Was the Sin of Sodom Homosexuality? Part 1 of 2.

If you ask most Christians what the sin of Sodom was, they will say homosexuality. After all, it appears obvious to our western thinking when we read Genesis 19. We can see this understanding even in the language that we use. The words “sodomy” and “sodomite” came into the English language as early as the late 14th century, ¹ and the latter is even found in the King James Bible. Webster’s online dictionary defines sodomy as “anal or oral copulation with another person; especially: anal or oral copulation with a member of the same sex.” ² Interestingly, the definition has changed somewhat in the past 200 years. Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines sodomy as simply “a crime against nature”; ³ and sodomite as “one guilty of sodomy.” ⁴ It would seem that some things went without saying back in the early 1800s, thanks to the stereotypical Victorian reticence of speaking about certain topics in polite society.

If you ask most Christians what the sin of Sodom was, they will say homosexuality. After all, it appears obvious to our western thinking when we read Genesis 19. We can see this understanding even in the language that we use. The words “sodomy” and “sodomite” came into the English language as early as the late 14th century, ¹ and the latter is even found in the King James Bible. Webster’s online dictionary defines sodomy as “anal or oral copulation with another person; especially: anal or oral copulation with a member of the same sex.” ² Interestingly, the definition has changed somewhat in the past 200 years. Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines sodomy as simply “a crime against nature”; ³ and sodomite as “one guilty of sodomy.” ⁴ It would seem that some things went without saying back in the early 1800s, thanks to the stereotypical Victorian reticence of speaking about certain topics in polite society.

There are various hermeneutics used to interpret the Bible. The word hermeneutic refers to a method of interpretation. A liberal hermeneutical principle might be to argue that the story of Sodom was a fable told to pass on a value or moral teaching that the ancient Hebrews felt was important, much like Aesop’s fables do, but that it was not an actual event that occurred in history. While I will not argue that every story in the Bible serves a purpose to teach us some lesson, I am a person who holds the Bible in high regard, and I am not comfortable dismissing a story as merely a fable. I believe that the Bible stories were actual events.

I also believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the various authors of the various books to include certain stories for a specific purpose. We don’t know, for example, the details of how Lot went from having his tent pitched toward Sodom (see Genesis 13:12) to actually living within Sodom by the time it was destroyed, because the Bible writers did not deem those details essential. We just know that it happened, because Lot was obviously in a house within the city, and not in a tent, when he brought the angels home (see Genesis 19:3). Each story was included to teach some lesson or lessons.

In order to answer the question, “What was the sin of Sodom,” I intend to use two hermeneutical principles. The first is that I will look at what Moses’s audience and the readers/hearers at the time all the relevant verses were written, would have understood the sin of Sodom to be—as opposed to what modern readers think it is. That is what I will do in this article. The second is that I will compare Scripture with Scripture to see what other verses say about Sodom outside of the Genesis narrative. I will do this in the following post.

First, let us look at the story. Genesis 19 starts with two angels arriving in Sodom, but it is not the beginning of the story. The story actually starts in Genesis 18, where God and two angels show up at Abraham’s house, and Abraham extends hospitality to them and receives the promise of a son the following year. Then the angels head toward Sodom while Abraham intercedes with God over the destruction of the city. This is the backdrop to the story of Genesis 19—a hospitable man who cares about others. I do not believe that it is coincidence that we see a story of gracious hospitality right before the story of Sodom.

When the angels arrive in Sodom, Lot meets them and invites them to his home. They decline, saying they plan to sleep in the city square. But Lot knows the dangers of the town, and insists that they come to his house, so they go.

Let us pick up the story from the Bible:

But before they retired for the night, all the men of Sodom, young and old, came from all over the city and surrounded the house. They shouted to Lot, “Where are the men who came to spend the night with you? Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them!” —Genesis 19:4–5, NLT.

This is not speaking of consensual sex, but of gang rape. All the men of Sodom come to Lot’s house with the intent of gang raping the two strangers who had just arrived in town. Lot argues that such a thing would be wicked, yet he is willing to let them rape his own daughters instead, so it would seem that it is not the rape itself that he sees as so wicked. This is crucial to understanding the purpose of the story. In Lot’s culture, hospitality was supremely important, and the men of Sodom were so anti-foreigners that they were showing the extreme opposite of hospitality (see Genesis 19:9). Context clearly shows us that Lot felt that humiliating a visitor was worse than gang rape, for he never argued that they should not rape anyone, merely that they should not rape his visitors, because he had extended them his hospitality.

Every culture has a hierarchy of sins. In our modern, western, individualist culture, we have made rape a criminal offense, while we view inhospitality as only a minor offense that does not make a person wicked or evil or deserving of punishment. Yet in the ancient near east, and even in many collectivist cultures today, hospitality is an essential virtue, and the lack of it is taken very seriously. Lot, Moses, and the audience to whom Genesis was given, would have all understood clearly that the men of Sodom were committing a grievous offense against the strangers in their midst. That offense was in not helping the strangers within their gates.

One would ask, if hospitality were such an important value for ancient cultures, why were the men of Sodom so opposed to foreigners? And if foreigners were always mistreated, how did Lot end up moving into the city? I do not have a definitive answer, but I have a theory.

If we go back even earlier in the history of Sodom, we read about the story of when four kings banded together and attacked the cities of the plain, one of which was Sodom (see Genesis 14). It is likely that this incident caused them to distrust foreigners. Lot was a foreigner (see Genesis 19:9), but he had been living in or near Sodom when the events of Genesis 14 occurred, and this may be why he was still allowed to stay with them, since he had been living there before that event. This is speculation, to be sure, but it is plausible. In an age where hospitality was so highly regarded, it appears that the men of Sodom were determined to give themselves a reputation for inhospitalitly, so that foreigners would avoid them. And almost nothing was more humiliating to a man in that day than to be treated like a woman, which is what the men of Sodom would have been doing by raping another person.

Rape, regardless of the victim, is not only about sexual pleasure—and possibly never is. “The desire for power and victim humiliation are primary motivations in sexual aggression against women.” ⁹ The same is true for male on male rape. Rape of men by men in prisons tends to be a way of establishing a hierarchy, and anyone who becomes a victim will find it hard to regain his masculinity. ¹⁰ In many cultures even today, a man is considered a homosexual only if he is penetrated; the person who is penetrating him is still considered straight, while the man who is being penetrated is considered gay. He is viewed as degraded, because being penetrated violates societal gender norms that dictate that a man should conquer and a woman should submit. ¹¹ This speaks to the fact that the men of Sodom were likely not gay; only about 5–6% of the population is gay. ¹² A group of gay men would probably have gone and had an orgy instead of looking for a victim to rape.

With this background in mind, we see that this story is about a city full of people who didn’t like foreigners, and they would show their dislike by not only refusing them hospitality, but also by humiliating them in the worst possible way.

One interesting thing is, the story of Sodom was repeated in almost every detail in Judges 19, except that this time a woman was actually given to the crowd of violent men who wanted to rape the male guest, and her subsequent death was used as a rally cry to punish the tribe whose men had perpetrated the crime. If the rape were about sexual pleasure, true gay men would not be satisfied with a woman.

What is even more interesting is that this theme of hospitality being so important was not unique to Abraham’s descendants. There is a story in ancient Greek literature about a poor couple named Baucis and Philemon who welcomed two Greek gods disguised as men, after all the “wicked” people of the land refused them entrance. The gods blessed them, and told them to leave the city, because they were going to destroy it. ¹³ The story is strikingly similar to that of Sodom, but the wickedness of the land’s inhabitants is demonstrated in their lack of hospitality; there is no attempt at gang rape in this story. The story of Sodom appears to be the older story, leading me to assume that the Greeks may have borrowed it from the Hebrews and adapted it for their own purposes. If this is so, they took from the story the elements that were relevant to them—namely, the lack of hospitality and the subsequent destruction of the wicked people—and ignored the other details, such as the gang rape.

So what was the sin of Sodom? The interesting thing is that the Bible leaves us in no doubt as to the answer to that question.

Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door. She was proud and committed detestable sins, so I wiped her out, as you have seen. —Ezekiel 16:49–50, NLT

Some have seen “detestable sins” as a reference to the attempted gang rape (with the assumption that it wasn’t the first time they had done this), but that is reading into the text what we want it to say. “Detestable sins” is translated “abomination” in the King James Version, and abomination usually referred to the idolatrous practices of the heathen that God did not want His people to imitate, as well as any practice that was considered unclean (for example, eating certain animals). It is certain that the people of Sodom and the other cities of the plain were idol worshipers who committed all kinds of detestable acts in the worship of their gods, things that God explicitly forbade Israel from doing in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Thus we can confidently say that the detestable things were likely related to idol worship—a practice that did include homoerotic behavior at times. But to limit the meaning of abomination in Ezekiel 19:50 exclusively to homoerotic behavior is to impose upon the text that which it we want it to say.

Here I have just begun to look at other verses in the Bible that refer to Sodom; we will look at the rest of them in the next article. Please subscribe if you want to be notified when I post the next one.

1. https://www.etymonline.com/word/sodomite ↩︎
2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sodomy ↩︎
3. https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/sodomy ↩︎
4. https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/sodomite ↩︎
5. https://www.etymonline.com/word/sodomite ↩︎
6. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sodomy ↩︎
7. https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/sodomy ↩︎
8. https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/sodomite ↩︎
9. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/sexual-aggression-achieving-power-through-humiliation-handbook ↩︎
10. See https://www.pcar.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdfs/7_understanding_rape_in_prison_low_res.pdf ↩︎
11. https://rule.psych.utoronto.ca/pubs/2015/Tskhay%26Rule(2015_Ch).pdf ↩︎
12. https://abcnews.go.com/US/americans-identify-lgbt-poll/story?id=76097305#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20Gallup%20poll%20released%20Wednesday%2C,of%20United%20States%20adults%20identify%20as%20LGBT. ↩︎
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baucis_and_Philemon ↩︎