Leviticus 18:23 describes bestiality, whether practiced by men or women, such as tebel, a name used to describe the confusion of languages in Babel. Tebel often translates as “confusion. ” It makes sense. Bestiality crosses the boundaries created between animals and humans. It’s definitely a “confusion. “
The word is used in Leviticus 20. 12, which deals with punishment for those who sleep with their daughter-in-law. It’s also a “confusion. ” These are the only two uses of the word in Leviticus 18 and 20 sex law.
- It’s not so obvious why having sex with a stepdaughter is tebel.
- Is it to be understood that a man who sleeps with his daughter-in-law is somehow analogous to bestiality?Does this sound more like bestiality than other forms of incest.
- In what way?What makes incest with a stepdaughter a “confusion” and sleep with your mother.
- Aunt or sister and not confusion?Why is discovering a stepdaughter’s nudity confusion.
- When sex between two men is not?Evah (“abomination”? Leviticus 18.
- 22; 20.
- 13).
We can start by noting that the terms used to evaluate different forms of sexual sin may not be exclusive. Is bestiality tebel and homosexual acts? Evah, but at the end of Leviticus 18, a? Evah covers all forms of forbidden sex:? (Leviticus 18:26; see verses 27, 29, 30). Although maternal incest and homosexual acts are not explicitly described as tebel, the word can still be applied.
The sexual laws of Leviticus presuppose an order of creation and an order of marriage. There is an order of creation because God created natural categories and established limits by separating those categories. Animals are animals and humans are men, and they should not form a single Genesis 2, where Adam does not find a mate among the animals, is the background. Similarly, God’s differentiation of human beings between male and female is at the root of the prohibition of homosexual acts. God built Eve in a “sacrifice” procedure of division and reunion; homosexuality implies acts of “discredit”, like floods when they annul the division of land and sea.
The language of the laws of bestiality in chapters 18 and 20 sheds more light. In Leviticus 18:23, is it forbidden for men to lie down?With an animal, and is it forbidden for women to stand in front?picked up with him. ? Is it the priestly tongue (Deuteronomy 10:18). Also, in 20. 16, the woman? (qarab) to an animal, a verb that, in Leviticus, usually has a liturgical connotation (Leviticus 1. 1-3). Climbing a forbidden sexual partner is analogous, if not identical, to sacrilege, a violation of the “holy place”.
These liturgical/sexual analogies suggest the logic of these laws. The categories and differentiations created show the difference between the Creator and the creature, behind which lies the Trinitarian difference between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the ultimate cause of differentiation in the created order. The tebel involved in bestiality is not simply a confusion of natural categories, but the ultimate confusion: worshipping the creature instead of the Creator.
Social and cultural boundaries are not embedded in creation. A father has a biological relationship with his son, but not a biological relationship with his daughter-in-law. If we consider her as a natural being, the daughter-in-law is not outside. She is probably younger than the man, but there is nothing in the Torah that prevents October from marrying May [1]. What leaves her irrelevant is the fact that there is a conjugal bond between her husband, the man’s son, and herself. As an institution, marriage is of God; it is a divine institution. Each specific marriage is also a creation of God: “What God has created does not separate man. ” But this divine act of creating a marriage is mediated by human action. A minister, not God himself, declares the couple “husband and wife. ” The violation of this divine-human boundary is as much a confusion of types and categories as the confusion of a man or a woman sleeping with an animal.
Here again the analogy of sexual and liturgical life is evident. Marriage is a mechanism of creative sacrifice, a separation (? Leaving and joining?) That leads to transformation (Adam became one? Ish [man] when he sees the? Ishshah [man]) and union (? Only meat?). Due to the virtue of? Sacrifice? of marriage, a man and a woman share the same bridge. Did the original sacrifice out of Eden result in? Blankets Adam and Eve, who hid the shame of their nakedness. As husband and wife, they were covered by a blanket. ? Cover nudity? someone other than the person sharing the same sacrificial blanket reverses the sacrificial mechanism of marriage. Discovering nudity shows shame; it is an act of non-sacrifice. Although performed by human beings, wedding ceremonies create new types and categories. God Himself performs the sacrificial act of separation and union that marriage does and creates new categories for those involved. A woman becomes a “daughter-in-law”, while a man becomes a “son-in-law”. And these guys shouldn’t mix.
Confusion? Involved in incest with a stepdaughter is related to the violation of generational boundaries. Generational succession is natural, but these natural boundaries become relevant in Leviticus due to marriage. A man who takes his father’s wife confuses?Child? And husband? And maybe he’ll try to regain his father’s position (see Absalom with David’s concubines). A man who discovers the nudity of his daughter-in-law crosses a generational border in the other direction. He is potentially the father and grandfather of his children. he does not take over the authority of the old man, but the future of the young man; confuses generations when it claims a future that is not theirs; there is a problem in any intergenerational incest, but again, it is not just a question of what do these sexes become?is the social and divine-human institution of marriage.
Does Leviticus intend to “humanize”? Israel, to free it from the bestial structures of paganism and the undifferentiated sexuality of animals. And it is a very relevant humanization for our current sexual theme. We must remember that God considers the two “natural” boundaries inviolable. as certain “cultural” borders. The social of marriage is a construction of God himself.
?
[1] The author’s humorous allusion perhaps to the various popular superstitions about the right month to get married and/or the compatibility between the signs of the zodiac (translator’s note).