Gen 19:24-25).

Later books treat that night as the umbrella's anchor. Luke recalls the sentence: "in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all" (Lu 17:29), and warns that an unrepentant town will fare worse than Sodom on the day of judgement: "It will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city" (Lu 10:12). Peter remembers Lot inside the same scene — "delivered righteous Lot, very distressed by the sexual depravity of the wicked (for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed [his] righteous soul from day to day with [their] lawless deeds)" (2Pe 2:7-8). Sirach reads the destruction as a judgement on hardened pride: "And he did not spare the place where Lot sojourned; Those who were furious in their pride" (Sir 16:8). The prophets use Sodom as a comparison — "Except Yahweh of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like Gomorrah" (Isa 1:9); "they declare their sin as Sodom, they do not hide it" (Isa 3:9); "the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom" (La 4:6); "their vine is of the vine of Sodom, And of the fields of Gomorrah" (De 32:32). John picks the same name up at the end: "their dead bodies [lie] in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified" (Re 11:8).

The Gibeah Parallel

Judges replays the Sodom scene almost verbatim against an Israelite town. While a Levite and his concubine are lodging in Gibeah, "the men of the city, certain base fellows, beset the house round about, beating at the door; and they spoke to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man who came into your house, that we may have sex with him" (Jdg 19:22). The same UPDV idiom places the same demand on the same kind of guest. The civil war that follows establishes the seriousness with which Israel itself treated the act.

The Levitical Prohibition

Sinai legislates against same-sex acts and bestiality together, in the same code, with the same penalty. "You will not plow a male as one plows a female: it is disgusting" (Lev 18:22). "And you will not have any sex with any animal and defile yourself with it; neither will any woman have any sex with an animal: it is perverted" (Lev 18:23). The penalty section repeats the prohibition with sentence attached: "And if a man plows a male as one plows a female, both of them have done something disgusting: they will surely be put to death; their blood will be on them" (Lev 20:13). The bestiality clauses follow the same pattern: "And if a man has any sex with an animal, he will surely be put to death: and you⁺ will slay the beast. And if a woman has any sex with an animal, you will kill the woman, and the animal: they will surely be put to death; their blood will be on them" (Lev 20:15-16). The Covenant Code anticipates the penalty — "Whoever lies with a beast will surely be put to death" (Exod 22:19) — and the Deuteronomic curse list seals it: "Cursed be he who lies with any manner of beast. And all the people will say, Amen" (Deut 27:21).

The Pagan Whore

UPDV translates the Hebrew qadesh and qedesha as "pagan whore," a temple-attached prostitute of either sex. The Deuteronomic ban is symmetrical: "There will not be a pagan whore among the daughters of Israel, neither will there be a pagan whore among the sons of Israel" (Deut 23:17). The same vocabulary surfaces incidentally in the Tamar episode, where Judah's friend asks "Where is the pagan whore, that was at Enaim by the wayside?" and is told twice, "There has been no pagan whore here" (Gen 38:21-22).

The historical books then trace the institution's appearance and removal across the kings of Judah. Under Rehoboam "there were also pagan whores in the land: they did according to all the disgusting behaviors of the nations which Yahweh drove out before the sons of Israel" (1Ki 14:24). Asa "put away the pagan whores out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made" (1Ki 15:12). Jehoshaphat finishes what Asa began: "the remnant of the pagan whores, who remained in the days of his father Asa, he put away out of the land" (1Ki 22:46). The institution returns and reaches the temple itself before Josiah's reform: "he broke down the houses of the pagan whores, who were in the house of Yahweh, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah" (2Ki 23:7). Wisdom and prophecy use the same vocabulary. Job's friend Elihu says of the wicked, "Their soul dies in youth, And their life [perishes] among the pagan whores" (Job 36:14). Hosea indicts the men of Israel: "for [the men] themselves go apart with whores, and they sacrifice with pagan whores; and the people that does not understand will be overthrown" (Hos 4:14).

The Pauline Verdict

Paul's argument in Romans 1 names the same acts as the visible mark of a society given up by God. "Therefore God delivered them up in the desires of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies should be shamed among themselves" (Rom 1:24). "For this cause God delivered them up to immoral sexual passions of shame: for even their women changed the natural use into what is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, became passionate with each other, men with men, shamefully having sex together, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due" (Rom 1:26-27). The verb is forensic — handed over, not merely observed — and Paul places the conduct in the same paragraph that opened, "the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, [even] his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse" (Rom 1:20).

The vice lists in his pastoral correspondence place the same conduct on the same level. "Or don't you⁺ know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived: neither whores, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals" (1Co 6:9). Law, Paul writes Timothy, exists "for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers" (1Ti 1:9), and continuing the catalogue, "for whores, for homosexuals, for menstealers, for liars, for false swearers, and if there be any other thing contrary to the sound doctrine" (1Ti 1:10). Jude returns the umbrella to its origin: "As Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, which committed sexual depravity and homosexuality as do these [men], are set forth as an example, serving a penalty of eternal fire" (Jud 1:7).

Wisdom and the Christian Bench-Mark

The wisdom tradition treats sexual passion as a fire that consumes the man who feeds it. Sirach: "Two types [of men] multiply sins, And a third brings wrath: A lustful soul burning like fire, Which is not quenched until it is consumed; A fornicator in the body of his flesh, For he does not cease until the fire consumes him" (Sir 23:16). "[And] the fornicator to whom all bread is sweet, For he will not leave off until he dies" (Sir 23:17). Paul reaches the same conclusion at vocational depth: "Put to death therefore your⁺ members which are on the earth: whoring, impurity, immoral sexual passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry" (Col 3:5); "not by immoral sexual passion, even as the Gentiles who don't know God" (1Th 4:5). The Epistle to Diognetus marks the contrast positively, describing Christians who share table-fellowship without sharing beds: "They eat together, but do not sleep together" (Gr 5:7).