When a rain of sulfur and fire fell from the sky, destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s wife, despite God’s prohibition, looked back. She perished there, transformed into a pillar of salt…

Lot continued on his way, accompanied only by his two daughters. All three took refuge in the mountain. They took up residence in the hollow of a cavern. After the cataclysm from which God had narrowly saved them, it was safer. Lot’s daughters, in need of a husband, quickly suffered from their isolation. There was no man in the region. Except for their father – an old man.

So, they devised a stratagem to satisfy their sexual desires and the instinct of self-preservation that gripped them. A Machiavellian method: get their father drunk and sleep with him…

They did so that very evening. When Lot, driven to drink, had absorbed enough wine, he became unconscious. The eldest daughter, taking advantage of her father’s alcoholic euphoria, slept with him. The next day, it was the turn of the youngest. Both of them, one after the other, left the bed before the old man came to his senses.

Through these stolen couplings, Lot’s daughters became pregnant. Two sons of Abraham’s nephew were thus born: Moab (“from the father”) and Ben-Ammi (“son of my people”). They were ancestors of the Moabites and the Ammonites, idolatrous peoples, future bitter enemies of Israel! The first two incests reported in the Bible clearly had catastrophic consequences. The initial cause must be seen in the corrupting climate of Sodom where Lot’s family lived.

So corrupting that the only righteous man in the city was ready to offer his two virgin daughters to the raging men who were attacking his house, so that they could satisfy their perverse instincts on them. Fortunately, the intervention of the protective angels prevented the crime. The second factor that led to the incest lay in the evil nature of Lot’s daughters. They knew perfectly well that it was wrong to mate with their own father.

In his normal state, he would never have accepted such a thing, because he was righteous. But he was a weak righteous man. Therefore vulnerable. So, inspired by the dissembler, in defiance of all respect for the one who had given them birth, they imagined the means that would allow them to accomplish their plan. In the long term, the consequences were painful. Cain and Seth, sons of Adam and Eve, necessarily took their own sisters as wives, which the Scriptures do not mention.

At the origins of humanity, this did not constitute a sin in any way. Had not God commanded the first couple: “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth”? Our distant ancestors did so thanks to the means granted by the Creator. However, with the increase in the population and its diversification, the potential choice of a spouse widened.

At the same time, the notion of good and evil was refined. Even before the Eternal dictated his law to Moses, particularly in matters of sexual relations, incestuous couplings attracted divine judgment and the disapproval of upright men. Lot does not seem to have shown any, if we stick to the silence of the Scriptures. On the other hand, two biblical episodes give, on this subject, significant indications.

The first is succinctly reported in Genesis 35:22: Reuben (Jacob’s eldest son) went to sleep with Bilhah, his father’s concubine. And Israel heard of it. A judgment was to follow, as the guilty party would lose the privileges of the birthright. In fact, before dying, Jacob pronounced prophetic blessings on his sons that lift the veil on the destiny of the different tribes of Israel. His words began thus:

“Reuben, you, my firstborn, my strength and the firstfruits of my vigor, superior in dignity and superior in power, impetuous as the waters, you shall not have preeminence! For you went up to your father’s bed, you have defiled my bed by going up there“

The verdict could not be clearer. A second episode confirms how much incest was already perceived as condemnable before the law was given. This is the mating between Judah and Tamar, unconscious for the former, calculated voluntarily for the latter.

Following circumstances to which we will return in another chapter, Tamar, who had become a widow and disguised as a prostitute, dragged Judah, her father-in-law, into her bed without his recognizing her. When the latter discovered the truth, he cried out, confused: “She is less guilty than I, since I did not give her to Shelah, my son. And he knew her no more“.

The custom of Israel wanted, in fact, that a young widow marry her brother-in-law. Now, Shelah was the third son of Judah and the only survivor of his brothers at the time of the events. The incestuous coupling between father-in-law and daughter-in-law is therefore clearly qualified here as guilty. Judah would not have committed it knowingly.

Proof of this is given since he did not renew it. Then came the Law. The fifth commandment. Already excludes any sexual intercourse between daughter and father or son and mother. Otherwise, how would the honor owed by children to their parents be respected?

The formal prohibition “not to uncover the nudity of a close relative” obviously also condemns incestuous relations. Other commandments confirm this:

— “No one shall take his father’s wife, and no one shall lift his father’s covering”.
— “Cursed be he who lies with his father’s wife, for he lifts up his father’s covering.”
— “Cursed be he who lies with his sisters, his father’s daughter or his mother’s daughter,
— “Cursed be he who lies with his mother-in-law.

This announced curse is not only of a moral or spiritual nature. It is realized in the flesh. We now know how much unions between close relatives expose to procreations carrying frequent defects. Genetic science shows how consanguinity brings out the defects of the common stock in the descendants.

Before the flood, the vital power was such that human existence was significantly approaching the millennium. This high potential allowed the implementation of the reproductive function, without problem, within the same family. Within the framework of the divine order (to each man his own wife), brothers and sisters could unite without guilt and without harm.

After the flood, things gradually changed. Corruption took over humanity, longevity diminished, defects accumulated, bad habits diversified, in a word: the weight of heredity grew heavier. This is why God, in his wisdom, forbade his people carnal unions between close relatives, as well as those with foreigners, who were carriers of a highly transmissible disposition: idolatry.

The law embodies the love of the Creator for his creature. It is a preventive code aimed at ensuring happiness and life for those who observe it. This in all areas…

When the kingdom of Israel was firmly established in the promised land, David, until then fully upright, succumbed to adultery with Bathsheba and to the crime of having Uriah, her legitimate husband, killed. These crimes greatly displeased the Lord.

Despite the king’s sincere repentance, Nathan the prophet announced to him on behalf of the Most High: “Behold, I will bring evil against you out of your house, and I will take your own wives before your eyes and give them to another, who will lie with them in the sight of this sun. Indeed, disorders will soon appear within the royal house. Amnon, David’s eldest son, raped his half-sister Tamar, dishonored her and slept with her”…

But Absalom, another son of the king and brother of Tamar, took a hatred for him and had him murdered by his servants! Thus death punished Amnon’s incest. Later, in turn, Absalom, having become his father’s rival, rebelled in an attempt to seize power. David even had to flee before him. While the sovereign was absent from the palace, Absalom entered it and, to ostentatiously demonstrate the advantage he had taken, “went to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel”.

Thus was fulfilled to the letter the divine judgment prophesied by Nathan. The rebellious son was to pay with his life, in dramatic circumstances, for his ignominious sedition. His incestuous behavior undoubtedly contributed to bringing upon himself the curse decreed by the Law towards this offense. The evil instinctive inclination that pushes the individual to commit the sin of the flesh that is within his reach was not about to be extinguished.

It is, alas, one of the constants in the arsenal of sensual temptations that the Enemy uses to lock man and woman into disobedience. Amos, the shepherd-prophet, denounces incest as one of the four crimes of Israel:

“Thus says the Lord… The son and the father go to the same daughter, to profane my holy name.”

The forbidden act therefore takes on the character of a profanation.

During the exile of Judah in Babylon, Ezekiel, stigmatizing the iniquities of Jerusalem, notes, among other things: “In the midst of you, each one commits abominations with his neighbor’s wife, each one defiles himself by incest with his daughter-in-law, each one dishonors his sister, his father’s daughter.”

At the time of Christ, John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded because he dared to denounce the incestuous marriage of King Herod Antipas with Herodias, previously wife of his brother Philip. Based on Jewish law, the prophet-precursor had declared to the sovereign: “it is not permitted for you to have your brother’s wife?”. Unforgivable exhortation, which aroused, in the heart of the queen in particular, an irreducible thirst for vengeance. It was Herodias who demanded the head of the troublemaker…

The denunciation of sin proves intolerable to those who indulge in it. Jesus paid for it with his life…

This text is an excerpt from the book “They Will Become One Flesh: Bible and Sexual Chaos” written by Henri Gras.

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