Deuteronomy 23:17

Deuteronomy 23:17

There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.

a. NLT: “No Israelite, whether man or woman, may become a temple prostitute. [Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.]

b. NIV: No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute. [THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by Permission of Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide.]

c. Young’s Literal Translation: 'There is not a whore among the daughters of Israel, nor is there a whoremonger among the sons of Israel; [The Young's Literal Translation was translated by Robert Young, who believed in a strictly literal translation of God's word. This version of the Bible is in the public domain.]

d. Amplified Bible: There shall be no cult prostitute among the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a cult prostitute (a sodomite) among the sons of Israel. [Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC) Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation]

e. Septuagint: There shall not be a harlot of the daughters of Israel, and there shall not be a fornicator of the sons of Israel; there shall not be an idolatress of the daughters of Israel, and there shall not be an initiated person of the sons of Israel.

f. Stone Edition Torah/Writings/Prophets: [In Jewish translations this verse is Deuteronomy 23:18] There shall not be a promiscuous woman among the daughters of Israel, and there shall not be a promiscuous man among the sons of Israel. [The Artscroll Series/Stone Edition, THE TANACH--STUDENT SIZE EDITION Copyright 1996, 1998 by Mesorah Publications, Ldt.]

1. “There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel…”

a. [There] shall be [Strong: 1961 hayah haw-yaw a primitive root (Compare 1933); to exist, i.e. be or become, come to pass (always emphatic, and not a mere copula or auxiliary):--beacon, X altogether, be(-come), accomplished, committed, like), break, cause, come (to pass), do, faint, fall, + follow, happen, X have, last, pertain, quit (one-)self, require, X use.]

b. no [Strong: 3808 lo' lo or lowi {lo}; or loh (Deut. 3:11) {lo}; a primitive particle; not (the simple or abs. negation); by implication, no; often used with other particles (as follows):--X before, + or else, ere, + except, ig(-norant), much, less, nay, neither, never, no((-ne), -r, (-thing)), (X as though...,(can-), for) not (out of), of nought, otherwise, out of, + surely, + as truly as, + of a truth, + verily, for want, + whether, without.]

c. whore [Strong: 6948 qdeshah ked-ay-shaw' feminine of 6945; a female devotee (i.e. prostitute):--harlot, whore. Qedeshah. ] [Gesenius: female temple prostitute, harlot.][Strong: a female devotee (i.e. prostitute):--harlot, whore.]

d. [of the] daughters [Strong: 1323 1323 bath bath from 1129 (as feminine of 1121); a daughter (used in the same wide sense as other terms of relationship, literally and figuratively):--apple (of the eye), branch, company, daughter, X first, X old, + owl, town, village.]

e. [of] Israel [Strong: 3478 Yisra'el yis-raw-ale' from 8280 and 410; he will rule as God; Jisrael, a symbolical name of Jacob; also (typically) of his posterity: --Israel.]

2. “…nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.”

a. nor [Strong: 3808 lo' lo or lowi {lo}; or loh (Deut. 3:11) {lo}; a primitive particle; not (the simple or abs. negation); by implication, no; often used with other particles (as follows):--X before, + or else, ere, + except, ig(-norant), much, less, nay, neither, never, no((-ne), -r, (-thing)), (X as though...,(can-), for) not (out of), of nought, otherwise, out of, + surely, + as truly as, + of a truth, + verily, for want, + whether, without.]

b. [a] sodomite [Strong: 6945 qadesh kaw-dashe' from 6942; a (quasi) sacred person, i.e. (technically) a (male) devotee (by prostitution) to licentious idolatry:-- sodomite, unclean.] [Gesenius: male temple prostitute.]

1). This Hebrew word translated “sodomite” in Deuteronomy 23:17 is found a total of six times in the Old Testament. It is translated five times as “sodomite” and one time as “unclean”. 

a). Job 36:14 They die in youth, and their life is among the unclean. 

b). 1 Kings 14:24 And there were also sodomites  in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.

c). 1 Kings 15:12 And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.

d). 1 Kings 22:46 And the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land.

e). 2 Kings 23:7 And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove.

2). These were not citizens of Sodom as the translation may imply, because by the time four of these instances are written of, beginning in Deuteronomy and proceeding chronologically through 2 Kings, Sodom and the other “cities of the plain”, had already been destroyed for approximately 400 years. The exception is the occurrence in Job 36:14, because some scholars (and I agree with them) believe Job is the oldest book in the Bible, that it pre-dates the five books of Moses, Deuteronomy being the last that Moses wrote.

3). Unger’s Bible Dictionary: Sodomite (Hebrew: qadesh, consecrated, devoted). The sodomites were not inhabitants of Sodom, not their descendants, but men consecrated to the unnatural vice of Sodom (Genesis 19:5; compare Romans 1:27) as a religious rite. This dreadful “consecration”, or rather desecration, was spread in different forms over Phoenicia, Syria, Phrygia, Assyria, Babylonia. Ashtaroth, the Greek Astarte, was its chief object. The term was especially applied to the emasculated priests of Cybele, called Galli, perhaps from the river Gallus in Bithynia, which was said to make those who drank it mad. In Deuteronomy 23:17, the toleration of a sodomite was expressly forbidden, and the pay received by a sodomite was not to be put into the temple treasury (v. 18). “The price of a dog” is a figurative expression used to denote the gains of a qadesh (sodomite), who was called kinaidos, by the Greeks, from the doglike manner in which he debased himself (see Revelation 22:15, where the unclean are called “dogs”).

4). Robert A. J. Gagnon, “The Bible And Homosexual Practice” pp. 100-102. “There is good evidence of homosexual cult prostitution in Israel during the period of the divided monarchy. A number of texts speak of the existence of qedesim (sg. qades, twice as a collective), literally, “holy/sanctified men,” “consecrated men,” “men dedicated to the deity” (Deuteronomy 23:17, 18; 1 Kings 14:24; 15:12; 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7; Job 36:14) The term is usally rendered in standard English translations to denote men at cult sites who engaged in homosexual prostitution: “male temple (or cult, shrine, sacred) prostitutes…the qedesim… men “whose masculinity had been transformed into feminity” by a goddess (Asherah? Astarte?).

a). D.C.: Mr. Gagnon includes Deuteronomy 23:17, 18 as evidence of homosexual cult prostitution in Israel during the divided kingdom. I believe that Moses wrote Deuteronomy before he died and immediately before Israel entered the land of Canaan, around 1400 B.C.. Because of that, the warning in Deuteronomy 23:17, 18 is not evidence of cult prostitution during the divided kingdom, but evidence of cult prostitution in Canaan previous to Israel entering. Generally, this specific sinful behavior would be included in the sinful Canaanite behaviors in Leviticus 18, particularly Leviticus 18:22.

5). Other different cultural examples are called assinnus, kurgarrus, and galli. They were all males, all temple prostitutes, and all sexually serviced males, yet consecrated to different goddesses. Some were castrated while some were not. Robert A. J. Gagnon writes of them, “men whose masculinity had been transformed into femininity by a goddess”. (The Bible And Homosexual Practice). It was from reading Gagnon’s book where I learned of the similarity between the ancient male temple prostitute and the contemporary transgendered (though not consecrated to a goddess). These are individuals who believe they are females, born anatomically as males but believe they are trapped in a male body, and males, born anatomically as female but believe they are a male trapped in a female body. What we are seeing in America and across the world is just a modern manifestation of this deception and confusion. The examples from Scripture are individuals who because of godless demonic idolatry believed they were transformed by a goddess into a female. In today’s examples it is also demonic godless influences that masquerade as science.

6).  Worship of Inanna: In the famous Sumerian/Babylonian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2700 - 1400 BCE) Inanna appears as Ishtar [Ashtoreth, a Canaanite goddess; Unger’s Bible Dictionary]  and, in Phoenician mythology, as Astarte [Greek name for Ashtoreth; Unger’s bible Dictionary.] In the Greek myth The Judgment of Paris, but also in other tales of the ancient Greeks, the goddess Aphrodite is traditionally associated with Inanna through her great beauty and sensuality. Inanna is always depicted as a young woman, never as mother or faithful wife, who is fully aware of her feminine power and confronts life boldly without fear of how she will be perceived by others, especially by men. Her temple at Uruk was her central cult center but throughout Mesopotamia her temples and shrines were numerous and sacred prostitutes, of both genders, were employed to ensure the fertility of the earth and the continued prosperity of the communities. Male transgenders, known as kurgarra, castrated themselves, females who identified as males were known as galatur; both were thought to have either been transformed by Inanna/Ishtar herself or created by the Father God Enki to rescue Inanna from the underworld. The Descent of Inanna notes that Enki made them "neither male nor female" and the clergy of Inanna's temple honored this tradition by embodying it. Scholar Colin Spencer comments: Sacred prostiution was the central part of the ritual in the Temple. The priestess performed a sacred marriage to ensure the fertility of the country and the great fortune of the new king, for the king copulated with the holy priestess at the beginning of his reign. There were lesser priestesses who were also musicians, singers, and dancers, certainly some of these were men who also copulated with both men and women. The goddess Ishtar had turned these men into women as a demonstration of her awesome powers. Yet though Ishtar was an all-powerful presence and through prostitution was revered and was also an important economic factor in the running of the Temple, women's role in society began to be secondary to that of men. (29) https://www.worldhistory.org/Inanna/

7). Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible: There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel,.... The word for "whore" is "kedeshah", which properly signifies an "holy" one; and here, by an antiphrasis, an unholy, an impure person, one that is defiled by man; See Gill on Genesis 38:18. Jarchi interprets the word, one that makes herself common, that is sanctified, or set apart; that is, one that separates herself for such service, and prostitutes herself to everyone that passes by: but some understand this not of common harlots in the streets, but of sacred whores, or such as were consecrated to Heathen deities, as such there were to Venus. Strabo (x) tells us that the temple of Venus at Corinth was so rich, that more than a thousand of those sacred harlots were kept, whom men and women had devoted to that goddess; and so a multitude of the same sort were at Comana, which he calls little Corinth (y); now these of all harlots being the most abominable are forbidden to be among the daughters of Israel: nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel: by the same rule that "kedeshah" is rendered "a whore" in the preceding clause, "kadesh" should be rendered "an whoremonger" here, as in the Septuagint and Vulgate Latin versions; though Aben Ezra interprets it passively, one that is lain with, and Jarchi one that is prepared to lie with a male, that prostitutes his body in this unnatural way; and it looks as if there were such sort of persons sacred to idols, since we read of the houses of the sodomites, which were by, or rather in the house of the Lord, 2 Kings 23:7.

  

c. [of the] sons [Strong: 1121 ben bane from 1129; a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etc., (like 1, 251, etc.)):--+ afflicted, age, (Ahoh-) (Ammon-) (Hachmon-) (Lev-)ite, (anoint-)ed one, appointed to, (+) arrow, (Assyr-) (Babylon-) (Egypt-) (Grec-)ian, one born, bough, branch, breed, + (young) bullock, + (young) calf, X came up in, child, colt, X common, X corn, daughter, X of first, + firstborn, foal, + very fruitful, + postage, X in, + kid, + lamb, (+) man, meet, + mighty, + nephew, old, (+) people, + rebel, + robber, X servant born, X soldier, son, + spark, + steward, + stranger, X surely, them of, + tumultuous one, + valiant(-est), whelp, worthy, young (one), youth.

d. [of] Israel [Strong: 3478 Yisra'el yis-raw-ale' from 8280 and 410; he will rule as God; Jisrael, a symbolical name of Jacob; also (typically) of his posterity: --Israel.