Bible Synapse
Are eunuchs shut out from God’s people, welcomed, or even preferred?
Hard question · The law of Moses · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
A man whose sexual organs have been crushed or cut off “shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord”.
He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.
God promises eunuchs who keep his sabbaths and hold fast his covenant a place in his house and “an everlasting name”.
Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.
Jesus speaks of eunuchs born so, eunuchs made so by men, and those who “made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”.
His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
Philip baptises an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official who had come to Jerusalem to worship and was reading Isaiah.
And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: …
The objection
Deuteronomy says that a man who has been castrated “shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord”. Yet Isaiah promises eunuchs a place in God’s house better than sons and daughters, and Jesus speaks approvingly of those who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Does God exclude eunuchs, welcome them, or even prefer them?
The answer
Deuteronomy 23:1 was a rule for the ‘congregation’ (Hebrew qahal) of Israel under the law of Moses: a man mutilated in this way could not be received into its full fellowship. Keil and Delitzsch find the reason in the mutilation of the body as God created it. The rule stood beside others of the same kind; a priest with a bodily defect, for example, could not offer the sacrifices (Leviticus 21:17-21). Such rules taught holiness and wholeness through outward signs. They did not say that a eunuch was worth less to God, or forbid him to fear God and pray.
Isaiah 56 announces that this barrier would fall. Isaiah had foretold that sons of the royal house would be made eunuchs in Babylon (39:7), and now God tells such men not to say “I am a dry tree”: to eunuchs who keep his sabbaths and “take hold of my covenant” he will give “a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters” (56:3-5). In the same breath foreigners are welcomed, and God’s house is to be called “an house of prayer for all people” (56:7). So the change is promised within the Old Testament itself, as part of the new age God was preparing. Acts shows it beginning: an Ethiopian eunuch, reading Isaiah on his way home from worship, asked to be baptised, and Philip baptised him (Acts 8:27-38).
Jesus does not say that castration pleases God. Asked about marriage, he names three kinds of people who do not marry: those born unable, those “made eunuchs of men”, and those who have made themselves eunuchs “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” (Matthew 19:12). The third group are those who give up marriage to serve God, as the BSB renders it: “still others live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”. It is a figure of speech for a single life given to God, which Paul also commends to those who are able for it (1 Corinthians 7:7-8, 32-35).
Other answers Christians give
Exclusion from office only
Luther held that Deuteronomy 23:1 barred eunuchs only from public office in Israel, and some other interpreters (Fagius, Cornelius a Lapide) only from marrying an Israelite woman. Keil and Delitzsch, who report these views, think it meant exclusion from the covenant fellowship itself. Either way, Isaiah 56 promises that the exclusion would end.
The early church’s reading
The church as a whole took Matthew 19:12 figuratively. Eusebius says that the young Origen took the words ‘in too literal and extreme a sense’, and the Council of Nicaea (325) ruled that a man who castrated himself could not serve as a clergyman, while those castrated by others could.
From the classic commentators
This law, however, was one of the ordinances intended for the period of infancy, and has lost its significance with the spread of the kingdom of God over all the nations of the earth (Isaiah 56:4).C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Deuteronomy 23, at Bible Hub
Sources
- Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Deuteronomy 23, at Bible Hub
- Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Isaiah 56, at Bible Hub
- Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible: Matthew 19 (1832), at Bible Hub
- Eusebius, Church History, Book VI, chapter 8, at New Advent
- The Canons of the Council of Nicaea (325), canon 1, at New Advent