Is Rape The Only Kind Of Homosexual Behavior The Bible Forbids? (December 4, 2005)

More from my son’s letter from college:

"The professor challenged the belief that the Bible condemns homosexuality, saying that...the ban against it in Leviticus had more to do with banning homosexual rape..."

I wrote back,

The liberal religious left has been trotting out this nonsense for a while now. It is simple lunacy. My guess is that this professor and others like him are crossing their fingers and hoping you'll just take their word for it, and that you won't go to the trouble of actually looking up the texts in Leviticus and seeing what they say. Here are the texts:

Leviticus 18:22: Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

Leviticus 20:13: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death. What they have done is perversion; their blood will be on their own heads.

There is no rape here! The texts forbid "lying with a man" as one would lie with a woman - not "raping a man" as one would rape a woman. The Hebrew word for "rape" is 'anah, which generally means "afflict, oppress, humble, humiliate", but in sexual contexts refers to rape. That word appears in each of the three rapes that the Bible records: Genesis 34:2 (Dinah); 2 Samuel 13:14 (Tamar); and Judges 19:24 (a Levite's concubine). The Levitical texts above do not have that word.

The word that they do have, "lie with" (shakab) is precisely parallel to English "have sex with," a phrase we never use to mean "rape" unless we put it in a non-consensual context or qualify it with a word like "forcibly." In Genesis 39:14, for example, Potiphar's wife accuses Joseph, saying "He came in here to lie with (shakab) me, but I screamed. When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house." She is saying he tried to rape her, but we don't get the inference of rape from the verb "lie with". We get it from the context of her resisting and screaming for help.

The actual crime of rape is dealt with in Deuteronomy 22:25-27, which reads:

But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving of death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her.

The Hebrew for "rape" here is literally "lay hold on (or 'force') her and lie with her." The phrase "lie with her" merely indicates sex; rape is inferred from the fact that he "laid hold on her" and that she screamed. Note that the Levitical texts on homosexual contact have no reference to "laying hold" on the part of a perpetrator nor "screaming for help" on the part of a victim. That is because it is consensual. Note also that there is no penalty at all for the girl who is raped (she is no more guilty than a murder victim), but both partners in the homosexual act are to be executed. According to the professor's view, the Bible is invoking the death penalty on someone who has done nothing more than suffer as the unwilling victim of a homosexual rapist!

The prohibition of homosexual behavior in Leviticus 20:13 follows a series of commandments, "If a man lies with his father's wife..." (verse 11); "If a man lies with his daughter-in-law..." (verse 12). (The NIV has "sleeps with" in verses 11 and 12, but it is all the same Hebrew word shakab.) Read these verses and you will see that each act is clearly consensual, as indicated by the dual punishments for both partners rather than the singular punishment for the rapist alone in Deuteronomy 22.

The professor didn't do his homework.