In this episode of Goddess Bible Study, we examine the Deuteronomic Law Codes (Deuteronomy 12–26), which embody the divorce of Yahweh from the Mother Goddess Asherah. These laws are believed to originate during the Yahwist reforms of King Josiah in the late 7th century BCE, shortly before the Temple's destruction at the hands of the Babylonians.
2 Kings 22 recounts the discovery of a “Book of the Law” in the Temple, and the code’s focus on worship at a single central sanctuary matches Josiah’s religious centralization reforms of around 621 BCE.
While some Deuteronomic laws are unremarkable or unobjectionable, focusing on common morality or on dietary restrictions that signify tribal allegiance, many of the laws exhibit extreme misogyny, religious intolerance, and ultraviolence toward neighboring cultures.
This is the period when, I argue, the last vestiges of the old Bronze Age matriarchal traditions were being shut down throughout the region. In the Deuteronomic laws, we see the Asherah poles representing the Mother Goddess torn down, the male and female qedeshas banned, and women's sexuality tightly policed.
We also see the prohibition on blending wool and linen. It is a rule that seems very strange by modern standards (though observant Jews still follow it), but it makes perfect sense once you recognize that wool and linen represent the shepherds and the farmers — the patriarchal clans and the matriarchal clans — who had once been joined in the sacred marriage traditions but were now being torn apart in the monotheistic divorce.
The Garden of Eden story, with its denunciations of goddess symbols (serpents, farming, the tree of knowledge, female submissiveness, etc.), was likely written in the same general period as these laws of Deuteronomy (perhaps before or after the Exile).
Let’s dive into the Laws of Deuteronomy…
Follow my laws, and the Promised Land will be yours.
Yahweh promises that if the Israelites follow his laws, he will deliver the Promised Land to them. The other nations will be driven out, and Israel’s territory will extend from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates River — essentially the same maximalist Zionist vision as Greater Israel today.
For if you carefully keep all these commandments I am giving you to follow—to love Yahweh your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast to Him—then Yahweh will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and stronger than you. Every place where the sole of your foot treads will be yours. Your territory will extend from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Western Sea. No man will be able to stand against you; Yahweh your God will put the fear and dread of you upon all the land, wherever you set foot, as He has promised you.
- Deuteronomy 11:22-25
Tear down the altars and burn up the Asherah poles.
Centralize the worship of Yahweh in a single temple, and do not serve other gods. The implication is that the people were doing exactly what is being prohibited here — installing Asherah poles next to the altar of Yahweh and worshipping on the high places. During the First Temple period, Yahweh was worshipped alongside Asherah, as seen in the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions (”Yahweh and his Asherah”) and in the Asherah poles installed in the Jerusalem Temple, as documented in the Bible itself.
These are the statutes and ordinances you must be careful to follow all the days you live in the land that Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess.
Destroy completely all the places where the nations you are dispossessing have served their gods—atop the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree. Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn up their Asherah poles, cut down the idols of their gods, and wipe out their names from every place. You shall not worship Yahweh your God in this way.
Instead, you must seek the place Yahweh your God will choose from among all your tribes to establish as a dwelling for His Name, and there you must go. To that place you are to bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and heave offerings, your vow offerings and freewill offerings, as well as the firstborn of your herds and flocks. There, in the presence of Yahweh your God, you and your households shall eat and rejoice in all you do, because Yahweh your God has blessed you.
- Deuteronomy 12:1-7
When Yahweh your God cuts off before you the nations you are entering to dispossess, and you drive them out and live in their land, be careful not to be ensnared by their ways after they have been destroyed before you. Do not inquire about their gods, asking, “How do these nations serve their gods? I will do likewise.”
You must not worship Yahweh your God in this way, because they practice for their gods every abomination which Yahweh hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
See that you do everything I command you; do not add to it or subtract from it.
- Deuteronomy 12:29-32
Kill any prophet who encourages you to worship other gods.
If a prophet or dreamer of dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you, and if the sign or wonder he has spoken to you comes about, but he says, “Let us follow other gods (which you have not known) and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For Yahweh your God is testing you to find out whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul. You are to follow Yahweh your God and fear Him. Keep His commandments and listen to His voice; serve Him and hold fast to Him.
Such a prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he has advocated rebellion against Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way in which Yahweh your God has commanded you to walk. So you must purge the evil from among you.
If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (which neither you nor your fathers have known, the gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, whether from one end of the earth or the other), you must not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity, and do not spare him or shield him.
Instead, you must surely kill him. Your hand must be the first against him to put him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death for trying to turn you away from Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such a wicked thing among you.
If, regarding one of the cities Yahweh your God is giving you to inhabit, you hear it said that wicked men have arisen from among you and have led the people of their city astray, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods” (which you have not known), then you must inquire, investigate, and interrogate thoroughly. And if it is established with certainty that this abomination has been committed among you, you must surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword. Devote to destruction all its people and livestock.
And you are to gather all its plunder in the middle of the public square, and completely burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to Yahweh your God. The city must remain a mound of ruins forever, never to be rebuilt.
- Deuteronomy 13:1-16
Do not set up a wooden Asherah pole next to the altar of Yahweh.
Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole next to the altar you will build for Yahweh your God, and do not set up for yourselves a sacred pillar, which Yahweh your God hates.
- Deuteronomy 16:21-22
Put pagan Israelites to death.
If a man or woman among you in one of the towns that Yahweh your God gives you is found doing evil in the sight of Yahweh your God by transgressing His covenant and going to worship other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or moon or any of the host of heaven—which I have forbidden—and if it is reported and you hear about it, you must investigate it thoroughly.
If the report is true and such an abomination has happened in Israel, you must bring out to your gates the man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you must stone that person to death. On the testimony of two or three witnesses a man shall be put to death, but he shall not be executed on the testimony of a lone witness. The hands of the witnesses shall be the first in putting him to death, and after that, the hands of all the people. So you must purge the evil from among you.
- Deuteronomy 17:2-7
Do not engage in pagan practices: no child sacrifice, divination, sorcery, spells, mediums, or consulting the dead.
When you enter the land that Yahweh your God is giving you, do not imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, practices divination or conjury, interprets omens, practices sorcery, casts spells, consults a medium or spiritist, or inquires of the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to Yahweh. And because of these detestable things, Yahweh your God is driving out the nations before you.
You must be blameless before Yahweh your God. Though these nations, which you will dispossess, listen to conjurers and diviners, Yahweh your God has not permitted you to do so.
- Deuteronomy 18:9-14
Offer peace, or plunder and kill.
If you attack a city, you must first offer peace and take the people as slaves. If they refuse, you are free to plunder the city, kill the men, and kidnap the women, children, and livestock. The Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, however, must be completely destroyed.
When you approach a city to fight against it, you are to make an offer of peace. If they accept your offer of peace and open their gates, all the people there will become forced laborers to serve you.
But if they refuse to make peace with you and wage war against you, lay siege to that city. When Yahweh your God has delivered it into your hand, you must put every male to the sword. But the women, children, livestock, and whatever else is in the city—all its spoil—you may take as plunder, and you shall use the spoil of your enemies that Yahweh your God gives you. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are far away from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
However, in the cities of the nations that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not leave alive anything that breathes. For you must devote them to complete destruction —the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—as Yahweh your God has commanded you, so that they cannot teach you to do all the detestable things they do for their gods, and so cause you to sin against Yahweh your God.
- Deuteronomy 20:10-18
Captive brides, firstborn sons, and rebellious sons.
If you see a beautiful woman among your enemies, you can kidnap her and make her your wife, as long as you follow a few simple rules.
A man must honor his firstborn son, even if he despises the boy’s mother.
And if a son is disrespectful, he can be taken to the elders and stoned to death.
When you go to war against your enemies and Yahweh your God delivers them into your hand and you take them captive, if you see a beautiful woman among them, and you desire her and want to take her as your wife, then you shall bring her into your house. She must shave her head, trim her nails, and put aside the clothing of her captivity.
After she has lived in your house a full month and mourned her father and mother, you may have relations with her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. And if you are not pleased with her, you are to let her go wherever she wishes. But you must not sell her for money or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.
If a man has two wives, one beloved and the other unloved, and both bear him sons, but the unloved wife has the firstborn son, when that man assigns his inheritance to his sons he must not appoint the son of the beloved wife as the firstborn over the son of the unloved wife.
Instead, he must acknowledge the firstborn, the son of his unloved wife, by giving him a double portion of all that he has. For that son is the firstfruits of his father’s strength; the right of the firstborn belongs to him.
If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and does not listen to them when disciplined, his father and mother are to lay hold of him and bring him to the elders of his city, to the gate of his hometown, and say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he does not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.”
Then all the men of his city will stone him to death. So you must purge the evil from among you, and all Israel will hear and be afraid.
- Deuteronomy 21:10-21
No wool and linen woven together.
Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.
- Deuteronomy 22:11
Wool and linen woven together represent the blending of farmers and shepherds: linen comes from a farmed plant, and wool comes from sheep. This law is directly contradicted by Moses’s instructions for building the Tabernacle, which command that wool and linen be blended in the priests’ holy vestments and in the Tabernacle curtains.
Traditionally, this is explained as a way of distinguishing the sacred from the secular: the blend of wool and linen is said to be reserved for the priesthood alone.
They are to make the ephod of finely spun linen embroidered with gold, and with blue, purple, and scarlet yarn.
- Exodus 28:6
I would like to offer an alternative explanation.
Blending wool and linen represents the sacred marriage between the shepherd kings — of Mesopotamia and of the Hyksos — and the peasant farmers who worshipped the Mother Goddess. We see the origins of this myth in the Sumerian epic poem The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi.
Separating wool from linen accompanies the divorce of God from the Goddess.
The Cain and Abel story reflects this divorce: Yahweh rejects the farmer Cain’s offerings of vegetables but accepts the shepherd Abel’s offerings of meat. The treacherous farmer Cain then brutally murders his good shepherd brother Abel in revenge, staining his reputation forever.
The monotheists are shepherds only, and they intentionally eliminate the sacred marriage ritual and ban the blending of wool and linen that represents it.
It is extremely important to control women’s sex lives to preserve patriarchal bloodlines.
Suppose a man marries a woman, has relations with her, and comes to hate her, and he then accuses her of shameful conduct and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman and had relations with her, but I discovered she was not a virgin.”
Then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring the proof of her virginity to the city elders at the gate and say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he has come to hate her. And now he has accused her of shameful conduct, saying, ‘I discovered that your daughter was not a virgin.’ But here is the proof of her virginity.” And they shall spread out the cloth before the city elders.
Then the elders of that city shall take the man and punish him. They are also to fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given a virgin of Israel a bad name. And she shall remain his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.
If, however, this accusation is true, and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, 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.
If a man is found lying with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.
If there is a virgin pledged in marriage to a man, and another man encounters her in the city and sleeps with her, you must take both of them out to the gate of that city and stone them to death—the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he has violated his neighbor’s wife. So you must purge the evil from among you.
But if the man encounters a betrothed woman in the open country, and he overpowers her and lies with her, only the man who has done this must die. Do nothing to the young woman, because she has committed no sin worthy of death. This case is just like one in which a man attacks his neighbor and murders him. When he found her in the field, the betrothed woman cried out, but there was no one to save her.
If a man encounters a virgin who is not pledged in marriage, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her must pay the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she must become his wife because he has violated her. He must not divorce her as long as he lives.
- Deuteronomy 22:13-29
No cross-dressing. No eunuchs or people of illegitimate birth may enter the assembly of Yahweh.
A woman must not wear men’s clothing, and a man must not wear women’s clothing, for whoever does these things is detestable to Yahweh your God.
- Deuteronomy 22:5
No man with crushed or severed genitals may enter the assembly of Yahweh. No one of illegitimate birth may enter the assembly of Yahweh, nor may any of his descendants, even to the tenth generation.
- Deuteronomy 23:1-2
No qedeshas.
The law below specifically bans the qedesha priestesses and the qadesh priests, calling them a whore and a dog, respectively. The qadesh were transgender people or eunuchs, like the Galli priests of the Mother Goddess Cybele in Rome, and they were clearly despised by the patriarchal Yahwists who chased them away.
No daughter or son of Israel is to be a qedesha [shrine prostitute]. You must not bring the wages of a whore [zonah] or of a dog [keleb] into the house of Yahweh your God to fulfill any vow, because both are detestable to Yahweh your God.
- Deuteronomy 23:17-18
Many contemporary scholars, such as Stephanie Budin, reject the association of the qedesha with sacred sex, even though that translation has been consistent since at least the Septuagint in the third century BCE. It is true that we don't know the finer points of these traditions, and specific sex rituals have not been documented for the qedesha, but scholars are too quick (in my opinion) to dismiss the accounts of ritual prostitution recorded by Herodotus, Strabo, and Lucian in the centuries following the Exile. Scholars also give short shrift to the story of Judah and Tamar, in which Tamar is explicitly identified as a qedesha after sex, and to the idea that Gomer, wife of the prophet Hosea, was likely a qedesha.
Sacred sex was common in goddess cultures and remains so today. Many of these practices continue in the Shakti goddess traditions of India, which include the devadasis (temple prostitution, banned in the 20th century but still practiced illegally), ritualized Tantric sex, and the transgender community known as the hijras.
My argument is that the Israelites, the Canaanites, and neighboring cultures were originally matriarchal and celebrated women's sexuality. They believed that sex makes the flowers grow and encouraged it as a benefit to agriculture. Farming metaphors for sex are extremely common in the literature of Inanna, Ishtar, and related Bronze Age goddesses.
Matriarchal family lines allowed women sexual freedom, and the transition to patriarchal families in the Iron Age required that these old sex traditions be constrained or shut down.
Public ritual sex was well known in the Dionysian and Bacchic traditions of Greece and Rome. The Romans finally banned the Bacchanalia in 186 BCE because the rites were sexually licentious and politically seditious. The Hebrews were simply ahead of the Romans by some 500 years.
A man can divorce his wife for almost any reason.
A man can divorce his wife for basically any reason and send her away. In a patriarchal world, this is very harmful to women, who are left with no resources and may have children to care for. In matriarchies, it is the man who is sent away in a divorce, while the woman stays in her home with her children and her wealth.
If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds some indecency in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce, hand it to her, and send her away from his house.
If, after leaving his house, she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the second man hates her, writes her a certificate of divorce, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house, or if he dies, then the husband who divorced her first may not remarry her after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination to Yahweh. You must not bring sin upon the land that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance.
If a man is newly married, he must not be sent to war or be pressed into any duty. For one year he is free to stay at home and bring joy to the wife he has married.
- Deuteronomy 24:1-5
And finally, perhaps the weirdest of all the Old Testament laws — and not a great one for women either.
If two men are fighting, and the wife of one comes to rescue her husband from the one striking him, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his genitals, you are to cut off her hand. You must show her no pity.
- Deuteronomy 25:11-12
Next episode, we will return to the Greeks and show how their mythology, contemporary with that of the Hebrews, exhibits the same transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. The Iron Age Greeks reordered their pantheon to make most of the goddesses submissive to Zeus, and wives submissive to their husbands.