A Queer Theological Reading of Leviticus 18:22: “Do Not Lie With A Man As With A Woman”

Why Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are really about banning male incest rather than same sex relationships.

16.12.2025

Editorial team

You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination (Lev. 18:22).

If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them (Lev. 20:13).

Leviticus 18:22 is a short verse around which this article is built. In the Bible it has an almost word for word parallel in Leviticus 20:13: the second text repeats the phrasing of the first, but adds a command prescribing the death penalty.

Both verses occupy a special, almost isolated place in the Old Testament: in other books there are neither direct echoes nor repeated quotations.

The phrase “Do not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination” is traditionally understood as a ban on male same sex intercourse. Because of this, it is often taken as an unambiguous statement about God’s attitude toward such practices, and it is cited as a basis for prohibiting same sex relationships.

In this article we will examine the arguments of contemporary biblical scholarship, including the work of queer theologians. These scholars argue that the text is not about banning same sex relationships outside the family, but about banning incest between men within the same family. This conclusion is supported by a detailed philological analysis of the ancient Hebrew original.

Who Leviticus Is Addressed To

“Leviticus” is the title of one of the books of the Bible. The name can be understood as “a book about the Levites.”

The Levites were one of the tribes of Israel from which the temple ministers came. However, the status of the chief priests did not belong to all Levites, but to the kohanim, the descendants of Aaron: only they had the right to offer sacrifices.

First of all, the book was studied by priests, because it served as a handbook for sacrifices, ritual purity, and the boundaries of what was permitted in worship.

From this one might conclude that the prohibition in Lev. 18:22 does not apply to modern people, because we are not ancient Israelite priests. But that argument is weak, because the book was still meant to be known by the whole people: it set norms for what actions were permitted for Israelites and what were not.

In Christianity today it is commonly believed that after the coming of Jesus Christ, Levitical prescriptions ceased to be binding. Animal sacrifices, food prohibitions (for example, against pork or seafood), and ritual purifications were tied to the ancient temple cult of Israel, and so they are not treated as requirements for literal observance now.

At the same time, the moral commandments voiced in Leviticus, such as the prohibitions of murder and theft, and the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself,” are generally regarded in Christianity as continuing to have force. In Judaism, by contrast, the book of Leviticus continues to be received in full as part of the living Law.

Traditional Interpretation: A Ban On “Sodomy”

Traditional Orthodox commentators read Lev. 18:22 as an unconditional ban on “sodomy” and practices close in meaning. Lopukhin, for example, wrote: “The prohibition of the most disgusting forms of carnal sin, sodomy… is accompanied by an indication that they existed among the Canaanites, for which they will be repaid in justice.”

The Catholic tradition is close to this position. In papal documents the prohibition is treated as belonging to the moral norms of the Law, which remain binding even after Christ.

Within Protestantism there is no single approach. Evaluations are not uniform. Modern apologists, including LGBT Christians, more often argue not about whether a prohibition is present in the text, but about its status: whether it belongs to the ritual sphere, which Christians consider to have been surpassed after Christ, or to the moral sphere.

There are several modern queer theological interpretations, but here there will be three.

First is the approach of Professor Daniel A. Helminiak. He reads the verse primarily in its historical religious context and connects it with Israel’s separation from “foreign” cultic practices and with the language of ritual purity.

Next is an overview of how The Expositor’s Bible Commentary discusses the grammar of the formula and a possible narrow sense of the prohibition as incest, a theory associated with Rabbi Jacob Milgrom.

And finally, the most detailed philological analysis, by the philologist K. Renato Lings: he argues that Leviticus 18:22 is about a ban on male incest rather than a universal ban on same sex relationships.

Helminiak’s Reading: The Ban As Part Of Israel’s Separation From Neighboring Cults

Professor Daniel A. Helminiak has drawn attention to the fact that the prohibition is addressed to men and does not mention female same sex relationships. Helminiak then connects the meaning of the command to its historical and religious context. What follows is a summary of his arguments.

In Leviticus, male participation in same sex acts functions as a marker of becoming like “pagans” and identifying oneself with non Jews. The issue, therefore, is not the condemnation of sex as such, but religious apostasy: breaking the covenant and taking part in “foreign” cultic practices.

This prohibition appears in the section often called the Holiness Code. Its purpose is to keep Israel “holy,” that is, set apart from neighboring peoples. The frame is established at the start of chapter 18 with the call not to act as they do in Egypt and Canaan, and not to follow their statutes. Then a series of practices associated with Canaanite religion is listed, and they are called “abominations”: fertility motifs, sex during menstruation, and the sacrifice of children to Molech. Against this background, the ban on male same sex acts appears as part of the same series.

Helminiak explains his logic by an analogy. A contemporary believer might be outraged by a “satanic ritual” that includes sex, not because of the sex itself, but because of worship directed to the “wrong” object. In the same way, he argues, Leviticus condemns religious unfaithfulness rather than treating a sexual practice as an ethical category in itself.

From this he draws his thesis: today, in most contexts, sex is not part of a religious ritual, so the reasons for the Levitical prohibition do not match the frame of the modern discussion about homosexuality. Therefore, quoting Leviticus as a direct answer to the question “Is it ethical or unethical?” shifts the topic. The text is addressing the boundaries of the community and fidelity to the covenant, not constructing a universal moral theory of sexual acts.

Helminiak then turns to the word “abomination.” In translation it sounds like a moral verdict, but in the ancient Hebrew context it is tied primarily to the ritual system of the clean and the unclean. In Lev. 20:25–26, what is called “abominable” stands alongside prohibitions against “defiling” oneself with unclean animals and birds. In this logic, “abomination” functions as a kind of “uncleanness” and as a violation of rules of ritual purity that maintain the boundary between “insiders” and “outsiders.” The same principle can be seen in food prohibitions, bans on “mixing” (seeds, fibers), and temporary states of impurity, such as menstruation, emission of semen, contact with death, and childbirth.

The internal logic of these rules is hard to reconstruct, and a “sanitary” explanation works poorly here: it does not clarify, for example, the prohibitions against mixing fabrics, and it does not fit well with the descriptions of skin diseases. In Lev. 13:13 purity is linked not to contagion, but to the wholeness of a condition: a person who is completely afflicted is declared clean.

For that reason, Helminiak sees these categories not as ethics, but as a ritual system. Modern cultures also rely on notions of what is “dirty” and “indecent,” but more often these are social taboos and learned reactions of disgust. Yet disgust is not the same as moral wrongness: what seems “dirty” may simply be unfamiliar, and over time such prohibitions begin to look “eternal” and even “divine,” even though they arose as the norms of a particular setting.

From this angle, when Leviticus calls male same sex acts an “abomination,” it places them in the sphere of ritual impurity and the “foreign,” rather than claiming that they are “evil by nature.” In the ancient Hebrew text the word translated as “abomination” is tō’evâ, and it can be understood as “impurity,” “defilement,” or “taboo,” as distinct from the word zimmâ, which denotes evil as such (guilt, injustice). So in Lev. 18:22 the act is marked as a taboo and a ritual violation, not as an ethical sin.

In support of this, Helminiak appeals to the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Scriptures for Greek speaking Jews. In Lev. 18:22 tō’evâ is rendered with the Greek word βδέλυγμα (bdélugma), a term from the same sphere of ritual impurity. The translators could have chosen ἀνομία (anomia, “lawlessness”), which in the Bible is indeed used where the subject is violence or obvious injustice. Helminiak treats the choice of βδέλυγμα as an additional argument for a ritual reading. From this he draws a conclusion about how the prohibition could have been understood in pre Christian Judaism: not as “this is evil by nature,” but as “this is impure and associated with foreign cults.”

In the end Helminiak concludes that the overall set of arguments shows that Lev. 18:22 forbids male same sex acts because of their cultural and religious consequences in a specific historical setting, without formulating a universal sexual ethic. Therefore it is incorrect to use this verse as a direct argument in a modern moral discussion about same sex intercourse: the questions and contexts are not comparable.

But even the historical plausibility of this interpretation does not remove other questions that the LGBT community directs to Lev. 18:22.

What The Expositor’s Bible Commentary Says

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (EBC) is a major English language multi volume commentary series on the books of the Old and New Testaments.

The authors of EBC note that in Leviticus the word “abomination” appears six times. Four of these uses are concentrated at the end of chapter 18, where the discussion concerns practices described as “Canaanite” and as “defiling the land.” Against this background, EBC considers it likely that male same sex acts were perceived as an element of a foreign cult, or as a concession to the forbidden customs of neighboring peoples.

The commentary adds that in the ancient Near East homosexuality was rarely prohibited directly by law, except in situations involving violence. The Middle Assyrian Laws are named as an exception. In other regions, according to the available data, the practice could be tolerated, and in some cases it even acquired a cultic status.

EBC also discusses separately the position of Jacob Milgrom, a Jewish biblical scholar and rabbi, one of the specialists on Leviticus and the cultic laws of the Torah. Milgrom draws attention to the grammar: the word “man” stands in the singular, while the expression connected with “a woman’s beds” is in the plural.

He also emphasizes that the formula usually translated as “to lie as with a woman” occurs only here, whereas the construction “to lie as with…” has parallels and appears in the Hebrew Bible five times. In four cases this construction is connected with “bed” as a place, and by itself does not necessarily denote a sexual act.

On this basis, Milgrom proposes understanding the disputed phrase as a reference to a “bed” or “bedding,” that is, to a situation and context, rather than as a direct description of an act. This reading leads to Milgrom’s narrower conclusion: in this passage the text is prohibiting specifically homosexual incest among Israelites in the land of Israel.

K. Renato Lings’s Arguments: Reading The Ancient Hebrew Text And The Problems Of Translation

K. Renato Lings is a contemporary theologian, translator, and interpreter of biblical texts. In his research he consistently argues that Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 are not about banning all same sex relationships, but about banning incestuous relations. Below is a presentation of his approach.

Lings begins from the claim that the vocabulary of these verses is so archaic that, despite their apparent simplicity, they almost resist any single unambiguous translation. For that reason he offers an extended philological analysis.

A reader may easily assume that the Hebrew original of Lev. 18:22 uses the ordinary word for “man,” ’īš. However, the text uses the rarer noun zākhār, whose basic sense is “male” or “male one.” This word is used both for humans and for animals. For example, in the creation account (Gen. 1:27) it appears next to its female counterpart neqēvâ (“female” or “female one”).

For Lings, the choice of zākhār instead of ’īš is not incidental: it changes the shade of meaning in the statement and therefore may affect how the verse should be interpreted.

In the Masoretic tradition, the base text of Lev. 18:22 contains two short phrases:

w’eth-zākhār lō’ tiškav miškevē ’iššâ

Lings breaks the expression down into parts: w- is a particle functioning much like “and”; ’eth-zākhār is the combination of the marker ’eth with the noun zākhār (“male” or “male one”); lō’ is the negation “not”; tiškav means “you shall lie” or “you will lie.” With a strictly sequential, literal rendering, the beginning comes out roughly as: “And with a male you shall not lie.” Up to this point the syntax does indeed look relatively straightforward.

What Exactly Does “As With A Woman” Mean?

The greatest exegetical difficulty is concentrated in the second half of the verse, in the expression miškevē ‘iššâ. It can be rendered as “the lyings of a woman,” “a woman’s bed,” or “a woman’s lying down.”

In traditional translations this construction is most often expanded into a phrase that is clear to a modern reader: “do not lie (with a man) as with a woman.” However, this is already an interpretation: the Hebrew wording is shorter and syntactically less transparent.

A strict grammatical analysis highlights two important points.

First, there is no particle meaning “as” in the original. Between tiškav (“you shall lie”) and miškevē there is no expected prefix kě- (“as,” “like”). That means miškevē does not look like a comparison, but like a direct complement to the verb “you shall lie.” Read literally, this creates an oddity, as if “lyings” become an object of the action, something one is told not to “lie.”

Second, the second half does not repeat “with.” The particle ’eth appears at the beginning, with the word “male,” but it is not repeated before “woman.” Because of this, translations often insert “with” a second time and, together with it, add “as,” filling the semantic “gaps” so that the phrase sounds normal in a modern language.

It is also important that miškevē is a noun formed from the verb šākhav (“to lie down,” “to have sexual intercourse”). Together with ‘iššâ it stands in the construct state: the result is not “as with a woman” and not “with a woman,” but a construction of the type “a woman’s lying” or “female beds.”

Therefore, the familiar translation “do not lie with a man as with a woman” does not reflect the structure of the Hebrew phrase very well. Read literally, it comes out as: “and with a male you shall not lie the lyings of a woman”; with a slight variation, even more unusual: “and with a male you shall not lie female beds.”

The expression miškevē ‘iššâ (“a woman’s beds” or “the beds of a woman”) has no close parallels elsewhere in the biblical texts, and therefore calls for cautious interpretation.

The difficulty is increased by the form miškevē. It rarely appears in the plural; far more often the singular miškav (“bed”) is used. The plural miškevē literally gives something like “acts of lying” or “beds.” At the same time, the word is grammatically bound to ‘iššâ through the ending -ē (a genitival linkage), and the whole construction looks unusual.

Interpreters therefore try to look for clues in other parts of Scripture. In Num. 31:18 we find the expression miškav zākhār, referring to women who had not known “the lying of a male.” Against the background of strict norms about sexuality outside marriage, this can be read as a reference to girls who had not yet entered into marital relations. In that case, the formula is connected with the theme of legitimate sexuality within marriage.

The only example of the plural miškevē outside Leviticus is Gen. 49:4. There Jacob rebukes Reuben for his relationship with Bilhah (Gen. 35:22). In the nearby wording two different terms stand side by side: the physical “bed” or “couch” is named with yātsūa’ (singular), while “beds” is expressed precisely with miškevē (plural). This may suggest that the forms are not fully interchangeable. One possible reading is that yātsūa’ names the place of the act, while the plural miškevē highlights the problematic status of the relationship. However, most translations simplify the construction, treating miškevē as an ordinary equivalent of miškav and thereby erasing the philological difference.

Reuben was the eldest son of Jacob and Leah, one of Jacob’s twelve sons. Bilhah (also rendered as Balla/Valle in some traditions) was his father’s maidservant. In modern everyday terms, a relationship between them would not be considered incest. But by ancient norms it fell into the same category as incest taboos—as “sexual relations with one’s father’s woman.” In the Bible’s ancient Israelite logic, this is phrased as though Reuben “uncovered his father’s nakedness” through his father’s woman.

From this Lings draws his conclusion: many translations of Lev. 18:22 and Gen. 49:4 avoid the rare and difficult plural miškevē and in practice do not follow the principle of lectio difficilior (“the more difficult reading is preferable”). Yet the meaning may be hidden precisely in that difficulty.

Lings’s Hypothesis About A Ban On Same Sex Incest

The only non Levitical occurrence of miškevē appears in the context of Reuben’s forbidden relationship, which is treated as incest: his sexual involvement with Bilhah. This episode aligns with the corresponding prohibitions in Leviticus.

Given that the whole of Leviticus 18 places strong emphasis on bans within the kinship group, the word ’iššâ in this chapter can, as a preliminary working sense, be understood as “a woman from the family.” Leviticus 18 lists various forbidden sexual relations, including marriage to two sisters, sex during menstruation, adultery, and bestiality.

To understand miškevē ’iššâ, one must also consider the composition of the chapter. The main section (18:6–17) describes incest through the formula lěgalōth ‘erwâ (“to uncover nakedness”) and introduces a general prohibition of sexual relations with close kin (18:6). Miškevē ’iššâ stands next to this block, so a connection to the theme of incest cannot be ruled out.

An additional key comes from Leviticus 20. This chapter largely parallels Leviticus 18, but it is organized differently: each violation is paired with a punishment, and the sequence of topics changes sharply. The prohibition connected with giving one’s “seed” to Molech, which in 18:21 looks like a separate episode, becomes a leading theme in Leviticus 20 (20:2–5). This regrouping forces the reader to look at the same prohibitions from a different angle, and that shift may also clarify the place and meaning of miškevē ’iššâ.

A Significant Detail Is That The Two Verses Immediately Before 20:13, Namely 20:11–12, Are Explicitly About Incest And Assign The Death Penalty For Incestuous Acts. In 20:13, the same punishment is assigned to the men involved in miškevē ‘iššâ. Then, after a short block of sanctions for other violations, the theme of incest returns in 20:17 and 20:19–21.

Against this background, a cautious conclusion suggests itself: one cannot speak with complete certainty, but the composition of Leviticus 20 supports the hypothesis that miškevē ‘iššâ is connected with the language the book uses to describe incestuous relationships.

If we accept this frame, then Leviticus 18:22 can be read as a clarification that the general ban on incest applies “in all directions.” By the time the reader reaches 18:22, most combinations have already been listed and forbidden, and miškevē ‘iššâ can function as a summary: relations with a close male relative are just as forbidden as the incestuous relations with female relatives listed earlier.

This reading is helped by the plural form miškevē. It can be taken as pointing back to the entire set of “female” relations described in Leviticus 18. In that case, specific sexual acts move into the background, and the chapter is read as a list of “wrong kinds of relationships” that Israelites should avoid. The same logic can also include bestiality as the choice of a “wrong partner,” and the prohibition of Molech as the choice of a “wrong addressee” or a wrong procedure in the offering of “seed.”

If this interpretation is correct, it can be partly compared with norms from other legal traditions of the ancient Near East. In particular, § 189 of the Hittite laws provides punishment for forced sex by a man with his mother, his daughter, or his son.

Summary Of Lings’s Argument And Its Limits

If we accept that miškevē ‘iššâ is connected with incest, a practical question arises: can this construction be rendered in clear modern language without destroying its meaning? Two working options are proposed:

(a) “You must not lie with close relatives, whether male or female.”

(b) “With a male relative you must not enter into sexual relations that are forbidden with female relatives.”

After that, one more problem remains, which traditional interpretations have largely passed over.

The usual translation “as with a woman” sounds neutral and implies that “lying with a woman” is generally permitted. But this fits poorly with the context of Leviticus 18, where nearby we find prohibitions of heterosexual incest and other sexual offenses committed precisely with women. In chapters 18 and 20 the mention of a woman almost always appears inside a prohibitive formula. The plural miškevē may point not to one “model” of behavior, but to a set of unlawful configurations, that is, to different forms of heterosexual incest listed above. In other words, the standard “as with a woman” does not match the overall tone of warning and prohibition that sets the rhythm of both chapters.

Leviticus 18:22 ends with the words tō’evā hī’, “it is an abomination.” Sometimes it is claimed that because the word “abomination” is used, male same sex relations are judged here more harshly than other offenses. However, the text itself gives little basis for such a grading.

Chapter 18 as a whole draws a boundary of purity around the family circle, in order to exclude incest and other degrading and destructive acts, and tō’evâ in 18:22 simply marks the deed among other sharp labels. In 18:17 we find zimmâ (“depravity,” “lewdness”), and in 18:23, tēvel (“reprehensible mixing,” “confusion”). Moreover, in 18:26 all the prohibitions of the chapter are summed up with the plural tō’evōth (“abominations”), and in the concluding verses (18:26–27, 29–30) this vocabulary functions as a general conclusion to the entire list.

Therefore tō’evâ here is a broad and recurring category by which the lawgiver labels the unlawful character of the whole set of actions in Leviticus 18. For that reason there is no basis for assigning this word a special “degree of disgust” for one item more than for the others: it is a marker of behavior that leads the men and women of Israel away from the path set by YHWH.

***

If one accepts Lings’s arguments, then Lev. 18:22 was likely inserted with a specific purpose. If the overall aim of Leviticus 18 and 20 is to prohibit incestuous heterosexual practices, then Lev. 18:22 may have been added so that the list of prohibitions would also include homosexual incest. This reading returns the verse to its biblical context and makes it a coherent element within a series of accusatory formulas against transgressive sexual practices. In paraphrase, the meaning would then look like this: incest is forbidden with any close relative, regardless of sex.

The research of Lings, Helminiak, and others gives the LGBT community grounds not to treat homophobic interpretations of Lev. 18:22 as self evident. At the same time, the Bible contains other passages that are often read as prohibiting same sex relationships, for example in the New Testament. Their analysis will appear in separate articles.

🙏 This piece is part of the article series “Queer Theology of the Old Testament”:

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References and Sources

Лопухин А. П. Толковая библия. [Lopukhin, A. P. - The Explanatory Bible.]
Longman Temper III, Garland David E. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: 1 Genesis–Leviticus. 2008.
Lings K. Renato. The «Lyings» of a Woman: Male-Male Incest in Leviticus 18.22?. 2009.
Daniel A. Helminiak. What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality. 1994.

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