Figures of sex

In dealing with the sexual legislation of Leviticus 18, Ephraim Radner ( Leviticus (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible) ) employs a figural/prophetic framework rather than a more traditional ceremonial/moral one. The results are intriguing.

The prohibition of adultery, for instance, is “fulfilled by means of confession, self-recognition, forgiveness, and conversion in the Samaritan woman . . . and in the woman caught in adultery who is brought before Jesus.” The figure of sexual union is “fulfilled in Jesus’ own self-giving for the church in a full and exhaustive manner, a reality that draws together his own teaching on marriage . . . with the character of sacrifice as it is given in the mystery of human marriage.”

His remarks on the figuration of sodomy are particularly useful:

He highlights the contrast between proper intimacy and union within the body of Christ and illicit sexual unions of all sorts. Jesus “embodied and gave over to his disciples . . . a peculiar kind of friendship that finds its form in self-sacrifice on the one hand . . . and the community of shared faith and witness on the other.” Paul sees this type of friendship embodied in the church, and contrasts it with the prostitution and other sexual relations that form a one-flesh bond. Further, citing 1 Corinthians 6, Rander argues that for Paul “the ‘one body’ union that sexual intercourse provides . . . is, when misplaced – and this would include within a homosexual relationship – considered a form of idolatry.”

The laws against bestiality figure the mission of the church – lambs in the midst of wolves, the “entry of witness into the land of the beast, still unresolved.” And the warning that the land will vomit out those who defile it is expanded and ninverted into “the more cosmic release of life by the mortal earth that is provided in Jesus’ suffering on its behalf and breaking through the bondage of death . . . . This is perhaps the most startling of prophecies from Lev. 18: the death of Jesus, in which all the wastage of Israel’s failed unions of flesh and blood are spewed, alters the fluid of creation into one remarkable and miraculous act of renewal.”