Sex in the Old Testament: 5 habits that will surprise you

The Old Testament, apart from its immeasurable religious value for those who believe, has a correspondingly immeasurable historical value as it offers a very good and insightful look at the way the people of the Middle East lived almost 3,000 years ago. The laws, moral rules, customs and daily life of the Israelites have been embossed in its thousands of pages, and today you can only stare at them with fascination.

Especially some details that may at first glance go unnoticed, but if you lean over them, you can discover treasures. For example, verses about what people are allowed and not allowed to do in bed and in their private lives are fascinating, especially when you compare them to today.

We have collected five such cases:

1. If you had genital problems, you didn't enter a temple

In Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Old Testament, in chapter 23, it is written, “He who has his treasures broken or cut off shall not enter into the synagogue of the Lord.”.

This passage comes from a longer verse that describes which people are excluded from entering the temple. Those with shattered genitals included Moabites and Ammonites, two groups with whom the Israelites were not on good terms.

The reason why people with damaged genitals were not allowed to enter the church was because of God's requirement that priests or those who “come near to offer the bread of God” be physically perfect (Leviticus 21:16-23). This meant that it excluded anyone who had some kind of physical disability, such as being blind.

That is, God did not condemn only those with severed testicles, the exclusion was for all who had such issues.

2. A woman would be killed if she touched a man's genitals without permission

Again from Deuteronomy, this time from chapter 25:

“If two men fight with each other, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of him that smiteth him, and stretcheth out her hand, and taketh him by his hidden parts, then shalt thou cut off her hand. Show her no mercy.”.

At first it seems as if this command makes no sense at all. That is, how many times was a woman likely to find herself in the need to do something like this that it was explicitly stated as a prohibition, and in such detail?;

The logic here is that the prohibition would probably have to do with the need for a woman not to cross the boundaries of marriage or sexuality in general.

3. Polygamy

If we follow the Old Testament to the letter, then we will see that polygamy was a terribly common thing for that time. Many respected and important people in the Bible had fallen into its clutches and enjoyed it to the utmost, such as Cain's son Lamech, for example.

“Then Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of the one was Adah and the name of the second was Zillah (Genesis 4:19).”.

Moses also had two wives, and King Solomon had even more. Abraham and Sarah, Rachel and Jacob, both of these couples, had various mistresses and lovers.

The truth is that God never directly punished polygamy, which was in fact widely practiced among householders. However, this tolerance of polygamy was not shown in order to satisfy people's needs or perversions-usually. It was more a way to have many children, so that there would be even more hands to work in the fields, to protect women, to increase the wealth of the household and, as terrible as this sounds, to replace a wife if she died during childbirth. And yet, it made sense at the time.

4. Sexual pleasure is a good thing

In the “Proverbs” of the Old Testament, we read: ”Let thy fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be to thee as a lovely doe, a graceful fawn; let her breasts water thee in all seasons; rejoice in her love always.“.

The Old Testament is full of examples of satisfying, healthy relationships, monogamous or otherwise, and often deals with the issue of desire. It is obvious from the meaning of this selected verse that they really meant it (at least the men did, since they were responsible for these texts).

But the verdict is clear: pleasure is good, and neither husband nor wife should deny each other this pleasure.

But later in the New Testament we can see that even St. Paul agrees that husbands and wives should not physically deny each other.

5. Sex trafficking; Really?;

According to Exodus chapter 21 verses 7-11, if a family sold their daughter as a slave, then they could not buy her freedom. Instead a man could do this.

Also, “if her master, who has betrothed her to himself, does not like her, then he will sterilize her; he has no power to sell her to a foreign nation...”

And also again “if he take another for himself, he shall not deprive her of her food, her clothing, and the debt of marriage to her. But if he does not do these three things to her, then he will go away free, without money.’.

Today, we have a very different definition to describe this practice: human trafficking. However, we must remember that the awareness of the immorality behind slavery and human trafficking is a fairly recent concept for humanity. So let us keep this in mind before we condemn what was going on thousands of years before Christ - all the more so since some people morally do not condemn trafficking and still practice it, even if illegally.