bestiality

The Self-Destructive Nature of Self-Determination

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10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 11 If a man lies with his father’s wife, he has uncovered his father’s nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. 12 If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed perversion; their blood is upon them. 13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. 14 If a man takes a woman and her mother also, it is depravity; he and they shall be burned with fire, that there may be no depravity among you. 15 If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death, and you shall kill the animal. 16 If a woman approaches any animal and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

17 “If a man takes his sister, a daughter of his father or a daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace, and they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people. He has uncovered his sister’s nakedness, and he shall bear his iniquity. 18 If a man lies with a woman during her menstrual period and uncovers her nakedness, he has made naked her fountain, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from among their people. 19 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister or of your father’s sister, for that is to make naked one’s relative; they shall bear their iniquity. 20 If a man lies with his uncle’s wife, he has uncovered his uncle’s nakedness; they shall bear their sin; they shall die childless. 21 If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is impurity. He has uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.” – Leviticus 20:10-21 ESV

Once again, chapter 20 mirrors chapter 18 but with one very important difference. While the earlier chapter contains a series of laws prohibiting immoral sexual activity, chapter 20 provides God’s judgments against any violations of those laws. To ensure that His covenant people took His commands seriously, God let them know exactly what the punishment would be if they chose to disobey.

That God had to go cover such a wide range of sexual sins reveals that He knew the scope of the dangers facing the Israelites when they arrived in Canaan. Yahweh was well aware of the decadent and depraved lifestyles of the land’s pagan inhabitants who regularly engaged in everything from adultery and incest to homosexuality and bestiality. He also knew that His chosen people would find the Canaanite’s no-holds-barred approach to sex to be highly alluring. Despite His clearly defined bans on such behavior, the Israelites would be tempted to adopt the more “progressive” ways of their more liberal neighbors. So, God let His people know the deadly consequences they would face if they chose to ignore His commands and emulate the ways of the lawless and licentious Canaanites.

In each case, the penalty was the same: Death. In the case of adultery, both the man and the woman were to face capital punishment. Their violation of God’s command concerning the sanctity of marriage was not to be taken lightly. From the very beginning, God had proclaimed, “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24 ESV). Jesus picked up on this theme when He spoke to the Pharisees concerning divorce.

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” – Matthew 19:4-6 ESV

The apostle Paul also quoted from Genesis when he called the believing husbands in the city of Ephesus to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” – Ephesians 5:28-31 ESV

The author of Hebrews provides further insight into God’s views on the sanctity of the marriage relationship.

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. – Hebrews 13:4 ESV

God intended marriage to be between one man and one woman. But a host of aberrations involving human sexual activity had sprung up ever since the fall. Mankind had come up with all kinds of ways to take what God had ordained and pervert it. And the apostle Paul describes how God allowed the deviant desires of fallen humanity to run their course, eventually resulting in the very behaviors outlined in this chapter.

God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved. – Romans 1:26-27 NLT

But the Israelites were to be different. The laws given to them by God were to regulate their behavior and keep them from going down the same sordid path as the rest of the world’s inhabitants. They were not allowed to be promiscuous or perverse in their pursuit of sexual pleasure. Adultery was off-limits. All forms of incest were strictly forbidden. Homosexuality, while acceptable among the pagans, was not to be practiced by God’s people. And something as grotesque and off-putting as bestiality was to be viewed as a direct violation of God’s order of creation.

The important thing to consider is that these activities were being practiced among the inhabitants of Canaan. They were not imaginary or hypothetical cases but real-life examples of human behavior apart from a relationship with God. With no guidance or oversight from the Creator God, mankind was left to operate according to its own selfish and self-satisfying passions.

God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. – Romans 1:24 NLT

In Canaan, adultery was de rigueur, an everyday part of daily life. It was acceptable and even preferable. Any and all boundaries on sexual activity had long ago been abandoned. Mankind had made recreation the primary purpose behind sex instead of procreation. God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” had been replaced with the more self-serving mantra of “if it feels good do it.” Everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes and according to their own perverse passions.

This free-for-all behavior among the pagans is what led God to provide His people with detailed laws that prohibited their emulation and carried a high price for any violation. Disobedience was punishable by death because God knew that if this kind of behavior was left unchecked it would spread like cancer among His people. Sexual sin is insatiable and those who engage in it are never satisfied. What was once considered perverse becomes preferable and pleasurable. The taboos of yesterday eventually become tolerable and normal. Nothing is off-limits. No desire is left unmet and no rules are allowed to deny one’s passions.

As always, for God the issue was holiness. His people were to live set-apart lives that mirrored His will and demonstrated His divine plan for humanity. All of the perversions mentioned in this chapter are meant to illustrate just how far the human race had fallen from grace. These immoral behaviors provided ample evidence that humanity had followed the example of the first couple, who in their desire to be like God, succumbed to the enemy’s lies and ate of the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve sought to know good and evil, the capacity to determine their own moral fate. They longed to be the autonomous arbiters of righteousness, making their own decisions about what was right and wrong. And that dangerous desire for self-determination had plagued mankind ever since. This is why God provided His people with a new and expanded set of laws designed to make it clear that He alone held the right to regulate human behavior.

And in the closing verses of this chapter, God will reiterate His call to holy living. The Israelites had been set apart by God so that they might demonstrate what righteousness looks like in everyday life. Adam and Eve had failed to live in obedience to God’s commands. Now, the nation of Israel had the opportunity to “be fruitful and multiply” in the land of Canaan, demonstrating to the world the benefits and blessings of living according to God’s will rather than the desires of the flesh. But for their lives to stand out, they would have to wholeheartedly buy into God’s commands or suffer the consequences.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

A Higher Standard

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6 “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord. 7 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. 8 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife; it is your father’s nakedness. 9 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether brought up in the family or in another home. 10 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son’s daughter or of your daughter’s daughter, for their nakedness is your own nakedness. 11 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife’s daughter, brought up in your father’s family, since she is your sister. 12 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s sister; she is your father’s relative. 13 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister, for she is your mother’s relative. 14 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s brother, that is, you shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt. 15 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law; she is your son’s wife, you shall not uncover her nakedness. 16 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness. 17 You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and of her daughter, and you shall not take her son’s daughter or her daughter’s daughter to uncover her nakedness; they are relatives; it is depravity. 18 And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.” – Leviticus 18:6-18 ESV

We live in an age in which sexual boundaries and mores seem increasingly non-existent or simply ignored. What was once normal and accepted insights into human identity and sexuality have been turned on their heads. The once non-negotiable taboos of the past have been rejected as antiquated and out-of-touch with our modern sensibilities. And as the people of God, we find ourselves pressured to compromise our convictions just to remain relevant and avoid rejection by our more enlightened neighbors.

The Israelites were in a similar situation – whether they realized it or not. They had no idea what awaited them in Canaan, the land that God had promised to them as their inheritance. None of them had ever set foot in the “promised land,” and it had been four centuries since their ancestor, Jacob, and his family of 70 arrived in Egypt as refugees from the famine in Canaan. After more than 400 years in Egypt, they had long ago forgotten what things were like in their former homeland. They had no idea what the moral and religious atmosphere in Canaan was like. But God knew and He was preparing them for the worst.

“You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.” – Leviticus 18:3 ESV

They had just come out of a far-from-ideal situation in Egypt. There, they had experienced the indignity of living as slaves, but that had not always been the case. For decades, they had lived as the guests of the Pharaoh, occupying choice acreage in the lush and fertile land of Goshen. The original 70 Jacobites expanded rapidly and filled the land. And as their numbers grew, they became increasingly more amenable to their new surroundings. They acclimated to the ways of Egypt, accommodating themselves to the local customs and social conventions, even adopting many of their false gods as their own. So, by the time they left the land of the Pharaohs, they had become fully Egyptianized and quite content to carry their acquired tastes and customs with them when they crossed the Red Sea on their way to Canaan. In fact, years later, long after they had conquered and occupied the land of Canaan, Joshua would warn them:

“Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell” – Joshua 24:14-15 ESV

God had known all along that His people would struggle with idolatry. That’s why the very first commandment He gave His people contained prohibitions against idolatry.

“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…” – Exodus 20:3-5 ESV

But there was another pressing problem facing the Israelites: Their propensity for immorality. And it’s no coincidence that idolatry and immorality seemed to go hand-in-hand in the ancient pagan world. Gross sexual sins were often associated with the worship of the false gods of Egypt and Canaan. In the process of trying to satisfy their gods, the Canaanites and Egyptians concocted rites and rituals that also satiated their sexual desires. Cult prostitutes plied their services in the pagan temples, providing a rather bizarre form of worship that was quite popular among the male population.

But all of this was off-limits to God’s people. He had given them His Tabernacle and a stringent set of laws concerning its proper use. There was to be no borrowing from the Egyptians or Canaanites. Their rituals and rites were unacceptable and had no place in the worship of Yahweh. But in order to drive home the need for His people to remain distinctively different from the rest of the nations of the world, God gave them a list of banned sexual activities. And the very fact that God had to put these prohibitions in writing accentuates the fact that His people were already predisposed to living this way. What stands out is that, in this passage, God deals with everything from incest to bestiality. These were not simple moral indiscretions, but gross sexual sins of the worst order.

And it’s interesting to note that there is a direct link between this passage and Genesis chapter 9, which outlines the sin of Ham, the son the Noah.

“This passage tells how Ham, the father of the Canaanites, acted with moral abandon when he saw the nakedness of Noah and for his lack of filial respect a curse was pronounced on his descendants, who would act with the same moral abandon.” – Allen P. Ross, Holiness to the Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus

According to Genesis 10, the sons of Ham were “Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan” (Genesis 10:6 ESV). So, the Egyptians and Canaanites were the descendants of Ham, and the descendants of Canaan, Ham’s son included “the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites” (Genesis 10:16-18 ESV). In other words, most of the occupants of the land of Canaan were descendants of Ham and would mirror his immoral behavior.

Ham had been guilty of uncovering his father’s nakedness. There has been much debate as to the exact nature of Ham’s sin but it seems that he had walked into his father’s tent and viewed him in a drunken and naked state. It is not so much that Ham viewed his father’s naked body but that he dishonored his father by gossiping about it to his two brothers. And when Noah sobered up and realized what his son had done, he was angry enough to curse Canaan, the son of Ham. Ham’s moral indiscretion proved costly.

And in chapter 18 of Leviticus, God repeatedly uses terms like “nakedness,” “uncovering,” and “seeing” when describing the sins of the Canaanites that the Israelites were to avoid. No Israelite as to “approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness” (Leviticus 18:6 ESV). And God drove home His point by using that phrase over and over again.

“You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife…” – vs 8

“You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter…” – vs 9

“You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son’s daughter or of your daughter’s daughter…” – vs 10

To put it bluntly, God’s people were forbidden from having sexual relations with any of their relatives. Throughout Leviticus 18, God uses the term “uncover the nakedness” as a euphemism for sexual intercourse. The relatively innocent-sounding sin of Ham had turned into unmitigated moral excesses of the worst kind. While Ham had been guilty of seeing his father naked, his descendants were guilty of committing every sort of sexual perversion the human mind could come up with. And it is sad to note that God had to provide such exacting detail to His list of unacceptable sexual activities. He was blatantly graphic in terms of His description of the sexual sins that were off-limits for His people.

The possibility of these sins taking place among His people was real. In fact, there is a good chance that some of these sins were already prevalent among the Israelites while they were in Egypt and as they made their way to Sinai. But the temptation would only increase when they arrived in the land of Canaan. So, God laid out His law in great detail so that His chosen people could never claim, “We never knew!” From this point forward, they would have no excuse.

When it came to sexuality, the Israelites were to live according to a higher standard; once provided to them by God. Every area of their lives belonged to Him and He expected their behavior to reflect their status as a royal priesthood and a holy nation. They were not descendants of Ham, but if they followed the example of their distant relatives, they would live to regret it. Disobedience would bring curses. But obedience would bring the blessings of God – in every area of their lives, including their sexuality and social interactions. During their years in Egypt, God had blessed them so that they increased in number. And He would continue to do so as long as they remained faithful to Him and obedient to His stringent standard of behavior.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.