Bible Strands
Deuteronomy 23:17
No daughter or son of Israel is to be a shrine prostitute.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Moses addresses the assembled Israelites on the plains of Moab, just before they cross the Jordan into the promised land. He issues this command immediately after regulating the treatment of escaped slaves and before detailing purity laws for the camp.
The words — קְדֵשָׁ֖ה (ke.de.Shah) denotes a female cult prostitute, while קָדֵ֖שׁ (ka.Desh) denotes a male cult prostitute. Both terms describe individuals consecrated to pagan fertility rites.
The thread — The prohibition against dedicating family members to cultic prostitution appears in Leviticus 19:29. The historical reality of these practices is recorded in 1 Kings 14:24 and 2 Kings 23:7, where they are later condemned and removed from the temple.
Why it lands — The text forbids Israelite men and women from entering into sacred prostitution, treating the body as an instrument for pagan worship. Readers must reject any practice that commodifies human sexuality for religious purposes.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.
Cross-references
- 2 Kings 23:7 He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the house of the LORD, where the women had woven tapestries for Asherah.
- Leviticus 19:29 You must not defile your daughter by making her a prostitute, or the land will be prostituted and filled with depravity.
- 1 Kings 14:24 There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land. They imitated all the abominations of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites.
- Deuteronomy 22:21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house, and there the men of her city will stone her to death. For she has committed an outrage in Israel by being promiscuous in her father’s house. So you must purge the evil from among you.
- 1 Kings 15:12 He banished the male shrine prostitutes from the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.
- 1 Kings 22:46 He banished from the land the male shrine prostitutes who remained from the days of his father Asa.
- 1 Timothy 1:10 for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for anyone else who is averse to sound teaching
- Romans 1:26 For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
- 1 Corinthians 6:9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts,
- Genesis 19:4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, surrounded the house.