A RATIONALIST READING OF LEVITICUS 18:22

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A Rationalist Reading of Leviticus 18:22

To'eva, sexual order, the Talmud, and Sodom

Spoken transcript prepared for Alle

Estimated spoken length: approximately 25 minutes at a measured 125 to 135 words per minute

Source notes at the end are not part of the spoken transcript.

(Opening)

Hi, Alle. I want to take up a difficult question directly: from a rationalist Jewish perspective, why would God prohibit a man from having intercourse with another man? The question is not answered by saying only, “Because the verse says so.” The verse is the legal starting point. It is not yet an explanation.

There is a second distinction we need at the outset. The biblical and rabbinic sources are discussing acts and legal categories. They do not use the modern concept of sexual orientation as a personal identity. The capital-liable act discussed here is the intercourse defined by the Talmud and classical halakha; it is not male friendship or every form of affection. That does not mean a modern listener's experience of attraction, love, or commitment is unreal. It means we should not pretend the classical texts directly answer every modern question about identity or relationships. We have to say what their texts actually address.

I also want to keep the language exact. A prohibition of an act is not a license to demean or mistreat a person. The Tora's court penalties belong to a narrow legal system with stringent rules of evidence and jurisdiction. No private person has authority to punish anyone. My purpose here is to understand the reasoning in the sources, not to turn a legal text into a weapon.

The method will be rationalist in a specific sense: we will ask what purposes the classical sources attribute to the law, test how well those reasons explain the text, and admit where the sources do not give us an answer. We will look at the word *to'eva*, the Talmud, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Ramban, the Rambam, and the Sefer HaHinukh. We will compare the law with bestiality and then ask what Sodom and Gomorrah do, and do not, prove.

[Part One: the Text in its Setting]

Leviticus 18 does not begin with this verse. It opens by telling Israel not to copy the practices of Egypt or Canaan, but to follow God's laws and judgments. It says that the person who follows them will live by them. The chapter then lists prohibited sexual relationships. Verse 22 says, in the traditional Jewish reading, that a man must not lie with a male in the manner of intercourse with a woman. The verse calls the act a *to'eva*. The next verse prohibits a man or woman from having intercourse with an animal; it calls that conduct *tevel*, a different Hebrew word often translated “perversion” or “confusion.”

The chapter then broadens its frame. It says these practices defile the land and warns that the land will expel a people that adopts them. So the passage is not written as a private contract between two individuals. It belongs to a covenantal account of sexuality, holiness, social order, and the continued life of a people. That is already a clue to the Tora's assumptions: consent and privacy do not, by themselves, define the whole of sexual morality.

Leviticus 20 restates the male-male prohibition in the language of a penalty: a man who lies with a male as with a woman has done a *to'eva*, and the two are to be put to death. Bestiality appears nearby, but in its own legal provision and with different wording. That distinction matters. The Tora places the acts in a related discussion; it does not say they are identical in every respect.

[Part Two: What Does toeva Mean?]

English translations often use “abomination.” That is a forceful word. It can make a listener think that the Hebrew term itself explains exactly why an act is forbidden, or that every act called a *to'eva* has the same rationale and severity. Neither conclusion follows.

The word marks something as abhorrent or rejected within a particular moral, ritual, or social order. Its force depends on the passage around it. In Leviticus 18:22, the act is called a *to'eva* before God. In Leviticus 20:13, the term appears again in a law that names a court penalty. But elsewhere the same Hebrew word is used for things that are not one single kind of offense. Deuteronomy 14:3 uses it in a dietary rule: “You shall not eat anything abhorrent.” Deuteronomy 25:16 calls dishonest weights and measures an abomination to God. Genesis 43:32 says that eating together with Hebrews was a *to'eva* to the Egyptians. There the word describes an Egyptian social taboo; it is not saying that sharing a meal with a Hebrew is inherently immoral.

Those examples show why “abomination” cannot do all the reasoning for us. The term is a serious negative classification, but it is not a one-word theory of the law. We still have to ask what feature of this particular act the Tora rejects.

The Talmud gives a memorable interpretation in Nedarim 51a. At a wedding, Bar Kappara asks Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi what *to'eva* means in the verse. After making the Rabbi dance, he answers with a wordplay: *to'eva* means *to'eh ata ba*—roughly, “you go astray in this act,” or “you are going astray through it.” This is a rabbinic derash, a homiletic interpretation based on sound and spelling. It is not a scientific etymology or a dictionary definition.

Its value is that it frames the act as a departure from the sexual order the verse assumes. The Talmud is not claiming that the Hebrew word literally originated from that phrase.

That distinction is especially important in a rationalist discussion. A wordplay can express an interpretation; it cannot, by itself, prove that interpretation is true. The argument has to be made from the wider Tora and from the commentators' reasoning.

[Part Three: What the Classical Sources Say]

Rashi's comment on Leviticus 20:13 is largely legal and descriptive. On the phrase “the lyings of a woman,” he explains the kind of physical act meant by the verse. Rashi does not use that comment to present a long philosophical reason for the prohibition.

That silence should not be filled in with an invented quotation. Rashi clarifies the act; other sources take up the rationale.

Ibn Ezra gives a compact account of the verse. He says that the male was created to act and the female to be acted upon, and that the verse warns against overturning God's word. This is a medieval argument from bodily function and created order. It is concise, but it carries an assumption: that sexual conduct should follow the male-female structure that Ibn Ezra regards as the designed form of intercourse. That is his interpretive framework. It is not a modern scientific account of sexual orientation, and we should not present it as one.

Ramban gives a more explicitly teleological argument. He says the reason for the prohibition of intercourse between males, as well as intercourse between a human and an animal, is evident: those acts do not preserve the human species because they do not produce offspring. In Ramban's account, the law protects the continuation of human life through generation. This is not a claim that the people involved are incapable of love. It is an argument about the purpose of the sexual act in the Tora's reproductive framework.

The Sefer HaHinukh, a medieval work that explains the commandments and their roots, develops a related idea. Its discussion of this commandment connects it to God's desire that the world be inhabited and settled. It describes male-male intercourse as wasting seed and contrasts it with the reproductive and marital purposes assigned to intercourse. Again, the logic is not that private desire is irrelevant in every respect. The logic is that desire is governed by a purpose beyond immediate pleasure: procreation, the continuity of human society, and sexual responsibility within marriage.

The Rambam provides a different but related kind of rationalist explanation in the Guide for the Perplexed, Part 3, chapter 49. His discussion treats the laws of forbidden intercourse as a system intended to restrain sexual indulgence and to limit intercourse. He places the verse about male-male intercourse beside the prohibition of intercourse with animals and says that the law rejects sexual acts pursued solely for pleasure outside the ordinary reproductive form. The older Friedlander translation uses the word “pederasty” here. That is a dated translation choice; it should not be used to narrow the verse to abuse of boys. The Rambam's legal code treats the relevant prohibition as male-male intercourse generally.

The Rambam's view is openly ascetic. He does not describe sex as an unlimited personal good so long as both people agree. He regards sexual appetite as something that must be disciplined because it can dominate the intellect, weaken self-command, and disrupt family life. In this framework, the fact that an act is consensual or emotionally meaningful does not automatically make it lawful. Law asks what role the act plays in the created and social order.

We should be equally clear about the limits of these explanations. Leviticus itself does not say, “This is prohibited because it cannot produce a child.” The reproductive rationale is supplied by medieval commentators. And reproduction by itself cannot explain every permitted or prohibited sexual circumstance.

Jewish law permits marital intimacy when conception is not expected, and the Sefer HaHinukh itself connects intercourse with marital obligations, not only conception. Rambam's broader framework adds restraint and family order, but his account reflects a medieval, strongly ascetic view of sexuality.

So the most careful statement is not that one commentator has proven the entire case. It is that several classical rationalists see the prohibition as part of an objective sexual ethic: sex is not governed only by private desire, but by procreation, male-female complementarity, family structure, restraint, and the settlement of the world. The sources differ in emphasis, and none of these reasons should be passed off as an explicit sentence in Leviticus.

[Part Four: the Talmud and the Penalties]

Now the legal classification. Leviticus 20:13 names death as the penalty. The Mishnah in Sanhedrin 7:4 places intercourse with a male among the offenses assigned stoning.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin 54a analyzes the wording and treats both the active and passive participants as liable when the act is voluntary and the legal conditions are met. The Rambam codifies that ruling in the Laws of Forbidden Intercourse, chapter 1.

That is the formal Tora-court penalty. It is not the way a community or an individual may respond today. A capital case in classical halakha requires a functioning court with jurisdiction, two valid eyewitnesses, a warning immediately before the act, and proof that the person understood the warning and deliberately proceeded. The Mishnah's capital procedure requires exact examination of witnesses about when and where the act occurred.

A confession or rumor is not a substitute for the required testimony. In fact, the Mishnah in Makkot records a rabbinic dispute in which Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon say that if they had sat on a Sanhedrin, no one would ever have been executed, because they would have found grounds to acquit. Their colleague Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel objects that this would encourage murder. The discussion shows that the Rabbis took the danger of wrongful execution seriously even while preserving the law's stated penalties.

The Tora also gives a second category of consequence. Leviticus 18:29 says that those who do any of the listed abominations are cut off from among their people. The Mishnah in Keritot 1:1 explicitly includes intercourse with a male among the transgressions subject to *karet*. In the rabbinic legal scheme, *karet* is a divine sanction, not a sentence that a human judge imposes. It applies to deliberate transgression even where the strict court conditions for a capital conviction are absent. So it is imprecise to say that *karet* is merely “the punishment for doing it privately.” Privacy may mean the court cannot convict; *karet* is the separate theological liability attached to the act.

The remaining question is why the Tora specifies stoning rather than one of the other court penalties. The sources we have named establish the sentence and classify it through the Oral Law. In the Guide, Part 3, chapter 41, Rambam gives a general rationale for assigning court-death penalties to some sexual offenses: he says these are acts that are accessible, frequent, disgraceful, and tempting, and that severe penalties can deter conduct done secretly. That is a broad theory of penal severity, not a specific explanation for why this offense receives stoning rather than another execution method. We should not pretend that a commentator has answered the narrower question if he has not.

[Part Five: the Comparison with Bestiality]

The comparison with bestiality is close enough to be illuminating, but it needs limits. Leviticus 18:22 calls male-male intercourse a *to'eva*. The next verse calls intercourse with an animal *tevel*. The two acts are adjacent in the list, and both are forbidden.

Ramban explicitly groups them when he offers the non-procreative explanation. Leviticus 20 also assigns a death penalty to the human participant in bestiality and separately says the animal is to be killed.

That shared placement does not mean the acts are morally identical. An animal cannot participate in a human relationship of mutual understanding or consent. Two adult men can, as a matter of ordinary human experience, have a consensual and loving relationship. The Tora's legal framework still prohibits a specific act between men, but that distinction is real and should not be blurred. Ramban's reproductive explanation identifies a feature shared by both categories; it does not erase the ethical difference between human partners and an animal.

The broader lesson is that the Tora is classifying acts by more than immediate consent. It places them within a system of sexual boundaries and created purpose. A modern listener may judge that system's criteria to be inadequate, especially when the relationship is mutual, faithful, and loving. That is a serious challenge to the rationale; it is not answered by simply repeating the word *to'eva*.

[Part Six: Sodom and the Word “Sodomy”]

The English word “sodomy” comes from medieval Latin *sodomia*, ultimately from the name Sodom. But the fact that the word is derived from Sodom does not mean the story of Sodom is a direct explanation of Leviticus 18:22. The Bible does not use the English category “sodomy.” It tells a particular story about a violent mob.

In Genesis 19, the men of Sodom surround Lot's house and demand that he bring out his male guests so that they can “know” them. In the narrative, the demand is sexual and coercive. Lot offers his daughters instead; the mob rejects that offer and tries to force its way inside.

This is an attempted gang rape of strangers, not a scene describing a consensual relationship between adult men. It is therefore a mistake to use Genesis 19 as though it were a clean example of the precise act prohibited in Leviticus. The Tora has a separate, direct prohibition in Leviticus; the Sodom story shows sexual violence and the abuse of strangers.

The prophetic description adds a broader social indictment. Ezekiel 16:49 names Sodom's pride, abundance, ease, and failure to strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Verse 50 also says that the city committed abominations before God. The prophet does not reduce Sodom's guilt to one sexual act. He describes arrogance, wealth without responsibility, neglect of the vulnerable, and conduct abhorrent to God.

The Talmud's account in Sanhedrin 109a and 109b develops that social picture through stories about cruel laws and abusive judges. One story describes a bed on which guests were stretched or cut to fit. Another describes residents giving a poor person a coin, recording the donor's name, and then refusing the person food. These are aggadic narratives, not courtroom records. Their point is that Sodom's evil was built into its social rules: the city used law and public custom to humiliate outsiders and deny help to the poor.

So Sodom brings together sexual violence, inhospitality, pride, and systemic cruelty. The English word's history later narrowed or expanded in different legal and cultural settings. It should not be used to smuggle the whole Sodom narrative into the meaning of Leviticus 18:22, nor should the Genesis story be reduced to a modern debate about consensual same-sex relationships.

[Conclusion: What the Rationalist Case Can and Cannot do]

Here is the strongest rationalist account I can reconstruct from these classical sources. The Tora treats sexuality as an area with an objective purpose and public consequences. Ibn Ezra emphasizes male-female bodily complementarity.

Ramban emphasizes the continuation of the human species. The Sefer HaHinukh emphasizes an inhabited world, the use of reproductive capacity, and marital obligations. Rambam emphasizes restraint: sexual appetite must serve human life and family order rather than become an end in itself. The wider Leviticus passage places these boundaries within a covenantal and communal structure.

That is a reasoned worldview. It is not the claim that God invents rules randomly, and it is not the claim that a person's feelings are fake. It says that consent and love are not the only criteria a Tora system uses to evaluate sexual acts. A person who accepts the Tora's account of creation, procreation, and sexual discipline can understand why the classical authorities regard this prohibition as principled rather than arbitrary.

But intellectual honesty requires the counterpoint. These texts do not demonstrate by empirical evidence that every consensual male-male relationship destroys families or harms society. The medieval sources do not discuss sexual orientation in modern terms.

Their argument rests on a normative premise: that sexual relations have a male-female, procreative telos, and that law should govern desire according to that telos even when a particular relationship is affectionate and consensual. If someone rejects that premise, the label “abomination” will not persuade him. The real disagreement is over what sex is for, whether reproductive design sets a moral norm, and whether divine law can bind beyond demonstrable interpersonal harm.

A rationalist account therefore needs two parts. First, it needs a substantive reason, and the classic sources provide several: species continuity, family order, restraint, and the created form of sexual union. Second, it needs the modesty to say where the reasoning stops.

The verse gives the rule; the Talmud defines its legal structure; the medieval authorities offer explanations. They do not all say the same thing, and no one explanation removes every modern objection.

That is still a better answer than “God said it, so stop asking.” It takes the command seriously enough to ask what human good, social order, and conception of creation it serves. It also takes reason seriously enough not to claim more than the sources establish.

(End)

Source Notes — not Part of the Spoken Transcript

Biblical text

• Leviticus 18:3 to 5, 18:22 to 30 — Egypt and Canaan; the prohibitions; land and covenantal frame: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Leviticus 20:13, 20:15 to 16 — penalty for male-male intercourse and separate law of bestiality: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Deuteronomy 14:3 — *to'eva* in a dietary rule: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Deuteronomy 25:13 to 16 — dishonest weights and measures called a *to'eva*: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Genesis 43:32 — Egyptians' taboo against eating with Hebrews: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Genesis 19:1 to 11 — Sodom mob's demand and Lot's guests: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Ezekiel 16:49 to 50 — Sodom's pride, abundance, neglect of the poor, and abominations: sefaria dot org U.R.L

Talmud and halakhic sources

• Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 51a — Bar Kappara's *to'eva / to'eh ata ba* wordplay: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:4; Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 54a–54b — classification as stoning; scope of the act and participants: sefaria dot org U.R.L and sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Mishnah Keritot 1:1 — male intercourse included in the list of *karet* offenses: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Mishnah Sanhedrin 5:1; Mishneh Tora, Laws of the Sanhedrin 12:1 to 3 — witness examination, warning, and capital procedure: sefaria dot org U.R.L and sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Mishnah Makkot 1:10 — rabbinic debate over the use of capital punishment: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 109a–109b — aggadic accounts of Sodom's laws and treatment of the poor: sefaria dot org U.R.L and sefaria dot org U.R.L

Classical commentators and legal works

• Rashi on Leviticus 20:13 — explanation of “the lyings of a woman”: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Ibn Ezra on Leviticus 18:22: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Ramban on Leviticus 18:22: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Rambam, Guide for the Perplexed, Part 3, chapters 41 and 49: sefaria dot org U.R.L and sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Sefer HaHinukh, commandment 209: sefaria dot org U.R.L

• Rambam, Mishne Tora, Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 1:7 to 8: sefaria dot org U.R.L

Historical word origin

• Oxford Learner's Dictionaries, “sodomy,” word origin: oxfordlearnersdictionaries dot com U.R.L

Editorial note: The transliterated phrase *to'eva / to'eh ata ba* in Nedarim is a rabbinic wordplay, not a claim about the historical etymology of the Hebrew noun. “Pederasty” is the older English rendering in the Friedlander translation of Guide 3:49; it should not be used to recast the underlying halakhic category as limited to child abuse.