There shall be no prostitute amongst the daughters of Israel, nor any Sodomite amongst the sons of Israel.
This law bans any Israelite man or woman from serving as a shrine prostitute. The nations nearby treated that role as worship, so the command raises a sharp question: what happens when people give sin a religious name?
The Hebrew word here is not the ordinary word for a prostitute. It comes from the root for holiness, and it has both a feminine and a masculine form. That rules out any innocent reading of it as "a holy woman."
Far more probable is the ordinary view, which supposes a "consecration" to the corrupt Astarte, or Venus, of early and later idolatry. One writer suggested instead that the word means a holy woman or seer, but he does not try to explain the masculine form, which occurs in Deuteronomy 23:17; 1 Kings 14:24; 1 Kings 15:12; 1 Kings 22:46; 2 Kings 23:7; Job 36:14. Can anyone claim that holy men, or seers, are meant here? If the masculine form plainly means a class of men of extreme moral corruption, then the argument about the feminine form falls to the ground. They are forms of the same word, and the idea of holiness, or consecration, runs equally through both. Terrible to say, prostitution was an almost universal element of heathen sanctity!
Among the nations of Canaan this was not a private vice. It was part of their worship, and that is what made it intolerable in Israel.
Women in Israel were forbidden to be prostitutes, and men were also forbidden to practise sodomy or prostitution (v.17). Such things were practised in the religious rituals of the nations God was judging in Canaan, for people like to justify their evil practices by making them appear religious. But this made the practice more detestable to God, for it is attaching His name to evil.
Why would anyone call such a thing worship? One writer answers that the same impulse is at work in every one of us.
Look inside an idol's temple. See the almost unbelievable horrors pictured there — human corruption in its lowest forms. You say, how could a people think that was religious worship? Dear friends, it is just what all men do. They turn away from God as He is revealed to us in Christ, they make a god of their own imagination, they give free rein to the desires of their own hearts. That is why there is so much corruption in the name of religion.
Just before this command comes the law that frees the runaway slave. One commentator ties the two laws together and turns the "consecrated" title back on the reader.
The sanctuary must first be the place of freedom, so that it may be the place of holiness. This freedom must be found with God to be real and sanctifying, for the heart is brought to Him. So the freeing of the slave comes in its right place here. It connects with what follows, which for us has much fuller meaning: there is to be no prostitution among the people of God. Here the prostitute is called kedeshah, "consecrated." That name stands in plain, deliberate opposition to Israel's sanctification. The nations around Israel consecrated themselves in this detestable way to the service of their gods. May we not also easily cover with a fine-sounding name what is really only the heart straying from God? Note here also, though it is simple, that money earned by such prostitution is only detestable to Him. We might use it to justify the sin to ourselves, or to make it up to the Lord.
The verse is not an isolated rule. It sits inside a chapter that keeps asking who belongs to God's assembly and what that assembly must look like.
In Deuteronomy 23, relation to the congregation of Jehovah is guarded, making a difference, and the decency even of the camp is maintained; the runaway slave is shielded from oppression; prostitution and its gain are rejected, and interest too from a brother; vows are established; kindness is required as to vineyard or field, but selfishness is forbidden.
Israel did not keep this command. In time the evil settled next door to the temple itself.
It is specially noted that "he brought out the Asherah from the house of the LORD, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people" (2 Kings 23:6). The Asherah appears to have been an image of Astarte. Imagine such a horror set up in the house of the LORD! He once said that His eyes and His heart would be there always (2 Chronicles 7:16). Next to the temple were the houses of the male cult prostitutes! Horror upon horror! How low Israel had fallen, that such behaviour should appear in the most sacred spot on earth!
- Name. The word used here means "consecrated" — the nations gave their vilest practice their holiest title, and God refuses to let that title stand.
- Cover. Calling sin worship never makes it better. Attaching God's name to evil makes it worse, because people invent a god who approves of what they already want.
- Freedom. God's dwelling place must first be a place of freedom before it can be a place of holiness — the freed slave and the banned prostitute belong to one lesson.
- Money. Gain earned this way cannot be offered back to God as compensation; He counts the profit as detestable as the act.
- Cleansing. Israel let this evil settle beside the temple itself. It took a king who burned the idol and ground it to dust to clear it out.
Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot, or the price of a dog, into the house of Jehovah thy God for any vow; for even both these are an abomination to Jehovah thy God.
This law stops two kinds of money at the door of God's house. No one may bring a prostitute's fee, or "the wages of a dog," to Him — not even to pay a vow. So does God accept a gift just because someone offers it to Him? Or does He also weigh where it came from?
This is not a matter of taste. One writer calls such a gift an insult, and points to a modern case.
Any gains a woman made through prostitution she must not dare to bring as an offering to God (v.18). It would be a gross insult. The same was true as to the price of a dog. Dogs, as unclean animals, are typical of Gentiles in an unclean state of unbelief. Whatever is linked with uncleanness offends God. Not long ago the owner of a dog racing track reportedly gave one million dollars to a so-called television evangelist. Anyone who does the Lord's work should flatly refuse money made by such gambling, for God cannot accept it.
The word is not kept for gross crimes alone. It also covers what is unfit to bring into God's service — and it can spread to the worship itself.
In the Old Testament the word 'abomination' covers any iniquity as a holy God sees it. It also marks what was unfit to bring into the service of God: an animal with a blemish offered as a sacrifice, the price of a dog put into the treasury, and so on. Deut. 17:1; Deut. 23:18. The service of God itself became an abomination to Him when it sank into mere outward form, or went together with iniquity. Isa. 1:13; Prov. 28:9.
The dog is not picked at random. Scripture uses the animal in one steady way, and the New Testament keeps it.
Scripture keeps calling the dog an unclean and degraded animal, so it compares the unclean Gentiles, or heathen, to dogs. Ps. 22:16; Ps. 59:6, 14. The law forbade putting the price of a dog into the Lord's treasury; it was an abomination. Deut. 23:18… The most offensive name you could give a man was "dead dog." They were, and are, the scavengers of Eastern cities. People throw all their rubbish into the streets and the dogs eat it… In the New Testament it is the same: "outside are the dogs," "look out for the dogs" — a picture of those cut off and of the unclean.
The words "for any vow" matter. A vow was voluntary. But once a person made a vow, God held him to it, and poverty was no way out.
Poverty was never an excuse to block God's claim, or to shelter the man who made the vow from keeping it. No one had to make a vow: "If you refrain from vowing, you will not be guilty of sin" (Deut. 23:22). But once a vow was made, the Lord would require it. No man could set aside an agreement made with God, by order or by whim.
So a sincere promise does not clean the money. God's house has its own law.
God will not accept anything unholy, even from sanctified priests… There is no use offering God what is unclean. He will not accept it. The law of His house is HOLY. Ezek. 43:12.
You can keep this law and still be wrong. The men who paid for Jesus would not put that money into the temple.
The Jewish rulers had bought the blood of Jesus, yet they admit the money they paid is so defiled that they will not use it for the temple. They treat the presence of the house as more awesome than the presence of Him who dwelt in it.
The same principle reaches into Christian work. One writer praises workers who went out for God's name and took nothing from the world.
"For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles." This is what especially endeared these workers to the apostle. They kept clear of profiting from the world's resources. They might be in need, but they held on to the heavenly dignity of the gospel… What degrades the gospel more than letting its ministers or the church beg from the world? What denies faith in the Lord's care for His work so openly?
- Source. God weighs where a gift came from, not only that someone gave it. A prostitute's fee and the wages of a dog stop at the door.
- Standard. "Abomination" covers whatever is unfit for God's service. Such money ranks with a blemished sacrifice.
- Symbol. The dog stands throughout Scripture for what is unclean and shut out, and the New Testament keeps the same picture.
- Self-deception. A vow does not clean tainted money. The men who refused the price of Christ's blood kept the rule and still missed God.
- Service. The rule still stands in Christian work. Those who go out for His name take nothing from the world.