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

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

Sexuality in Old Testament narratives

Ancestors in love. Although biblical narrative tends to be taciturn about what happened behind closed tent flaps, it is clear that our Israelite ancestors enjoyed sexual love within the context of their marriages. Sarah laughed when she overheard the three men telling Abraham that he would have a son, but not merely because she ridiculed the idea of procreation by senior citizens. This 90-year-old woman, who was in her younger days so beautiful that the Pharaoh of Egypt had taken her from Abraham to be his own wife, asks with delight, presumably based on good memories, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" (Gen 18:12). The motif of the barrenness of the beloved matriarch suggests that women were cherished for their own attractiveness and character qualities and not only for their ability to have children.

The promised son born of this unexpected pleasure, Isaac (whose name itself means "he laughs"), found comfort after his mother's death through sexual intimacy with his young bride, Rebekah. The biblical narrator tells us of their meeting, after Rebekah has agreed to leave her family in Haran to marry Isaac, in one of the most romantic passages in the Hebrew Bible:

Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field; and looking up, he saw camels coming. And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel, and said to the servant, "Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us? The servant said, "It is my master." So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. (Gen 24:63-67)

Apparently it was easier to get married in those days. All one had to do was to have sexual relations, and all the better if it was in your deceased mother's tent! Isaac was so enamored of his attractive wife Rebekah that he apparently could not resist fondling or "playing" with her in public (Gen 26:8). (Note that "he plays" is another good translation for the name "Isaac.") This intimate behavior alerted the king of Gerar to the couple's marital relationship, so that he was able to warn his male subjects not to seduce Rebekah (Gen 26:9-11).

In turn, Isaac and Rebekah's son Jacob loved the beautiful Rachel, and found working off her bride price for seven years an easy matter because of his deep feelings: "So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her" (Gen 29:20). After marrying Rachel's older sister Leah through his father-in-law's deceitful substitution of his elder daughter for his younger, Jacob is able to marry Rachel as well: "So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah" (Gen 29:30). The story of the younger favored and the older hated wife emphasizes the jealousy that can easily arise in matters of sexuality. By bargaining for bed time through a payment of some aphrodisiac mandrake plants that her son Reuben had found, Leah is entitled to meet Jacob when he returns home to tell him that he is sleeping with her: "'You must come in tome, for I have hired you with my son's mandrakes.' So he lay with her that night" (Genesis 30:16). Love and hate, manip ulation and competition--even these may be part of marriage, as the Old Testament acknowledges with its typical realism.