What Does the Bible Say About Lust?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

What does the Bible say about lust? Does it treat it the same as other types of temptation? For many modern readers, the word immediately brings to mind sexual desire, often in a negative, or even shameful, sense. But the biblical picture is far more nuanced, ultimately prompting us to ask a question: when the Bible warns against lust, is it condemning a specific kind of desire, or something deeper within the human heart?

To answer that, we need to look beyond modern definitions and explore how the concept of lust is used throughout Scripture. By examining both the Hebrew and Greek terms behind the word, as well as key passages in the Old and New Testaments, we can better understand what is actually being prohibited—and why.

Definitions and Translations

In its oldest English form, the word lust simply meant “desire, appetite, or inclination.” This could include, but was not limited to, sex. We still see this meaning in modern phrases like “lust for life,” which simply means a strong desire to live life fully. However, over time, the meaning of lust became more limited in English, and now most of us associate the word only with sexual desire. Is that limited meaning common to the Bible as well?

Actually, if we’re going to look into what the Bible says about lust, we’ll need to dig further into what it means, both now, and in the ancient languages in which the Bible was written. Since the Old Testament was written almost entirely in Hebrew (with a smidgen of Aramaic thrown in), let’s begin there.

In Hebrew, the main verb translated as lust is ṯaḥmōḏ, a word that generally means “desire,” and thus applies not only to sexual topics but to anything desirable. As we’ll see below, ṯaḥmōḏ is applied to many different objects in the Old Testament.

The same is true in the New Testament, where the Greek verb for lust is epithumeó, a word which simply means “to long for or desire.” Where does it say that this word solely applies to sex? It doesn't. Can it apply to sex? Of course. Does it have to apply to sex? No.

Keep these broader meanings in mind as we look at what the Bible says about lust and what is actually prohibited.

What Does the Bible Say About Lust in the Old Testament?

In the Old Testament, where does it say there are specific situations where someone may show lust? We first see this word used in the Ten Commandments, specifically in Exodus 20:17:

Here, we see the general meaning of ṯaḥmōḏ as covet or desire. While lusting for your neighbor’s wife probably does include a sexual element, lusting for your neighbor’s ox probably doesn’t.

In fact, most of the uses of ṯaḥmōḏ in the Hebrew Bible refer to a strong desire for material objects rather than sex. Most of the time, this is not translated as “lust” but rather as “covet.”

Given all the uses of ṯaḥmōḏ as coveting, we see that it usually refers not only to sex, but more generally to greed. One can certainly be greedy for sex as one can be greedy for money, but it seems that the Old Testament does not make a big distinction between these two inner inclinations. It does distinguish, however, between physical acts of greed (like theft) and physical acts of lust (like fornication or adultery), but the inner disposition that leads to those acts seems to be one and the same.

There is, however, an example of ṯaḥmōḏ used in a sexual context in Proverbs 6:23–25: 

Note that even though the context here is sexual, the verses are not talking about any woman but “the wife of another.” In the commandment not to covet someone else’s wife from Exodus, the wife is listed among possessions, just like a house and livestock. In other words, even in a sexual context, ṯaḥmōḏ can be associated more broadly with avarice than with sexual desire as such.

What Does the Bible Say About Lust in the New Testament?

Remember that the Greek word for lust is epithumeó, a word that, like ṯaḥmōḏ, simply means to desire. So where does it say that sexual lust is forbidden? It’s addressed directly by Jesus in Matthew 5:27-28

From the context, there is no doubt that Jesus is referring here to our modern usage of lust as sexual desire or lust of the flesh. Rather than simply condemn the physical acts of fornication or adultery, Jesus here actually condemns the inner inclination that precedes those acts. This is a radical statement, requiring men to somehow prevent lustful thoughts from even arising.

This verse explains, for example, how Catholicism views lust. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church 2351, it says that “Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.” In other words, sexual activity is to be used for procreation and to bring a married couple closer to each other. Any other inner disposition which might lead to extramarital sexual activity of any kind is considered sinful.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul refers to the lust of the flesh explicitly in 1 Thessalonians 4:3–5, where he is discussing God’s will in relation to sex:

Note that Paul is not condemning lust in general—he knows that all people experience it— but he is condemning “sexual immortality,” or porneias in Greek. This Greek word was applied to any act deemed sexually sinful but certainly applied to sex outside of marriage in Christian writings. David Fox Sandmel, writing in the Jewish Annotated New Testament, clarifies that the importance of maintaining sexual purity in Paul’s opinion is to “set themselves apart from non-believers.”

What does the Bible say about sex before marriage? In 1 Corinthians 7:1–3, Paul has a clear answer for this question:

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Interestingly, Paul acknowledges that because it’s almost impossible to suppress lust entirely, it’s better to channel it into marriage.

Meanwhile, an interesting use of a form of epithumeó, one in which the meaning is a general desire but certainly could be applied to sexual desire, is found in James 4:1–2:

In this case, the author is not concerned at all about the specific object of desire—it could be a mere thing, or it could be a person as in the modern notion of lust. Instead, he is concerned that a strong desire for anything causes conflicts and thus leads to other sins. Incidentally, the word translated as “covet” here— zēloute—means “to envy.” When it comes to the Ten Commandments in the Greek Old Testament (known as the Septuagint), however, the word for covet is epithymiseis, another form of epithumeó.

Most other NT verses about sexual immorality deal directly with sexual acts outside of marriage, not with the inclination that causes them (see 1 Cor 6:12–13 and 1 Cor 6:18–20). It’s abundantly clear in context, however, when epithumeó refers to sexual lust and when it refers to strong desire or greed more generally. Again, we’re left with the impression that while acts of sexual immorality, porneia, and acts of greed like theft, kleptō, are condemned separately, the inclinations that drive them—strong desire—are viewed as one and the same.

Adultery in the Bible: New Testament Verses

Judaism

Unsurprisingly, Jewish tradition after the Hebrew Bible has continued to prohibit extramarital sex. Lust outside of marriage was classified by the rabbis as yetzer hara, usually translated as “evil inclination.” It is the tendency to misuse what we need to survive. The yetzer hara can thus turn the natural need for food into gluttony or the natural inclination to procreate into promiscuity. This means that sexual lust is not classified as explicitly sinful unless it is followed by a forbidden sexual act.

For this reason, Rabbi Michael Gold writes that

In other words, by separating the sexes and maintaining modesty, the rabbis hoped to avoid the occurrence of extramarital relations when the yetzer hara attempted to turn lustful thoughts into unlawful actions. Gold writes that all forms of modern Judaism maintain the prohibition on sexual activity outside of marriage.

Islam

The Quran warns about controlling lust before it results in a harmful action, that is, sexual activity outside of marriage. For instance, Quran 24:30 says

Notice two factors here: Men are ordered not to allow the sight of an attractive woman to trick them into unchastity, but they are also warned that Allah is always watching. For women, as for most ancient religions, the instructions involve dressing with modesty so as not to excite the men, seen here in Quran 24:31:

For both men and women, the Quran recognizes that once lust has been stirred up within a person, an unlawful act may easily follow. For this reason, there is a hadith, one of a collection of traditions and sayings of the prophet Muhammad, in which Muhammad tells his cousin Ali

That is, a first look at an attractive woman is permissible but a second look, allowing lustful inclination to increase, is not.

Hinduism

In one of the best-known Hindu scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita, there are several warnings about the dangers of lust, both as sexual desire and desire in general. For example, in BG 3.37, we read

The Bhagavad Gita was written in an ancient Indian language called Sanskrit. In that language, the word kām can mean either sexual lust or merely a strong desire, much like the words for these concepts in Hebrew and Greek we discussed above. It is interesting, though, to see how this strong desire, sexual or otherwise, is also seen in the Bhagavad Gita as the beginning of anger, which is considered an even more serious probelm. There is a similarity here to the passage in James above which identified desire with conflict.

Another Bhagavad Gita passage (2.62) emphasizes this connection between lust and anger:

A commentary on this verse notes that “anger, greed, lust, etc. are considered in the Vedic scriptures as mānas rog, or diseases of the mind.” The list above then, from attachment to desire to anger, reads like an etiology of these “diseases.”

In a final passage from BG 3.39, we read that

While again, desire here means any strong desire, this passage specifically emphasizes how even wise people lose their wisdom when their minds/hearts are overtaken by strong desires.

Conclusion

As something most humans experience in their lives, lust is a complicated topic. L While most religions clearly state that sex is only permitted within the bonds of marriage, lust, as an inner inclination, is more difficult to legislate.

What does the Bible say about lust? Most of the ancient languages discussed in this article make no explicit distinction between sexual lust and other strong inner desires, using one word for both. In other words, as an inner tendency, lust for sex and a strong desire for money come from the same place. However, in the prohibited acts that such tendencies encourage, a distinction is definitely made.

In the Hebrew Bible, for instance, the word for lust is often used to mean coveting—that is, wanting what someone else has. In other places, such as the warnings against promiscuous women in Proverbs, the meaning is more explicitly sexual, although even there, many of the warnings are about taking the wife of another man.

Meanwhile, in one of Jesus’ best-known sayings from the Sermon on the Mount, he equates lust with adultery. While it’s hard to imagine that he thought the two entirely equal, it’s likely that he meant to encourage his followers to guard their thoughts as well as their actions.

Finally, it’s clear that in other world religions, such as Islam and Hinduism, the same prohibitions on extramarital sexual involvements apply, prohibitions which also encourage curbing inner desires. While in some cases the reasons for these differ from each other, in practice, requirements of fidelity and chastity look quite similar across traditions.