Even as Sodom and Gomorrah ... giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Jude 7
It's hard for most of us to take that question seriously. God, if he exists, doesn't have a body, so he doesn't have a sexual nature, certainly not a homosexual one. And yet Christians tend to think of God as a person, a father even, and use the pronoun "he" when referring to "him." God made man in his own image and only later made a woman after the man couldn't find an acceptable "help meet" among the animals that God created.1 So if men are made in the image of God, God must be a male, right?
You see where I'm going with this. I don't have to draw you a picture, do I?2
The Bible is unclear about God's body,3 as it is about pretty much everything else. But there are stories about God's body in the Bible. And some of them, when you turn your head slightly and look at them just right, look just a bit on the gay side.
Jacob said, "I won't let you go until you bless me."
And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. 32:26b
The vampire-man asked, "What's your name?" And Jacob said, "Jacob".
And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, 32:27
The man said, "Your name is no longer 'Jacob,' but 'Israel', because you have wrestled with God and won."
And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. 32:28
Jacob asked, "What's your name?" The vampire man-god answered, "Why do you want to know?" Then the mysterious wrestler blessed Jacob/Israel.
And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. 32:29
Jacob named the site of the wrestling match "Peniel" because he saw God face to face and lived.
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. 32:30
That was a fun story, wasn't it? But who was the strange creature that wrestled with Jacob all night? Well, apparently it was God, since Jacob wrestled with God and saw him face to face.
But what was it that God did to the hollow of Jacob's thigh? It's hard to say for sure, but since "thigh" is sometimes used as a biblical euphemism for penis,4 some say there was some hanky-panky going on here between God and Jacob. Perhaps God grabbed Jacob's private parts or, as Jennings suggests in Jacob's Wound, God wounded Jacob in a violent homoerotic attack.5
Moses and God
One of the strangest stories in the Bible occurs in the fourth chapter of the book of Exodus, where God, for no apparent reason, tries to kill Moses.
Moses and his family were on their way to Egypt, when all of a sudden:
The LORD met him, and sought to kill him. Exodus 4:24
Luckily for Moses, his Egyptian wife Zipporah knew just what to do. She found a sharp stone, cut off the foreskin of her son, threw the bloody bits at her husband's feet, and said: "You're nothing but a bloody husband to me."
Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. Exodus 4:25
And that did it. God let Moses go, and Zipporah repeated her "bloody husband" speech.
So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision. Exodus 4:26
I don't think anyone really knows what to make of this story, but it must have something to do with God, a baby's penis, and Moses's feet. And since "feet" is sometimes Bible-talk for "penis,"6 I guess maybe it's all about God and penises.
There are some imaginative theories, though. Keith Sharpe, for example, in The Gay Gospels, says that "even though the text tells us that Yahweh wanted to kill Moses this again looks more like a violent sexual attack which Zipporah frustrates, rather than a case of attempted murder."7
Man, that Yahweh is something, isn't he? We already knew he was a serial mass murderer,8 but a serial homosexual rapist, too? It's almost too much to believe.
God has a thing for handsome men
If you want to get a good job with God, it helps to be a good-looking man. It may, in fact, be the only qualification you need. Here is the way the Psalmist put it, when speaking about an unknown king:
Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for ever. Psalm 45:2
Here are some of the good-looking men who were especially blessed by God.
Joseph (the son of Jacob)
Joseph's success in life was based on his good looks. Everyone loved Joseph, including Yahweh.9
Joseph was a goodly person, and well favoured. Genesis 39:6
Moses
The Bible doesn't say much about Moses's appearance. But it does say that his mother thought he was a good-looking baby, which is why she decided to hide him from the Pharaoh, who was one of these all-too-common biblical baby-killing sprees.10
And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. Exodus 2:1-2
Saul
Saul was the best-looking guy in Israel and was a foot taller than everyone else. so as soon as God saw Saul, he said, "Yeah, this guy's the one. Make him king."
Saul [was] a choice young man, and a goodly: and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people. ... And when Samuel saw Saul, the LORD said unto him, Behold the man whom I spake to thee of! this same shall reign over my people. 1 Samuel 9:2-17
David
It would be hard to find anyone in the Bible that God liked more than David.
He was directly selected by God to be king, mostly because he was, to God's eye anyway, "of a beautiful countenance and goodly to look to."
And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the LORD said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward. 1 Samuel 16:12-13
Even Goliath agreed with God about David's looks.
And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him: for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance. 1 Samuel 17:42
And in 2 Samuel 6, David danced naked, or nearly naked, in front of God and everybody. When his wife, Michal, criticized him for exposing himself, God punished her by making her childless.11
And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod. ... And Michal ... said, How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself! ... Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death. 2 Samuel 6:14-23
But God liked David's performance, promising him an everlasting kingdom in the next chapter of Second Samuel.
I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. ... And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever. 2 Samuel 7:12-16
Jeremiah's loincloth
There's a story in the book of Jeremiah in which God gives Jeremiah some divine instructions about a girdle (loincloth). He tells Jeremiah to get a linen girdle and put it on his loins, but don't wash it.
Thus saith the LORD unto me, Go and get thee a linen girdle, and put it upon thy loins, and put it not in water. Jeremiah 13:1
So Jeremiah does as he is told and puts a linen girdle on his loins.
So I got a girdle according to the word of the LORD, and put it on my loins. 13:2
God told Jeremiah to remove the girdle from his loins and hide it in a hole in a rock on the Euphrates River.
And the word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying, Take the girdle that thou hast got, which is upon thy loins, and arise, go to Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of the rock. So I went, and hid it by Euphrates, as the LORD commanded me.13:3-5
Then, after many days, God told Jeremiah to go to the Euphrates and get the girdle from the hole in the rock.
And it came to pass after many days, that the LORD said unto me, Arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from thence, which I commanded thee to hide there. 13:5-6
So Jeremiah went to the Euphrates and found the girdle. But, alas, it was ruined.
Then I went to Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle from the place where I had hid it: and, behold, the girdle was marred, it was profitable for nothing. 13:7
Apparently, the point of the girdle story was to say that worshipping other gods "is good for nothing."
This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods, to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as this girdle, which is good for nothing. 13:10
And that, as Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. explains in Jacob's Wound, "Judah should cling to that which Yahweh's loincloth clings -- his phallus."12
As the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah, saith the LORD. 13:11
This isn't just Jennings's interpretation. Here's what Howard Eilberg-Schwartz says in his book, God's Phallus:
The principal meaning of this passage is obviously to condemn Israel's lack of fidelity to God. But not far beneath is the exceedingly erotic conception of Israel's relationship to God as the cloth covering God's loins."13
Hemorrhoids in their secret parts
Chapters 5 and 6 of First Samuel are mostly about hemorrhoids. God punishes the Philistines with hemorrhoids ("emerods" in the KJV) in their secret parts and then he demands five golden hemorrhoids to make him stop.
Here's the story.
The Philistines stole the ark of the covenant from the Israelites. And that's when their troubles really began. God destroyed the people of Ashdod and smote those that survived with hemorrhoids.
But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods. 1 Samuel 5:6
So the people of Ashdod decided to send the ark to another Philistine city: Gath.
What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel? And they answered, Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried about unto Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel about thither. 5:8
And then God smote the people of Gath, the small and the great, with hemorrhoids in their secret parts.
The hand of the LORD was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts. 5:9
After that, what do you think the Gathites decided to do with God's ark? They sent it to Ekron.
When the ark arrived at Ekron, God did the usual thing: he killed most of the people and gave the rest hemorrhoids.
There was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there. And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods: and the cry of the city went up to heaven. 5:11-12
After striking the Philistines with hemorrhoids "in their secret parts," God demanded that they send him five golden hemorrhoids as a "trespass offering."
What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden emerods ... Ye shall make images of your emerods ... Ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from off your gods. 6:4-5
Okay, that's a pretty nasty story. But according to Jennings, it's even nastier. He suggests that the hemorrhoids with which God punished the Philistines were the result of anal rape, with God as the rapist.
Thus, the population of each of the five cities experienced the phallic assault of Yahweh upon them, an assault that is somehow connected to the ark as the sign and seat of that potency. ... Yahweh afflicts the Philistines, both young and old with the mark of anal rape.14
Naked prophets
Saul: Is that why he's a prophet?
To really get God's attention, a prophet just has to get naked. At least that's the way it worked for Saul.
The story begins with Saul being plagued by an evil spirit from God.
And the evil spirit from the LORD was upon Saul. 1 Samuel 19:9
Then Saul tried to kill David, but David's wife helped him escape. So Saul sent messengers to find David, but they found Samuel and a group of prophesying prophets instead. When the messengers saw everysone phrphesying, the Spirit of God came upon them and they started prophesying too.
And Saul sent messengers to take David: and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as appointed over them, the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. 19:20
Saul found out that his messengers were prophesying , so he sent more messengers. When the second set of messengers arrived at the prophesying party, they started "prophesying likewise."
When it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they prophesied likewise. 19:21a
When Saul heard the at second set were prophesying, he sent a third group of messengers who "prophesied also."
And Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they prophesied also. 19:21b
After sending the three groups of messengers that all began prophesying, Saul decided to go there himself. As soon as he arrived, the Spirt of God came upon Saul also and he began prophesying.
And he [Saul] went thither to Naioth in Ramah: and the Spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on, and prophesied. 19:23
And Saul didn't just prophesy. He stripped off all his clothes also. Apparently when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon you and you start prophesying, it really helps to take off your clothes. God likes to see what he's working with.
Saul was naked in front of God and everybody all day and all night.
And lay down naked all that day and all that night. 19:24b
That's why people say, "Is Saul among the prophets?"
Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets? 19:24c
I know that's why I say it.
Jennings, of course, suggests that Saul was sexually assaulted by Yahweh in this episode:
Thus it would seem that being ravished by Yahweh has briefly assuaged Saul's rage. ... Saul's sexual submission didn't mean what Saul might have hoped. Perhaps Saul is lucky in a way, for having been utterly possessed by God's phallic power, he is still not destroyed. 15
Naked Isaiah: a sign and a wonder
God told Isaiah to take off all his clothes and wander around naked for three years as a "sign and a wonder." In this way he will be just like the Egyptian captives who will walk about naked "with their buttocks uncovered."
At the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah ... saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. Isaiah 20:2-4
Micah: I will go stripped and naked
Micah tells us that the Lord is coming down to earth to tread upon the high places.
For, behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth.
He will melt mountains and split valleys.
And the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft. 1:4
He'll make Samaria a heap and pour stones into the valley.
Therefore I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard: and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley. 1:6
He'll destroy the graven images, "burn all the hires," and destroy idols because they're all a bunch of whores and johns.
All the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot. 1:7
And then the next verse says:
Therefore I [Micah] will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls. 1:8
So the people took off their ornaments and Moses set up the tabernacle outside the camp.
And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb. And Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp. 33:6-7
When Moses entered the tabernacle, a cloudy pillar descended and God talked to him face to face, like a man speaks to his friend.
And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses ... face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. 33:9-11
The two friends talked for another six verses or so. Then Moses asked to see God's glory.
And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. 33:18
God said, "OK, I'll let you see me, but not my face. No one can see my face and live." (Even though Moses had just finished a long face to face chat with God a few verses ago.)
And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee ... [but] Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. 33:19-20
God told Moses to stand on a rock so he could get a good view.
And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock. 33:21
God said he'd put a crack in the rock and cover Moses's eyes with his hand while he passes by.
And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by. 33:22
That way, when God goes by, Moses can look through the crack in the rock and get a peek at God's backside.
And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts. 33:23
Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel
Now that's probably weird enough for you, but Jonathan Kirsch says it's even weirder.
The word used in the Hebrew text and translated as "glory" is kabod - but we are not often told that kabod also may be translated as "liver" and is sometimes used idiomatically to refer to the male reproductive organ."16
So Moses saw Yahweh's backside, and he may have seen his penis, as well.
God's loins: the glory of the Lord
When Ezekiel saw God's loins ("the glory of the Lord"), which seemed on fire, he fell on his face.
I saw ... the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. ... This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face. Ezekiel 1:27-28
Behold, the glory of the LORD stood there ... and I fell on my face. Ezekiel 3:23
Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward. Ezekiel 8:2
Which is completely understandable. If I saw God's loins I'd fall on my face too.
Notes
"Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam ... but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man." Genesis 2:19-22
Since I'm not much of an artist, I suggest you read the book God's Phallus by Howard Eilberg-Schwartz.
"[T]he word 'thigh' is sometimes used in ancient Jewish sources as a euphemism for the penis." Eilberg-Schwartz, God's Phallus, 88.
"The prohibition of eating the nerve is practicable because it is so readily identifiable, being about as big around as the small finger. In wrestling, a particularly violent grip at the base of the buttocks could strain or damage this nerve, resulting in serious injury. The same would be true of a violent sexual assault." Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., Jacob's Wound, 253.
"The term 'feet' is an occasional euphemism for penis (Isaiah 7:20; Ruth 3:7; possibly Exodus 4:25)." Eilberg-Schwartz, God's Phallus, 78.
Keith Sharpe, The Gay Gospels, 135.
The same suggestion is made by Jennings: "[T]he assault on Moses appears to have been a kind of attempted rape, a violent assault. It is this violent sexual assault that is averted by the claim of Zipporah upon Moses' sexuality." Jacob's Wound, 248.
There are two mass baby killings that are quite similar: the Pharaoh's command to kill all Hebrew male babies (Exodus 1:16-22) and King Herod's slaughter of the male infants in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16) But the nastiest mass baby killing of all was God's, when he killed every firstborn child in Egypt (Exodus 12:29-30).
