The Bible’s Obsession With Incest
How family sex stories made it into scripture and what it says about ancient values
The Good Book is full of family dramas that would make even the late Jerry Springer blush. You’d think a holy text would rise above soap opera drama, but instead the Bible keeps circling back to incest, cousin marriages, father-daughter weirdness, and brother-sister hookups. Preachers like to sweep these stories under the rug, but they’re right there in black and white. And they say a lot about the “morality” of the ancient world.
Drunk Dad, Pregnant Daughters
Let’s start with one of the most disgusting highlights. In Genesis 19, Lot flees the destruction of Sodom with his daughters. His wife turns into a salt statue, and the family hides in a cave. The daughters decide civilization is over, so the only way to “preserve the family line” is to get Dad drunk and sleep with him. They do it not once but twice, and both end up pregnant by their own father. These children supposedly become the founders of Moab and Ammon, two nations the Israelites later fought. The Bible doesn’t condemn the daughters outright—it just states the fact. Ancient morality, in this case, was survival by any means, even if that means turning Dad into a breeding bull.
Half-Siblings Playing House
The father of three world religions? Married his half-sister. Genesis 20:12 has Abraham himself admitting it: Sarah “is really my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my wife.” So the “man of faith” bedded his own half-sibling and then lied about it twice to foreign kings, claiming she was only his sister to protect his own skin. God supposedly punished the kings who almost took Sarah, but not Abraham for marrying his sister in the first place. Ancient morality here seems twisted: lying to outsiders is worse than incest.
Cousin Marriage as Normal
Next up, Isaac, the “miracle child” of Abraham and Sarah, marries Rebekah—his first cousin once removed. Rebekah is the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother. The Bible treats it as totally fine, even arranged. In fact, most patriarchs marry relatives. Jacob marries not one but two of his cousins—Rachel and Leah—sisters to boot. He also sleeps with their slave women. This kind of family tree looks less like a healthy lineage and more like a ball of tangled yarn.
Father-in-Law and Daughter-in-Law
Genesis 38 gives us another gem. Judah, one of Jacob’s twelve sons, has a daughter-in-law named Tamar. After her husband (Judah’s son) dies, she disguises herself as a prostitute. Judah sleeps with her, not realizing who she is, and gets her pregnant. When Tamar is accused of immorality, Judah is ready to burn her alive. But then she proves the child is his, and Judah sheepishly says she’s “more righteous than I.” The Bible even honors their son Perez as part of the family line that leads to King David and, later, Jesus. So incest not only happens—it’s baked right into the Messiah’s genealogy.
Brother Rapes Sister
Jump to 2 Samuel 13. David’s son Amnon falls in lust with his half-sister Tamar. He fakes an illness, tricks her into visiting, and then rapes her. Afterward, he hates her and throws her out. King David, her father, is furious but doesn’t punish Amnon. Later, Tamar’s full brother Absalom kills Amnon in revenge. It’s a brutal story that shows how little power women had and how much sexual violence was ignored. The Bible doesn’t give Tamar justice. It just shows incestuous rape tearing apart a royal family.
Solomon’s Chaos of a Family
King Solomon, son of David and Bathsheba, ends up with 700 wives and 300 concubines. That’s not directly incest, but you can bet plenty of those marriages involved relatives, since royal families kept it in the family to protect bloodlines. The Bible doesn’t list each wife’s family tree, but given Israel’s tiny population and habit of cousin marriage, it’s almost certain. The text treats Solomon’s massive harem as normal, even a sign of his wealth and power.
Why So Much ‘Domestic’ Sex
If you zoom out, the Bible’s incest problem makes sense in a grim way. Ancient societies were small, tribal, and obsessed with keeping bloodlines “pure.” People married close kin because options were limited, alliances were important, and outsiders were considered dangerous. Women were property, used to produce heirs and strengthen family ties. Love had little to do with it.
The shocking part is that the Bible doesn’t usually frame these stories as scandalous. Modern readers gag, but ancient readers saw them as part of life. Sometimes incest is condemned—Leviticus 18 and 20 set rules against it—but even those chapters look selective. The same book that bans sex with close kin also bans mixed fabrics and eating shellfish. Yet preachers today will shout about shellfish or “man lying with man” but never mention Abraham marrying his sister.
Biblical Morality
Christians and Jews often talk about “biblical morality” as if it’s one clean, consistent standard. But the incest stories show the opposite. The patriarchs and heroes break the very rules later set in the Law. Their sins aren’t punished, sometimes they’re rewarded, and occasionally their actions create the very bloodlines God supposedly blesses.
If morality means not screwing your sister, daughter, or father-in-law, then the Bible fails its own test. Instead, what you see is a reflection of human messiness. The Bible is less a guidebook from heaven and more a diary of a tribal people, preserving all their family scandals. It shows what they thought survival and power required, not what universal morality demands.
The Excuses Apologists Make
Defenders try to explain this away. “Well, back then it wasn’t considered wrong.” That’s the point. Ancient morality was different—and often cruel, self-serving, and disgusting by today’s standards. Others say, “God used broken people for His plan.” That’s a fancy way of saying incest and rape don’t matter as long as it keeps the story going. If you excuse Lot’s daughters or Judah and Tamar as part of “God’s will,” you’re admitting morality bends when the Bible needs it to.
What Scholars Say
Scholars don’t shy away from pointing out that incest and close-kin marriage in the Bible aren’t accidents—they reflect the social realities of the ancient Near East. Historian John Van Seters notes that the patriarch stories, especially Abraham marrying Sarah, mirror common practices in Mesopotamia where cousin and half-sibling marriages were legal and even preferred to keep property in the family. What looks sick to us was considered smart bookkeeping to them.
Biblical scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky points out that the Lot story isn’t just about survival—it’s a piece of Israelite propaganda. By making Moab and Ammon the children of father-daughter incest, Israel’s storytellers were painting their enemies as “born of shame.” In other words, the Bible used incest stories not only to explain origins but to slander rival nations.
When it comes to Tamar and Judah, scholars like Ilana Pardes argue that the text flips the script. Tamar, a woman, outsmarts the patriarch, and the line of David—and by extension, Jesus—goes through her. That doesn’t mean the Bible endorses father-in-law sex. It means the writers were willing to bend morality if it made Israel’s kings look chosen by God.
On Amnon raping Tamar, feminist scholars like Phyllis Trible read the story as “texts of terror”—biblical accounts that expose violence against women without condemning it. The silence of the text isn’t divine approval; it’s evidence of a patriarchal culture that normalized female suffering.
And as for Solomon’s harem, historians like William Dever remind us that this isn’t fantasy—it reflects the politics of the ancient Near East. Hundreds of wives and concubines weren’t just about sex, they were about alliances, power, and control. Family drama was a political strategy.
Before You Go
The Bible’s incest obsession isn’t a footnote. It’s central to the story of Israel, David, and even Jesus’ bloodline. Instead of calling it holy, we should call it what it is: a dirty record of ancient tribal survival, where morality meant keeping the family tree alive at all costs—even if that meant twisting the branches until they broke.
Read the whole thing? Now tell me: if this is the foundation of “biblical morality,” why should anyone follow it today? Drop a comment and let’s hear your take.
Sources and Further Reading
Phyllis Trible — Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives
https://fortresspress.com/store/productgroup/571/Texts-of-TerrorTikva Frymer-Kensky — Reading the Women of the Bible
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/56159/reading-the-women-of-the-bible-by-tikva-frymer-kensky/Ilana Pardes — Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674175440Jacob Milgrom — Leviticus 17–22 (Anchor Yale Bible) [Leviticus 18’s incest laws]
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/9780300140775/leviticus-17-22/John Van Seters — Abraham in History and Tradition
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300015721/abraham-in-history-and-traditionWilliam G. Dever — Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel
https://eerdmans.com/9780802828521/did-god-have-a-wifeMark S. Smith — The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
https://eerdmans.com/9780802839725/the-early-history-of-godSusan Niditch — Ancient Israelite Religion
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ancient-israelite-religion-9780195095072“Incest” — Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jewish Virtual Library)
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/incest“Amnon and Tamar” — Encyclopaedia Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Amnon-and-Tamar-Biblical-figures