In the Bible, prostitutes are great

Over and over, they save the day.

Growing up Christian, I was told a lot of “facts” about the Bible, like that it was a long, long book about God hating sex. I decided to read up on the subject for myself, and found I’d been deceived. There’s no biblical laws, for example, against prostitution. It’s not a close call. It’s obvious. “Many states and countries today have made prostitution illegal. But nowhere in the law codes of the Hebrew Bible does any such prohibition appear,” notes An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible.

“Outside the cultic and priestly circles, however, no laws seem to have banned prostitution or denounced it,” as Ilan Peled puts it in Law and Gender in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible.

“Prostitution in the narratives and in the corpora is neither a criminal act nor an illegal activity,” as Irene E. Riegner puts it in The Vanishing Hebrew Harlot.

So let’s buckle up and get some facts on the Bible and prostitutes. They’re usually heroines.

So let’s go through some basic facts about the Bible and sex because Christians are often deeply misled on this subject.

The body and sexuality are, in general, good—from Genesis 1 on. There is no assertion of human evil in the Bible. And sex, throughout the Old Testament, is always seen favorably unless crossing lines of ownership or violence.

Michael Kaufman explains: “Unlike classical Christian belief, the sexual act is not, in Judaism, understood to be a debasing experience from which holy people abstain. Judaism recognizes that sensual desire stems from the same divine source as do man’s most ethereal and spiritual components. Bearing God’s seal, it is meant, like everything else with which God endowed man, to be pressed into His service.”

Most every biblical hero seems to be a sexual person. Virginity is never a theological good. To be pleasing to God you’re having sex, it appears.

Samson sleeps with a prostitute in Judges 16:1, so it wouldn’t appear that “good” people avoid them. There is no sense of taboo, shame or marginality in any stories about them. In 1 Kings 3:16–28, two prostitutes come to Solomon disputing a baby. After a reference to their work, they’re ‘women’ — never in legal peril, and accessing the legal system at its highest levels.

Some traditional Bible scholars try to assert a restrictive “morality” even so. “The Torah holds up monogamy as the ideal (Gen. 2:18–25), but no law explicitly prohibits sex with a prostitute outside the covenant,” as Bruce K. Waltke puts it. To argue for monogamy, that is, you only have Adam and Eve to work with. And polygamy is clearly the norm in narratives of heroes. We learn of Gideon, the hero, in Judges 8:30: “He had seventy sons of his own, for he had many wives.”

Never in the Bible is marriage a requirement for sex. The lovers in the Song of Songs, for example, aren’t married. Sex before marriage is always legal. Daniel H. Gordis notes: “no verse in the Bible or statement in the Mishnah or Talmud contains any specific prohibition on premarital sex.” A girl could get into problems only when lying to a potential spouse about it.

Sex with slaves is fine (cf. Exodus 21:7–11). Concubines and harems, which are probably typically non-Jewish women kept by Jewish men, are routine throughout the Old Testament narratives. Abraham has concubines, noted in Genesis 25:6, since they’re given gifts and sent away before he dies, likely so their children won’t assert inheritance rights.

There is an important prohibition of adultery in the Old Testament, but note that is not defined in the Christian way as sex outside of marriage. In Jewish law, adultery is a very specific legal term: it means taking the wife of a fellow Jewish male. A married man, under Jewish law, can sleep with single woman (which includes prostitutes) as desired. The problem is only if they’re married, and again, to a Jewish man.

This point surprised me, but as Rachel Biale explains in Women and Jewish Law: “a married man who has sexual relations with an unmarried woman is not guilty of any offense since he could theoretically marry that woman.” She adds: “a man who had such extramarital sex, if he did not try to marry the woman, had not committed a sexual transgression.”

Then note that even distinguishing between “married” women and unmarried prostitutes in the biblical narratives is somewhat artificial. This is a world in which all women were sold. A marriage was a sale of a woman from father to groom, in which money, goods or political favors were exchanged. As Tal Ilan notes in Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine, marriage was “the transfer of property by purchase.” In Genesis 31:15, Rachel and Lea note their father “sold” them when marrying them to their husband, Jacob.

Now let’s talk about how great prostitutes are, because that’s the Bible’s view.

Tamar

The Bible’s first prostitute heroine is a lady doing what God likes—thinking on her feet? Or her back? I love Tamar so much. Her story, in Genesis 38, has horrified Christian commentators, even as Tamar is an ancestor of Jesus, as noted in Matthew 1:3, and that means God likes her. Her wit and wiles, her theatricality, her willingness to go on journeys, her refusal to submit to injustice, are the messianic qualities.

It’s not clear if Tamar is a Jew. She shows up to be married to Judah’s son, who’s wicked and God kills him. A second son, Onan, is called upon to impregnate her. By the Levirate law, the resulting child to be considered his brother’s. He refuses—having sex with her, but spilling the seed. Onan doesn’t want to impregnate her because he wants his brother’s property for himself. God kills him too.

Judah isn’t about to give up a third son to a woman who must seem like trouble. That would leave her a useless widow, her rights flouted. That isn’t the history Tamar plans to live, and she sets out to rewrite it. Dressing up as a prostitute, veiled, she has sex with Judah himself and becomes pregnant.

The details, as often in the Bible, are subtle. Tamar’s sex with Judah happens during sheep-shearing (38:13), and she seems to know it will happen. An unexpected narrative opens up. “It is known that feasts of the pre-exilic period were accompanied by ritual fornication with the magic intention of securing rich crops and increase of herds,” notes Michael C. Astour. A visit to a temple worker for sex was “a predicable, ritually prescribed act.” Judah, a follower of Yahweh, is seeking a fertility blessing from another deity.

But wait. That means Jacob’s line is drifting from Yahweh worship. The covenant community is on the verge of extinction—until a woman decides to clean house. There is no hint she’s even a Yahweh follower, but she knows when people are being mistreated, and refuses to allow it.

Putting on a veil, the costume of a temple worker, she travels to wherever Judah is, and has sex with him. His payment is to be a goat (likely to be used for a sacrifice at the pagan temple), but until it’s old enough, he gives her three objects: his signet, cord, sand staff. Later, when seeing Tamar is pregnant, thinking her guilty of illicit sex when still regarded as married, he’s about to burn her alive—and she shows the objects to him.

Judah is enraged at her, then realizes she was within her rights. “She is more righteous than I,” he says. His remaining son is abruptly disinherited, as Tamar the single mother takes control of the family.

Rahab the Harlot

In Joshua 2, the Jews have to go to the Promised Land, but a little problem called Jericho is in the way. Joshua, the leader, sends in spies to investigate the city’s defenses. They know right where to go: the whorehouse. There they find Rahab, the madam in charge, and she knows exactly what to do.

Like the Tamar narrative, the plot points seem mysterious, and the sexual details have been horrifying to Christian tradition. There’s no doubt, however, that Rahab is a divine agent, also noted in the genealogy of Jesus (Matt 1:5), and praised as ‘Rahab the Harlot’ in Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25. As a non-Jew brought into the covenant, she becomes the prototype of the Gentile Christian. She’s also a hooker. The language drips with sex. The spies ‘come to’ her, or ‘came to see me’.

I love Bible scholars writing on Rahab, noticing the details about a powerful woman taking charge. “In Israelite society, women were usually under the protection of men; in this case, we have the reverse, men are under the protection of a woman,” notes Gail C.P. Streete. “The spies enter her brothel to satisfy their sexual appetite but she dominates them in the whole deal,” notes Ronald Charles.

But there’s a few angles that are little appreciated. In the Old Testament, when humans are opposing God, the penises of men stop working. This happens in Genesis 12:15 when the Pharoah takes Abraham’s wife (God explains: “I did not allow you to have sexual contact with her”). It happens again in 1 Samuel 5:1–12. Then when the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant, a strange ailment occurs, not explicitly identified. But, as Aren M. Maeir explains (also here), it appears the Philistines “were afflicted in their membra virile . . .”

What appears to be happening—in the narrative world of the Bible—is that God the Father is represented, appropriately, by the penis. If you go against Him, yours stops working.

Rahab explains to the spies, in v.9, that after God freed the Jews from Egypt, “a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you” (cf. v.11).

This seems to be the military intelligence they had been seeking—but what have they learned? The word “fallen” here, as Erin Runions details, means “the men of the land had lost their virility — a fact to which Rahab would have had access.”

As a hooker, Rahab knows the men of Jericho have had penis problems, and that means Jericho’s god is less powerful than the Hebrew god. The spies would’ve alerted her to the Jewish penis not experiencing that problem. She reads the signs, and acts accordingly.

Delilah

The woman that Samson sees in Judges 16 isn’t identified as a prostitute, but the reason they’re spending time together is never stated. Her name is Hebrew, possibly for ‘darkness’, but she lives on the dividing line between the Jewish and Philistine territories. Delilah is a mystery.

A warning: Delilah’s engagement with Samson is not what we might expect in the Bible. “As she asks ritual questions, binds him several times and finally shaves his hair, the scene has several characteristics of a bondage game,” notes Marco Derks.

Samon’s story has, in general, been badly read. He isn’t a Hercules figure and doesn’t have super strength. Rather, a special divine power comes over him in moments of need, as in Judges 13:25, when the “spirit of Yahweh began to trouble” him. Delilah’s ropes burn off him “like charred flax” as in 15:14, or incinerate as when “close to a flame” in 16:9.

He’s magical, with a power that flares up whenever he’s in danger. This same thing happens later, with Saul (cf. 1 Sam 11:6). As we see Saul being emotionally messed up by these episodes, that might be Samson’s situation too. As Saul has David to calm him down with his harp, Samson may turn to Delilah to get some peace of mind. He goes to a whore to calm down and relax, may be the narrative.

Note again that Samson is always a hero (cf. Hebrews 11:32). But there are dark and difficult features of his story. An S&M game seems to be part of the ordeal. But the game has a point. He is trying to tell her the secret of his magical nature, but he can’t at first. She works on him, trying to get him to tell her. What might be happening is that he wants to tell her his weakness so that he can die. This is provocatively suggested by Amy Kalmanofsky: “Samson wants to die and thinks that the best way of doing so is at the hands of the Philistines.”

If Samson’s purpose would be to quiet his emotional disturbance, there are deeper theological intentions—the mind of God at work. Samson can keep killing Philistines, but that won’t help much. It’s just killing. When the Philistines capture him, though, they do something which ends up shocking the deity system. They take him into the temple of their god.

And Samson destroys it. His powers reactivate—possibly because he’s in the presence of a rival deity. But the key to this amazing victory was Delilah, and there is no scorn for her. In fact, Samson loves her! And the “love” he has for her, in Judges 16:4, is agape. The messianic event is being forecast.

In the human world, sex is good. All the Biblical heroes are sexual.

“Harlot” can be negative terms when used of deities in prophetic books. But these references occur in a very different context, where, as Eugene Peterson explains, a ‘harlot’ can be “a metaphor for worship gone wrong.”