prostitution as part of the ancient Israelite religion paralleled the religious life of other Near Eastern lands as attested by the Hebrew terms for these prostitutes, kedeshah, meaning sacred. Male and female kedoshim and kedoshot were mentioned along with a house of male prostitutes in the Temple precincts(2 Kgs.23:7). The marriages of the prophets Hosea and Isaiah have been regarded as hiero gamos.” The Israelites participated in the sexual religious orgies of their neighbors, like the Moabites, who honored their god Baal Peor and were castigated by the prophets(Nu. 21:1-9, Jer. 2.20).
Despite this mingling of sex and religion by the ancient Israelites , which paralleled other Near Eastern religions, we may still claim that the classical religion of ancient Israel , as it developed, was singularly asexual as compared with the others. It did not despise or condemn sex, nor fight it. Genesis showed God creating sex along with the pangs of childbirth(Ps. 139:13, Job 10:8-12; etc.). The Bible spoke frankly about sex and human reproduction as a divine commandment(Gen. 1:28, etc.). Human fertility was a divine blessing and barrenness a divine punishment, particularly after sexual transgressions(Gen. 20:18).
The male sexual organ possessed a sacred character and sometimes an oath was taken by touching it(Gen. 24:1-4; 47:29). The religious nature of sex in ancient Israel was also indicated by the rite of circumcision on the eighth day after birth(Gen. 17:11) and then demanded of all converts. Circumcision is found throughout the Semitic world,’ but the story of Abraham understood it as a sign of the covenant between God and him. It has always been seen as the “seal” of this covenant marked on the body of every male Jew. Neither the Bible nor later Judaism has ascribed any sexual significance to the rite.