What Does The Bible Say About Homosexuality: Examining Leviticus

Rethinking Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13

By: Dr. Gregory S. Neal

I first encountered these verses as a teenager while in conversion therapy. On one of the many occasions that we studied them, the leader read aloud: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” He then snaped his Bible closed with a heavy thump and declare: “The Bible said it. That settles it. Case closed.” 

Being one to cause trouble, I raised my hand and asked, “What about Leviticus chapter 11?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “What about it?”

I glanced at the sandwich he was holding and then replied: “It says we’re not supposed to eat pork, but you’re eating a ham and cheese sandwich.”

He wasn’t amused. I was taken into the hallway and warned that my question suggested I wasn’t cooperating with the program. I was then told that Jesus had fulfilled the dietary and ceremonial laws, but that the moral laws remained permanently binding.

Even though I was young, I was smart enough to recognize the problem with that response. Who decided which laws belonged in which category? Leviticus itself doesn’t divide its commandments into neat sections labeled “ceremonial,” “civil,” and “moral.” The people warning me not to “pick and choose” were, themselves, picking and choosing, interpreting and categorizing the text; they simply refused to acknowledge that they were doing it.

Declarations like: “The Bible said it. That settles it” may sound faithful, but in truth they often function as ways of limiting, discouraging, or controlling the interpretation of Scripture. Quoting an English translation isn’t the same thing as understanding the ancient Hebrew text that rests behind it. These verses didn’t descend from heaven in twenty-first-century English, informed by modern concepts of sexual orientation, homosexuality, committed same-sex relationships, and marriage equality.

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 appear within a particular collection of laws, written in and for an ancient culture and using words whose meaning and intention must be determined through grammar, context, history, and usage. All of this calls for attention to such details

What Does the Hebrew Actually Say?

In modern translations of the Bible, Leviticus 18:22 is usually rendered: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Leviticus 20:13 follows this closely, while also attaching a harsh penalty: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.” The Hebrew original, however, is less straightforward than these familiar English translations may suggest.

Leviticus 18:22 speaks of lying with a male (the Hebrew word is zākār) in the “lyings of a woman.” That expression is unusual in multiple ways, and despite what many will claim it does not say, in modern terminology, that “a man must not engage in a homosexual relationship.” It is probably speaking about a specific physical act; a relationship is not the subject here.

The word zākār has the broad lexical meaning of male. Depending upon context, it can refer to an adult male, a male child, male offspring, male kindred, or even a male animal. The broadness of the term doesn’t mean that we may arbitrarily choose whichever definition best supports our theology, rather it means that the word’s intended nuance must be determined by how it is being used within the context of a particular passage.

Words don’t simultaneously carry every possible dictionary definition. The English word “child,” for example, can refer to a young person, but it can also mean someone’s offspring regardless of age. A sixty-year-old man may still be his mother’s child. It is the context which tells us the sense that is intended.

The progressive approach to these verses, therefore, isn’t simply that zākār can mean “boy” or “male offspring,” and so these verses must concern pederasty or incest. That would be too simplistic. Rather, our argument is cumulative: the lexical range of the word, the difference between the nouns used for the two parties, the recurring ways zākār functions elsewhere in Leviticus and the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and the surrounding legal context of both chapters, all have to be considered together in determining the likely meaning of the passage..

How Zākār Functions in Familial and Household Contexts

When zākār refers to human beings in the Hebrew Bible, the majority of the time it’s found in reproductive, familial, household, genealogical, tribal, covenantal, and census contexts. For example, in Genesis 17 “zākār” refers to the males belonging to Abraham’s household who are to receive circumcision. In Leviticus 12, zākār refers to the male child whom a woman bears. In the Book of Numbers, the word repeatedly appears in censuses involving tribes, clans, ancestral houses, priestly lines, and male descendants, sometimes identifying every zākār from one month old to adulthood. In these cases, as well as in others, zākār doesn’t independently mean “son” or “male relative.” The kinship relationship is supplied by contextualizing words such as “household,” “clan,” “ancestral house,” “children,” or “descendants.” But the association is nevertheless real and recurring. In other words, zākār regularly functions as a classifying term identifying which members of a defined family, household, lineage, tribe, or group are male. This is how semantic nuance often works in Hebrew, as well as in most languages. Words often develop recognizable usage patterns, appearing in clusters of related contexts which help shape how they’re understood.

That doesn’t mean zākār is always used in familial contexts. It’s sometimes used more generally for males in contrast with females, for adult male populations, and for male animals. However, its frequent appearance in the contexts of childbirth, offspring, circumcision, household membership, genealogy, tribal identity, and descent is significant when it’s used inside chapters dominated by precisely those concerns. That’s the case in both Leviticus 18 and 20.

The Surrounding Context Is About Kinship, Household Boundaries, and Sexual Access

All of this should indicate that the meaning of zākār can’t be separated from the context in which it appears. In Leviticus 18 we find a lengthy catalog of prohibitions against sexual activity with one’s closest kin. The chapter excludes having sex with one’s mother, father’s wife, sister, granddaughter, aunt, daughter-in-law, brother’s wife, and other related persons. Included in this list are prohibitions of intercourse during menstruation, adultery with a neighbor’s wife, the sacrifice of one’s children to Molech, and ritual bestiality.

Leviticus 20 revisits many of the same matters while assigning penalties. Once again, the disputed prohibition appears among laws concerning adultery, incest, a father’s wife, a daughter-in-law, a woman and her mother, siblings, aunts, uncles, and the ordering of the patriarchal household. All of this context is critically important when it comes to determining the meaning of zākār. These chapters aren’t discussing two unrelated adults who meet, fall in love, form a faithful partnership, and publicly covenant to share their lives. They’re regulating sexual access within families, kinship boundaries, household authority, inheritance, reproduction, purity, and Israel’s distinction from surrounding peoples.

When a word whose range includes male offspring—and which is repeatedly used elsewhere to identify male members of households, clans, and lines of descent—appears within a collection of regulations overwhelmingly concerned with prohibited family and household relationships, that contextual association deserves serious consideration. Its use may suggest that the law addresses a particular form of male-male intercourse within a family, household, or unequal social arrangement rather than every conceivable sexual relationship between males.

Again, that conclusion isn’t established by the lexical meaning of the word zākār alone. The argument comes from the word’s lexical range, its recurring usage patterns throughout the Hebrew Bible, the distinction between ’ish and zākār, and the familial context of the chapters in which it appears. The traditional interpretation frequently isolates one sentence from everything surrounding it, translates both parties as adult men, imports the modern category of homosexuality, and then announces, “Case closed.” But, as this exploration has illustrated, the “case” was never actually examined. While the verse clearly prohibits some form of male-male sexual act, the question is what particular act, relationship, or circumstance the law assumes, and whether that prohibition can responsibly be extended to every loving, mutual, covenantal relationship between two people of the same sex.

Why Would Male-Male Intercourse Have Been Prohibited?

If these verses are prohibiting some form of sexual intercourse between males, and it certainly appears that they do, then why would the writers of Leviticus have regarded that practice as to‘evah in the first place? Why would it’s practice within a kinship group have been problematic, and why might it have been an issue beyond that social context?

One important explanation emerges when we remember how profoundly different ancient understandings of sex and gender were from our own. Ancient Israel was an intensely patriarchal society. Men possessed most of the social, economic, familial, and political power, while women were expected to be subordinate to fathers, husbands, and even adult sons. Those assumptions shaped not only family organization but also the way sexual intercourse itself was understood. 

To be blunt, sex was most often understood and practiced through the roles people occupied in the act: specifically, one person did the penetrating and the other was penetrated, and those roles weren't regarded as being socially equivalent. Penetration corresponded to the culturally masculine role, which was seen as active, powerful, and socially dominant, while being penetrated corresponded to the culturally feminine role, which was characterized by being receptive, inferior, and socially subordinate. In other words, sexual intercourse reflected and reinforced the much larger patriarchal ordering of society.

This helps explain the unusual language of Leviticus about a male participating in the “lyings of a woman.” Scholars such as Saul Olyan and Jerome Walsh have argued, though in somewhat different ways, that the expression is connected specifically with penetrative intercourse and the sexual role culturally assigned to women. Walsh, in particular, understands the underlying concern as the violation of masculine status that occurs when a free adult Israelite male assumes the receptive role. Comparative evidence from surrounding ancient cultures likewise demonstrates that penetration could function as an expression of power, while the penetration of a socially equal adult male could be understood as humiliating, feminizing, or subordinating him.

From within such a patriarchal conceptual world, male-male intercourse presented a profound problem precisely because it disrupted the expected hierarchy between male and female. If penetration belonged to the role of the man and receptivity belonged to the role of the woman, then a man being penetrated occupied a position his culture understood as female. What disturbed the social order wasn't necessarily “homosexuality” as we understand that term today, it was that a man had taken a woman’s role and, therefore, disrupted the prevailing cultural standards by accepting social subordination.

This point is particularly revealing because Leviticus contains no corresponding prohibition against sexual activity between women. Elsewhere Leviticus repeatedly regulates women's sexual behavior, yet it says nothing comparable about women having sex with women. That silence makes considerably more sense if the central anxiety concerns male penetration, masculinity, and the preservation of gender hierarchy rather than a comprehensive category corresponding to what we now call homosexuality. The ancient concern appears to have been specifically male and specifically connected with how male bodies could be sexually used. 

There is also an uncomfortable implication here which modern readers shouldn’t evade: the prohibition may depend, at least in part, upon assumptions about the inferiority and subordination of women that Christians largely no longer accept. The offense of placing a man in the woman’s role only works as an offense if occupying the woman’s role represents a loss of status or is seen as a challenge to the power and authority of men over women. The logic depends upon a world in which being active, dominant, and penetrative is masculine, while being passive, receptive, and penetrated is feminine, and in which movement from the former category into the latter is either degrading or seen as a challenge to the cultural dominance of men.

This doesn't prove that gender hierarchy was the only consideration behind Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Scholars have proposed several overlapping explanations involving purity, kinship, reproduction, social status, household structure, and the maintenance of Israel’s distinctive character relative to the religious practices of other peoples, and the text itself never stops to explain its reasoning. We should therefore resist replacing one overly simple explanation with another. Nevertheless, the gendered character of penetration provides important historical context for understanding why male-male intercourse could have been regarded as socially and religiously disruptive within this ancient patriarchal world. Contemporary Christians must then ask whether preserving those ancient assumptions about male dominance and female subordination is something the Gospel requires of us today.

What Does “Abomination” Mean?

The Hebrew word commonly translated “abomination” is to‘evah. It’s certainly a forceful word, but it isn’t a technical term meaning “the worst possible sin” or “something universally and eternally immoral in every conceivable cultural setting.”

The Hebrew Bible identifies several dozen things as being toʿevah, including idolatry, dishonest business practices, unjust courts, lying, arrogant pride, child sacrifice, at least 17 different sexual practices, eating certain animals, and even culturally taboo practices like Egyptians eating with Hebrews. The word doesn't automatically mean “universally and eternally sinful.” Like so much else in Biblical studies, its meaning depends upon its context.

Christians already believe that approximately 90% of the Torah’s 613 commandments, including many practices explicitly identified as toʿevah, or “abominations,” are no longer binding. So the question isn’t whether Christians distinguish among the commandments, because we all do. The real question is how we justify that distinction. The Torah itself never divides its laws into the later Christian categories of “moral,” “ceremonial,” and “civil.” Those categories are theological frameworks imposed upon the text in order to explain why some commandments are retained while others are set aside. The real debate is whether that framework is being applied consistently. It isn’t.

These Verses Don’t Discuss Sexual Orientation

And this brings us to the most important problem with depending upon Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 to condemn LGBTQ+ people, and it’s also the one that’s most often ignored: these verses don’t discuss sexual orientation. They don’t describe someone who experiences an enduring emotional, romantic, and sexual attraction to people of the same sex. They don’t discuss adults forming loving, mutual, faithful relationships. They don’t address covenantal same-sex marriage. They don’t describe gay or lesbian couples building homes, caring for one another, practicing fidelity, and sharing their lives together. They prohibit a particular sexual act within the legal, cultural, purity, kinship, and household dynamics of ancient Israel. Indeed, even the broadest traditional interpretation of these verses concerns a physical sexual act, not a sexual orientation. Yet these verses are routinely used not merely to prohibit a particular behavior, but to declare that the very existence of gay people contradicts God’s will. That conclusion goes far beyond anything the passages say.

The biblical writers knew that people could engage in same-sex acts, but they didn’t discuss homosexuality as an enduring sexual orientation or describe loving, faithful same-sex couples as a distinct relational category. While the ancient world recognized a variety of same-sex behaviors, it lacked the conceptual framework to distinguish sexual orientation from sexual conduct or understand same-sex relationships as mutual, lifelong, covenantal unions between equals.

Applying the biblical texts directly to modern LGBTQ people, therefore, requires a series of interpretive judgments, and those judgments are not derived from the text alone. Rather, they depend upon broader theological assumptions, cultural norms, and, quite often, personal and emotional reactions shaped by one’s social context. The claim that Scripture straightforwardly addresses modern same-sex relationships overlooks the substantial hermeneutical work required to bridge the gap between the ancient world and our own.

“The Bible Said It” Has Never Settled the Question

The leader of my conversion therapy program believed that snapping his Bible shut brought the discussion to an end. For him, the sound of that heavy thump meant that no further questions were permitted. But closing the Bible isn’t the same thing as understanding it.

Taking language, history, grammar, literary setting, and context seriously isn’t an attempt to evade Scripture, it’s what responsible biblical interpretation requires. Christians do this everywhere else in the Bible: we ask whether a command was given to ancient Israel, to the early church, to a specific congregation, or to all Christians. We examine genre, audience, historical circumstances, covenant, metaphor, cultural assumptions, and rhetorical language across the breadth and depth of the Scriptures.. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 deserve the same care.

These verses prohibit something, and they regard that prohibition as serious within ancient Israel’s holiness code. But precisely what relationship or practice they are addressing is less self-evident than many English translations make it appear. The semantic range of zākār, its recurring use in reproductive, familial, household, genealogical, and covenantal settings, its contrast with ’ish in Leviticus 20:13, and the overwhelmingly familial context of both chapters, all complicate the traditional reading. None of these observations, by themselves, prove that the verses refer exclusively to pederasty, incest with male offspring or other kin, or exploitative household relationships. Taken together, however, they demonstrate that translating zākār simply as an adult “man” and applying the passage to every possible same-sex relationship is not the only legitimate interpretation, nor is it the most reasonable one.

Most importantly, these verses don’t address the relationships actually being debated in the church today: loving, faithful, mutual, covenantal relationships between LGBTQ adults. We shouldn’t make Scripture say less than it says, but neither should we take ancient laws concerning particular sexual acts, patriarchal households, kinship structures, and Israelite holiness and use them to condemn people and relationships those laws never describe.

“The Bible said it. That settles it. Case closed.”

No. The Bible said something. Our responsibility is to do the difficult, faithful work of determining what it said, what it meant within its original context, and how, or whether, it should be applied today. That isn’t rejecting Scripture, it’s taking it seriously.

To explore more about the Old Testament and Homosexuality view or listen to our Episode: The Bible and Homosexuality: The Old Testament