What Does the Bible Say About Homosexuality: Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis, Ezekiel, Jesus, Jude, and the Misuse of an Ancient Story

 By: Dr. Gregory S. Neal

Few biblical stories have been used against LGBTQ people more relentlessly than the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. The English language itself bears the marks of that history: “Sodom” eventually became associated with homosexuality, while the word “sodomy” came to describe at least a couple of prohibited sexual acts. That later association, however, can actually make the biblical story more difficult to read because we’re prone to approach it already assuming we know what it’s about. If we read the text in its own context, and then pay careful attention to the ways Ezekiel, Jesus, and Jude later interpret or invoke it, a very different picture begins to emerge.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah isn’t about men falling in love with each other, entering into faithful same-sex relationships, and building caring households marked by companionship, mutual love, fidelity, and affection. It’s about a mob attempting to gang rape vulnerable outsiders who have entered their city. That distinction isn’t incidental to the story; it’s the story’s central moral horror, and any interpretation that moves from Genesis 19 to a blanket condemnation of homosexuality risks confusing sexual violence with consensual relationships.

What Actually Happens in Genesis 19?

Two angelic visitors arrive in Sodom, where Lot receives them into his home. Their arrival takes place against the backdrop of the “outcry” against Sodom and Gomorrah that has already reached God in Genesis 18, an outcry arising about cities whose wickedness had become notorious. Genesis 19 then gives us a glimpse of what that wickedness looks like when strangers show up. That evening, the men of Sodom surround Lot’s house and demand that he bring the visitors outside so that they can “know” them.

Occasionally someone argues that “to know” simply means that the townspeople want to become acquainted with the visitors, but the context makes that interpretation virtually impossible. Lot responds by offering the mob his daughters, specifically noting that they have never “known” a man. Whatever else we may, and should, say about the horrifying nature of Lot’s proposed solution, the sexual meaning of the language is unmistakable. The crowd intends to rape the visitors.

As is still true today, rape in the ancient world was not primarily an expression of sexual attraction; it was an act of violence, humiliation, domination, and power, and it could function as a particularly brutal means of social control. To rape an outsider was to subjugate that person, to diminish and humiliate them by treating their body as something the aggressor had the right to possess and use. Penetration itself became an assertion of dominance: the victim was reduced to an object, stripped of autonomy, and forcibly relegated to a position of inferiority in the social hierarchy. In that sense, the sex of the perpetrators and their intended victims is largely immaterial to the function of the act. The men of Sodom aren’t asking these strangers on dates, they’re not desiring consensual sexual encounters or long-term relationships with them, and the story gives us no reason to imagine that their actions arise from a shared sexual orientation. They’re a mob attempting to sexually violate vulnerable outsiders as an expression of hostility, domination, and contempt.

That’s an important distinction because Sodom’s behavior toward these visitors is part of a larger pattern of profound inhospitality toward the stranger. In the ancient world, hospitality wasn’t merely a matter of good manners; travelers depended upon the protection of those who received them, which made the abuse of strangers an especially serious violation. Lot receives the visitors into his home and places them under his protection, to which the city responds by surrounding the house and demanding access to their bodies. The attempted gang rape is therefore the most extreme manifestation of Sodom’s hostility toward outsiders: these strangers aren’t simply refused welcome, they’re to be humiliated, violated, and reduced to objects of contempt upon whom the men of the city can exercise their anger, aggression, and power.

If Genesis 19 involved men attempting to gang rape women, nobody would conclude that the story constituted God’s condemnation of heterosexuality or of marriage between men and women. We would recognize that rape tells us something about violence and domination, not about the moral legitimacy of consensual heterosexual relationships. The same principle should apply here. Condemning the attempted gang rape of male visitors doesn’t amount to condemning every possible relationship between two men; to make that leap is to turn a story about the violent subjugation of strangers into a story about sexual orientation, which is simply not what the text describes.

Ezekiel Tells Us What Was Wrong With Sodom

Fortunately, we don’t have to guess about how later biblical writers understood the story of Sodom and Gomorrah because the prophet Ezekiel explicitly revisits it. In Ezekiel 16:49–50, the prophet declares: “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” He then continues: “They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.”

It’s important not to reduce Ezekiel’s indictment to the tame observation that the people of Sodom were merely “inhospitable,” at least if by inhospitable we mean that they failed to offer strangers a place to sleep, something to eat, or a warm beverage. The problem runs much deeper than bad manners. As we’ve already discussed, in the biblical world strangers, travelers, the poor, and others who lacked the protection of family, wealth, or social standing were especially vulnerable to exploitation, and true social hospitality involved protecting those who had temporarily placed themselves within your protection. Again, what Genesis 19 portrays is the complete inversion of that obligation: instead of receiving and protecting vulnerable outsiders, the men of Sodom sought to dominate, humiliate, and sexually brutalize them as an act of societal control.

Ezekiel’s language of pride, prosperous ease, haughtiness, and failure to care for the poor and needy describes precisely the kind of society in which those who possess power come to believe they have the right to prey upon those who don’t. Sodom’s problem isn’t simply that it fails to welcome strangers; it’s that its people have turned social power into a weapon, using their privileged position not to protect the vulnerable but to subjugate and abuse them. In many respects, this is a warning that our culture desperately needs to hear and consider.

Of course, many readers will immediately focus upon Ezekiel’s statement that the people of Sodom committed an “abomination,” or toʿevah, before God, and attempt to draw an immediate connection to Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. That connection should certainly be noted, but the shared vocabulary doesn’t establish that Ezekiel understood the sin of Sodom to be homosexuality as we understand it today. The Hebrew Bible uses toʿevah broadly to describe things regarded as detestable, including idolatry and pagan worship, child sacrifice, dishonest business practices, injustice, arrogance, and various forms of sexual misconduct. In other words, the word tells us that Ezekiel regarded Sodom’s behavior as abhorrent to God; by itself, however, it doesn’t identify which particular behavior he has in mind, much less establish that he is referring specifically to consensual sexual relationships between people of the same sex.

Ezekiel’s own usage makes this especially clear. In chapter 8 the prophet repeatedly calls the idolatrous practices taking place in the Temple “abominations.” In chapter 18 he describes oppression of the poor and needy, robbery, failure to restore a debtor’s pledge, idolatry, adultery, and the charging of exploitative interest, as being “abominations.” Thus, within Ezekiel itself, toʿevah can encompass religious apostasy, sexual wrongdoing, economic exploitation, and social injustice; it’s a broad term of moral and religious condemnation.

The immediate context of Ezekiel 16 is even more significant. Ezekiel is comparing Jerusalem with Samaria and Sodom, and throughout the chapter his language of “abominations” encompasses Jerusalem’s idolatry, its metaphorical prostitution after other gods and foreign powers, and even the sacrifice of children. Indeed, Ezekiel’s point is that Jerusalem has committed more and greater abominations than Sodom. The term therefore functions throughout the chapter as a sweeping description of conduct that Ezekiel regards as abhorrent, rather than referencing a single offense. Scholarly commentaries on Ezekiel have similarly note the unusually broad range of religious, moral, and social offenses encompassed by the term.

Is it possible that Ezekiel’s reference to an “abomination” includes the attempted sexual violence of Genesis 19? Absolutely! I don’t think anyone seriously argues that gang rape is anything other than an abominable act, and I certainly reject what the men of the city wanted to do to the visiting angels. What can’t be demonstrated from Ezekiel’s wording, however, is the much more specific claim that he is identifying homosexuality, as we understand it today, as the sin of Sodom. That conclusion must be imported into Ezekiel from somewhere else. Nothing in Ezekiel 16:49–50 identifies the toʿevah in that way, while everything Ezekiel actually specifies points toward arrogant pride, wealth without compassion, neglect of the poor and vulnerable, and the kind of abusive violence depicted in Genesis 19 as conduct abhorrent to God.

And all of that fits Genesis 19 remarkably well. The strangers arriving at Lot’s house are vulnerable outsiders, and instead of welcoming them with hospitality, the people of the city attempt to brutalize them. The attempted gang rape is not disconnected from the social sins Ezekiel names; it’s their grotesque culmination. A society characterized by abundance without mercy, pride without restraint, and power without concern for the vulnerable has reached the point where outsiders can be treated as objects to be possessed, penetrated, humiliated, and discarded.

Ezekiel doesn’t state that Sodom’s great sin was homosexuality. Ezekiel doesn’t discuss sexual orientation at all, nor does the prophet describe anything resembling a loving or consensual same-sex relationship. His indictment is considerably broader and, in some ways, considerably more disturbing: Sodom had become a society in which privilege produced arrogance, abundance existed alongside neglect, and power was turned against the vulnerable.

That should give us serious pause before turning the story of Sodom and Gomorrah into a condemnation of gay people.

Jesus Invokes Sodom as a Warning About Failed Hospitality

When Jesus sends his disciples out to proclaim the coming of God’s reign, he gives them instructions about entering towns and homes. They are to receive the hospitality that is offered to them, but if a household or town refuses to welcome them, they are to leave and shake the dust from their feet. Then Jesus says:

“Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” (Matthew 10:15)

Luke conveys essentially the same teaching: a town that refuses to receive Jesus’ messengers will be more severely punished than were Sodom and Gomorrah. The significance of that comparison is critical: Jesus doesn’t invoke the sin of Sodom while teaching about sexual behavior; instead, he does that while counselinghis disciples about how to respond when hospitality is refused.The connection with Genesis 19 is obvious and unforced. Strangers arrive in a city, and the moral character of that city is revealed by how those strangers are treated. Lot receives them into his home and attempts to protect them, but the men of Sodom seek to subject the visitors to sexual violence, humiliation, and domination. Jesus draws upon that familiar story and applies it to the towns that reject those he sends.

None of this means that failed hospitality was the only evil associated with Sodom. Genesis 19 depicts horrific sexual violence, while Ezekiel broadens the indictment to include pride, prosperous ease, arrogance, and neglect of the poor and vulnerable. But Jesus’ use of the Sodom story makes one claim particularly difficult to sustain: that the biblical tradition simply understood Sodom as a story about homosexuality.

When Jesus himself uses Sodom as an example, he does so in the context of how a community receives, or refuses to receive, vulnerable outsiders who come among them. That reading is remarkably consistent both with Ezekiel’s interpretation and with the dynamics of the Genesis narrative itself.

But What About Jude?

Jude is sometimes presented as the New Testament proof that Sodom was really destroyed because of homosexuality. But when this brief letter is carefully read in context, its argument points in a very different direction.

Immediately before mentioning Sodom, Jude refers to the evils of the angels who abandoned the sphere of existence properly assigned to them: “The angels who did not keep their own position, but left their proper dwelling…” This reflects an ancient Jewish interpretation of Genesis 6 in which angels crossed the boundary between the heavenly and human realms and had sex with human women.

Jude then turns immediately to the Genesis 19 account: “Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh….” The Greek expression translated “strange flesh” is sarkos heteras: literally, “other” or “different flesh.” The wording is important because some English translations render the phrase in ways that have obscured its meaning. Jude doesn’t say that the people of Sodom pursued same-sex flesh; rather, Jude says that they pursued “other” flesh, flesh “different” from their own.

And what kind of beings did the men of Sodom attempt to violate? The visitors in Genesis 19 are angels. The parallel is striking, and essential to the letter’s argument. In the tradition Jude has just referenced, heavenly beings crossed the boundaries between heaven and earth and sought sexual relations with human beings. In Genesis 19, human beings attempt the reverse: they seek sexual access to heavenly visitors. In both stories, the sexual wrongdoing is connected with the transgression of a boundary between the human and heavenly realms.

That also makes considerably better sense of Jude’s unusual phrase “other flesh” than interpreting it as a reference to homosexuality. A man having sex with another man is not pursuing some fundamentally different kind of flesh; both are human beings, with the same kind of flesh. But humans seeking sexual intercourse with angels are quite literally pursuing flesh that is “other” than their own. And that is what’s happening in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Jude is not correcting Ezekiel or Jesus by informing us that Sodom was really about gay people. Rather, the letter draws attention to another disturbing element already present in Genesis 19, one that is often overlooked in the traditional way the story is read: this is an account of an attempted sexual violation of the angelic emissaries of Yahweh. Far from interpreting Sodom as a story about homosexuality, Jude understands the mob’s intention to gang rape these outsiders, disregarding the obligations of hospitality and asserting sexual domination over vulnerable strangers, as an attempt to transgress even the proper boundary between the human and the divine.

What the Story Does, and Doesn't, Address

None of this means that Genesis 19 has nothing to say about sexuality. Sexual violence is central to the story, but that is very different from questions regarding sexual orientation. Genesis 19 shows no awareness of homosexuality as we understand that term today, meaning an enduring pattern of romantic and sexual attraction toward people of the same sex. It doesn’t describe adults of the same sex forming loving, mutual relationships, nor does it address covenantal same-sex marriage shaped by commitments to fidelity, companionship, lifelong devotion, and mutual self-giving. Those simply aren’t the questions the story is asking.

Instead, the biblical witnesses converge around something quite different. Genesis gives us a horrifying picture of a society in which strangers can be surrounded by a mob and threatened with gang rape. Ezekiel remembers Sodom as arrogant and prosperous, yet inhospitable to strangers, neglectful of the poor and needy, and guilty of abominable behavior. Jesus invokes Sodom when towns refuse to welcome his disciples, while Jude focuses upon the attempted sexual violation of angelic visitors, describing the people of Sodom as pursuing “other” or “different” flesh.

These perspectives don’t contradict one another; rather, they illuminate different dimensions of the same story. Sodom and Gomorrah is a story about violence, domination, exploitation, failed hospitality, arrogance, injustice, and the abuse of vulnerable outsiders.

There’s also an uncomfortable irony in the way this story has been interpreted. For generations, a story about the mistreatment of vulnerable outsiders has itself been used to justify the mistreatment of vulnerable outsiders. LGBTQ+ people have been shamed, rejected, expelled from churches, driven from families, and sometimes subjected to violence while Christians invoked the name of Sodom as though the story itself authorized such treatment.

Whatever conclusions Christians may reach elsewhere in Scripture regarding human sexuality, Genesis 19 simply cannot bear the interpretive weight that has so often been placed upon it. The men of Sodom weren’t condemned because they were gay; they were condemned because they had become the kind of people who could see vulnerable strangers at their door and respond, not with hospitality, compassion, or protection, but with violence, humiliation, and a desire to dominate and terrorize. Ezekiel saw their pride, abundance without compassion, and neglect of the vulnerable; Jesus used Sodom as a warning to communities that refused to receive strangers; and Jude remembered their attempt to violate heavenly visitors. Taken together, these biblical witnesses offer a remarkably consistent warning that Christians should still hear. It’s simply not the warning LGBTQ+ people have so often been told it is.

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