Sexuality in the Old Testament: strong as death, unquenchable as fire

Currents in Theology and Mission, Feb, 2003 by Esther M. Menn

Being sexual is part of being human, and the Old Testament quite frankly acknowledges this important aspect of our humanity. It unapologetically depicts men and women as physical and sexual creatures, not only as spiritual, rational, and moral beings, as we sometimes pretend when we are in our religious, Sunday mode. Just as all the other animals created alongside us on the sixth day in the Genesis story, we are acknowledged to be "flesh" (basar in Hebrew), with all of its appetites and aversions, its needs and desires, its abilities and limitations, its potential for good and for evil. Surveying what the Old Testament says about human sexuality can remind us that the more things change (and they certainly have changed a lot!), the more things stay the same. The cultural world and the social structures within which we express our sexuality today are substantially different from those of Old Testament times, and they are continuing to evolve at a rapid pace in our day. Still, all things considered, it is not s o much our fundamental differences with our biblical ancestors that strikes us, but rather our common flesh, our common capacity for love with a physical dimension, our common desire to know and be known by another. These sexual aspects of our humanity are strong as death, unquenchable as fire.

Sexuality in creation

Sexuality is as old as creation itself. Both of the creation narratives at the beginning of Genesis introduce human beings as sexual creatures. The Priestly account in Genesis 1:1-2:4 stresses that humanity, created in the "image of God" for sovereignty over the rest of creation, consists of both male and female (Gen 1:27), and this sexual aspect of creation, along with everything else that God makes, is declared "very good" (Gen 1:31). Populating the world through sexual union is part of God's blessing for humanity when the earth is still new (Gen 1:28), and the command to "be fruitful and multiply" (1) is repeated after the devastation of the flood (Gen 9:1). Beginning already with the ancestral narratives, however, producing children is no longer presented as an imperative to fill the earth but rather as a precious gift from God, often received after anxious delay. Reproduction ultimately is not a human accomplishment but remains under God's control, a point emphasized by the repeated motif of the barren a ncestress, including Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and eventually Leab, as well as Hannah the mother of Samuel, and Elizabeth in the New Testament.

In the Yahwist's version of the creation story in Genesis 2-3, longing for companionship between the sexes emerges even more centrally as the fundamental theme. The essential problem is the loneliness of the first human, Adam ("Mr. Human" as the name resonates in the Hebrew account). It is worth note that although the identification of the original human as a male character signals the androcentric perspective of the narrative, it is nevertheless not as misogynistic as its history of interpretation would lead one to believe. Adam needs not only "help" that is above him, as God, our mighty "help," is above us (Exod 18:4), and "help" that is below him as the animals prove to be (Gen 2:20), but also "help" on his same level, the "helpe meet" in the KJV, which was demoted to a subordinate "helpmate" in some later translations. Since the companion is constructed from the side of the original human body that God formed out of the ground, man and woman are literally "bone of bone, and flesh of flesh," as Adam joyful ly recognizes (Gen 2:23). His exclamation adopts an expression used elsewhere in the Old Testament to speak of kinship and political relationships entailing mutual obligations, such as those between Laban and Jacob, when the latter flees from his brother Esau to the safe haven of his uncle's home in Haran (Gen 29:14), or between David and all the tribes of Israel, when they come to anoint him king at Hebron (2 Sam 5:1). Because Eve, "the mother of all living," was originally part of Adam's own body, he clings to her to be reunited as one flesh, as all men after him cling to their wives, the narrative maintains (Gen 2:24).

Eve's desire for her husband is also noted, although later in the narrative within God's reprimand for human disobedience, where the complexity of their relationship is expressed (Gen 3:16). After the fall, their relationship becomes a hierarchical one. This etiological story recognizes the almost universal reality that women in cultures all around the world find themselves under the authority of men, whom, at least in some cases, they nevertheless love and desire. At the same time, it makes the radical statement that this reality is a perversion of the original order of things, not a mandate established in the order of creation. The mutuality between the sexes expressed in Adam's delighted recognition of Eve as his counterpart (Gen 2:23) and in their unguarded nakedness in each other's presence in the garden of Eden (Gen 2:25) is recaptured in the poetry of the Song of Songs, in which the lovers express their mutual attraction and possession of each other. As the woman explains, "My beloved is mine, and I am his" (Song 2:16).