Wet Dreams (Deuteronomy 23:10)
“If one of you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he shall go outside the camp; he must not come within the camp. When evening comes, he shall wash himself with water, and when the sun has set, he may come back into the camp.” (Deuteronomy 23:10-11, NRSV)
Yes. The Bible talks about wet dreams.
While this post proves that we did not pull this card out of our collective butts, there is more at stake here than puritanical sensibilities of when one's love juice should leave the box.
The Context
The passage refers back to the laws of Leviticus chapter 15, which cover a variety of human bodily discharges. Leviticus 15:16-18 in particular addresses male ejaculation:
If a man has an emission of semen, he shall bathe his whole body in water, and be unclean until the evening. Everything made of cloth or of skin on which the semen falls shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the evening. If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of semen, both of them shall bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening.
The primary notion is that the release of semen makes one unclean. But this brings up the larger question of why. What makes the man, the solider in question, unclean? Thus, we must understand the biblical concept of clean and unclean.
Clean and Unclean in the Bible
For some initial perspective, here is a partial list of things that can make someone ritually unclean:
Eating unclean animals (Leviticus 11:26; Deuteronomy 14:8)
Having certain skin diseases (Leviticus 13-14)
Molds and infestations in a house or clothing (Leviticus 13:47-51)
Coming in contact with an animal corpse (Leviticus 5:2)
Coming in contact with a human corpse (Numbers 5:2b; 19:11 ),
Women on their period (Leviticus 15:19-24)
Women during childbirth (Leviticus 12)
Coming into contact with anyone who has come into contact with any of the above, i.e. someone who is unclean (Leviticus 15 ; 22:4-7 ; Numbers 19:21-22 )
Notice that majority of these things naturally happen without any willful act by the person subsequently deemed unclean. These are normal, daily, monthly occurrences, or completely up to chance. They are a part of life.
In the Bible, unclean does not primarily indicate that something is inherently evil or is a sign of moral turpitude.
The Bible does not say that women are evil or less than men because of their menstrual cycles or the participating in the birthing process, any more than it says men are evil when they ejaculate. Clean and unclean do have moral implications in some passages, but that is not the primary medium of the convention, neither is it relevant to the passage at hand.
A key passage to understand the clean/unclean dichotomy is Leviticus 10:10-11:
You are to distinguish between the holy (qodesh) and the common (chol), and between the unclean (tame’) and the clean (tahowr); and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them through Moses.
Some older translations will still render the word chol as “profane” or “unholy,” but the meaning of these choices is lost to modern readers. It does not speak primarily to moral or ethical compositions. The sense of the word is the distinction between things that are specifically suitable for use in worship (holy, separate) and things that are not (common, everyday).
Thus the chiastic structure of the passage— holy, common // unclean, clean— shows the holy is clean because it is separate and ready to enter into a community of worship, and the common is unclean in that it is not suitable for worship, but it is not necessarily evil.
We stress: ritual uncleanliness is not the same as religious turpitude.
This is further illustrated by the requirements made on a person who becomes unclean: separation from the community until the ritual offerings, sacrifices, and/or washing takes place. And that’s it.
Back to the Battlefield. . .
Returning to the solider who sprays sperm in his sleep, we see this clearly .
Imagine the timeline:
6:30 am ~ His wooden spear beside him, the solider rises with the sun and a smile from a half remembered dream.
6:31 am ~ The solider stretches, yawns, places his hand on his bed roll, suddenly feeling and seeing the sticky mess.
6:43 am ~ The solider finally tracks down his commanding officer, and has a half-mumbled conversation with an awkwardness worthy of an SNL sketch.
6:50 am ~ The solider leaves the camp.
6:45 pm ~ In the evening, as the sun is beginning to set (Hebrew ‘ereb), the solider ritually washes himself.
6:50 pm ~ The solider returns to camp.
During this intervening time the man was ritually unclean, he was in a common state, not worthy to fight in the holy army of YHWH. He must sit outside the community for 12 hours soaking in the hot sun, his own damp nut-fog, and musty shame. But why?
The context of this passage is the Israelites arrayed for war. This is not Sunday School camp, this is a camp of war.
This verse is adjacent to those describing the seriousness of how and where soldiers in The Lord's army take a carp, the specifications of defecation, because God is in their midst and doesn't want to step in their literal shit (and of course we have a Card Talk about that one).
Perhaps the issue is, like fecal matter, God doesn’t want to step in . . . nevermind.
Perhaps it is another example of common things making a person not ready to serve God as he/she should until they address an issue. We sometimes need to take a beat, wash off the. . . dust of the road, and come back with a clear head. Or
Perhaps the issue is where the mind of a solider having a wet dream really is: clearly not on the war at hand. It is a mind distracted, focused on things other than the life or death struggle forthcoming.
But what do we know: we made this game and we just keep giving you more reasons to believe we’re probably going to Hell.