Reading Biblical Sexuality in Its Ancient World

When we talk about sexuality in the Bible, one of the most important things we have to remember is this: the Bible was not written yesterday, in English, in America, by people who shared our assumptions about gender, marriage, bodies, love, consent, identity, or sexuality.

Reading the Bible is, in many ways, like entering a foreign country. Some things feel familiar because these texts have shaped our faith for generations. But other things are deeply unfamiliar. The languages are different. The cultures are different. The values are different. The social structures are different. And if we pretend the biblical world thought exactly like we do, we will almost certainly misunderstand what the Bible is saying.

A good example is the Song of Solomon. This beautiful, poetic, and, yes, very spicy little book is a collection of love poetry between two lovers. They describe one another with intense affection and sensual detail, using images from nature, geography, animals, spices, gardens, and architecture. To them, these images were romantic and evocative. To us, some of them sound… let’s just say, less like a Hallmark card and more like someone lost a bet at Bible study.

The man compares his lover’s hair to a flock of goats, her neck to a tower, her breasts to young deer, and her body to a garden of spices. The woman describes her lover in equally poetic terms, praising his appearance with images of gold, ivory, jewels, and cedar. These are not the ways most of us would describe our partners today. I would not recommend opening date night with, “Your hair is like a goat parade.” That is not romance. That is how you end up eating breadsticks alone.

But that is exactly the point. Language changes. Symbols change. What sounds strange to us may have been beautiful to them. Even within our own time, slang, euphemisms, and cultural references shift quickly. Now multiply that distance by thousands of years, multiple languages, ancient cultures, and very different social structures.

The Bible also uses euphemisms for sex and bodies. “To know” someone can mean sexual intimacy. So can phrases like “to lie with,” “to go into,” “to uncover nakedness,” or “to lay at his feet.” Words like “feet,” “flesh,” “hand,” and “nakedness” can sometimes refer to genitalia or sexual vulnerability. So when we read Scripture, we have to slow down. We cannot assume every phrase means what it would mean if someone said it in Dallas in 2026.

And it is not just the language that is different. The entire biblical world’s view of sex, sexuality, gender, and marriage was different from ours. In fact, there is not one single sexual ethic that runs cleanly and consistently from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible contains many voices, many contexts, many assumptions, and many cultural frameworks.

One of the biggest frameworks we have to name honestly is patriarchy.

The biblical world was overwhelmingly patriarchal. Families were often organized around the “house of the father,” with the oldest male serving as the central authority. Women were frequently treated as subordinates to fathers, husbands, and male relatives. Many significant women in Scripture are not even named. We know about Noah’s wife, Lot’s wife, Job’s wife, Samson’s mother, and Jephthah’s daughter, but we are never told their names. That is not accidental. That is culture.

This matters because patriarchy shaped how people thought about sex, marriage, virginity, property, inheritance, honor, and shame. A daughter’s virginity was not treated primarily as a matter of her personal identity or bodily autonomy. It was often tied to her father’s honor and economic interest. A woman’s sexual history mattered deeply in biblical law and custom. A man’s sexual history? Not so much. That double standard is not subtle.

And before we get too comfortable judging the ancient world, we should probably admit that many of those assumptions are still hanging around today wearing a slightly more modern outfit. We still see purity culture placing the burden of sexual morality disproportionately on women. We still see women blamed for men’s behavior. We still see people treating women’s bodies as symbols of family, church, nation, or male honor rather than as belonging fully to themselves.

This also affects how we understand passages about same-sex behavior. The ancient world did not think in terms of sexual orientation the way we do today. They were not asking the same questions we ask about identity, mutuality, covenant, love, orientation, or equality. In many ancient contexts, sex was often understood through categories of status, power, dominance, and submission. The issue was not simply “male and female” as we talk about it today. It was often about who was dominant and who was dominated, who was active and who was passive, who held power and who did not.

That does not mean we ignore the Bible. It means we read it more carefully.

Faithful interpretation does not flatten Scripture into slogans. It does not rip verses out of their ancient worlds and weaponize them against modern people. Faithful interpretation asks better questions. What did this mean in its original context? What assumptions shaped it? Who had power? Who did not? Whose voice is centered? Whose voice is missing? And how does the larger movement of Scripture call us toward love, justice, dignity, liberation, and wholeness?

When we study sexuality in the Bible, we are not betraying Scripture by naming these differences. We are honoring Scripture enough to take it seriously.

Because the goal is not to force the Bible to say what we already believe.

The goal is to listen deeply, interpret honestly, and follow the God whose love is always larger than our fear, our assumptions, and our inherited prejudices.