Uncovering Nakedness

In the Old Testament, the phrase “uncovering someone’s nakedness” was invariably a reference to sexual intercourse. Even if it was a private thing, as sex should be, it could be tantamount to a public humiliation. It was something degrading and abusive. It exposed someone’s nakedness to demonic infestation. From that time forward, their private parts were a domain of demonic presence. The “covering” of God’s blessing was torn away. Publicity wasn’t really the issue, but the exposure to demons; however, it might as well be public humiliation.

This was typically associated with idolatrous practices, but it didn’t have to be. People had little or no reason to publicly humiliate someone sexually except as a matter of degrading pagan ritual, but it was still an open invitation to demons. It was making a sacrifice of someone else’s innocence to a pagan deity, and in Scripture, all pagan deities are demons. There is only worship of the true Creator; all others are demons who capture the worship that should go to God.

If you worship your own self, in the sense of self-glorification, or simply can’t restrain your lustful impulses, it’s still service to a demon. Thus, any public act of sexual humiliation is inherently an act of demonic worship. But secret sexual encounters are no different. Notice that Leviticus 20 is all about stoning to death, and sometimes burning the corpse. The same actions without an idolatrous intent would not necessarily bring the same penalty, but sexual sins do.

We’ve already covered how private marital sex occurring during a wife’s menstrual period is treated as a mere ritual defilement in other passages, not a capital sin as mentioned in Leviticus 20. Hebrew men didn’t loathe menstruation, but feared the intimation of idolatrous practices associated with seeking a woman’s menstrual blood for demonic ritual magic. But according to Biblical Law, every sex act outside the bonds of a marriage covenant was de jure demonic.

Thus, proper marital sex was never “uncovering someone’s nakedness.” Pay attention to the context when reading the Law of Moses. Then again, in Old Testament History, nearly every instance of homosexuality was tied to vile pagan religious rituals. There were very few men and women sexually attracted to their own gender without a pagan influence; it was nearly always a matter of service to some pagan deity. And those who were homosexual or bisexual were suspected of being idolatrous, because demonic influence is considered the source of it. That’s what made Sodom and Gomorrah so disturbing. It wasn’t a pair of cities filled with queers, but degrading ritual sex practices in service to demons.

And publicizing any kind of sexual desire in that context was inherently an act of devotion to demons. It’s a paradox that the Old Testament Hebrew culture was so matter-of-fact about human sexuality, but then held it as something that must be kept private. It wasn’t embarrassing, just none of your business. That’s quite different from our Anglo-American cultural silliness of being so prissy about human sexuality, so that the only way to be “honest” about it is to engage in vulgarity.

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FYI: The emergency blog I started yesterday will remain open as an echo of this blog. It will serve as the backup blog, but is also an experiment to see what traffic it draws on another platform.