Jonathan Poletti
1 min readFeb 25, 2019

--

A fun game!- non-procreative in the Bible?

All of the Song of Songs? The lovers are having sex but no one is pregnant (or married).

Proverbs 5:18–19- the experience of being sexual without kids noted.

Isaac ‘caressing’ his wife Rebekah in Gen 26:8.

Samson and the prostitute in Judges 16:1. He’s sexual with Delilah (v.4), no pregnancy. Remember that Samson is never other than a hero, cf. Hebrews 11:32.

David’s many wives and concubines do bear children (cf. 2 Samuel 5:13; 15:16) but that doesn’t seem to be their primary intention (cf. 2 Samuel 15:16; 16:22; 20:3; 1 Kings 1:1–4).

Solomon in 1 Kings 11:3 “had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.” The problem is not many wives, but too many wives, cf. Deut 17:17.

Sex is implied in Esther 2:16–17 but she doesn’t get pregnant.

And I’d add Adam & Eve, before leaving the garden. “It is not good for the adam to be alone,” God says in Gen. 2:18. “I will make a helper suitable for him.”

As David M. Carr notes, this, with God’s “one flesh” speech in 2:24, “emphasizes a sexuality that is not focused initially on having children.”

--

--