Q: What was the sin of Sodom?
A: Ezekiel 16: 48-49. "This is the sin of Sodom; she and her suburbs had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not help or encourage the poor and needy. They were arrogant and this was abominable in God's eyes."
What did you think it was?
13 comments:
Well I figured it was a trick question so I knew what the answer wasn't. Chills up my spine though, because the description of Soddom sounds a lot like where I live.
I thought it was that they were in the habit of raping strangers who came to town...
This is the passage I share with people whenever they attempt to use the story of Soddom as an example against homosexuality.
I point this verse out and state that it reminds me much of where we live and how we live.
http://bible.cc/ezekiel/16-50.htm
Well, which is worse, raping strangers or being arrogant in God's sight?
Perhaps they are not completely different things.
Other translations leave more room for sodomy.
"Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me." NASB
"They were haughty, and did abominable things before me". NRSV
Pretty sure we can infer what the abominations were.
"In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire."
(Jude 1:7)
Consensual gay sex? People sometimes "sodomize" a vanquished foe as a way of humiliating and dominating them, who are actually heterosexuals.
The case against homosexuality based on the Sodom story has always struck me as unusually thin. Do you think the city would have been spared if they had taken Lot up on his offer of two virgin daughters?
Romans, etc., is a more serious matter.
Are you telling me the things mentioned in 48 and 49 are not abominable in the eyes of God?
Taking the Ezekiel passage alone does leave room for doubt about the homosexual activity. But it seems better to take all the texts related to Sodom (from Genesis, Ezekiel, and Jude) and derive a composite picture of what the sin was.
Genesis does not mention consensual gay sex. If one is entitled to assume that the only people who would try to force themselves on an outsider were people who enjoyed consensual gay sex amongst themselves, then one could make an inference that consensal homosexuality was rampant in Sodom, but I don't think we are entitled to make that assumption.
Ezekiel is consistent with homosexuality, in and of itself, being part of the problem, but it clearly implies that other types of problems existed. So, any attempt to say that homosexuality is the one sin that makes God so angry that he zaps people for it (as opposed to all the other deadly sins), collapses on the basis of Ezekiel.
Jude is probably the best passage for the anti-gay case, but are we entitled to identify perversion with homosexuality? The Sodomites may well have been motivated by sadism, and were intending rape. I consider rape and sadism to be sexual perversions in and of themselves, whether directed toward the same sex or the opposite sex. Sadism and rape also fit better with the passages suggesting that the sin of Sodom was related to arrogance.
Hypothesis: The sin of Sodom was the sin of arrogance on the part of the rich and powerful toward the poor and powerless, which expressed itself in sexual terms through acts of sexual domination, even toward sojourners. Such acts could well have been both homosexual and heterosexual, but the defining feature of this perversion of Sodom was domination, not homosexuality.
Can this hypothesis be refuted?
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