Sex is a gift from God, but often it feels like a curse. We are all broken people due to our rebellion and thus we struggle in the area of sexuality. David Lamb has given us a book that acknowledges just how bad we are. Indeed, we are worse than we think we are. But then he reminds us through is brilliant look at biblical stories of brokenness just how big God’s grace is toward us. Once you start reading this book you won’t be able to put it down.

The only books I read these days are those which throw fresh light on Scripture or challenge traditional presuppositions. Top-rated Old Testament scholar David Lamb has done both in this thought-provoking book.

A pastor once said he needed only three Sunday School classes in his church: one on sex, one on the end-times, and one on whether there will be sex in the end-times. David Lamb here covers all the bases on the subject of sex in the Old Testament, in a sensible, down-to-earth, well-informed way. He writes as a biblical scholar who knows about real life, and he shows he can bring the Bible and our own sexual lives together. His book would be a great textbook for at least one of those classes.

Sometimes it takes humor to take something really seriously. And David Lamb takes sex very seriously indeed, and his humor only underlines that. For this is serious biblical ethics, tackling laws and stories in the Old Testament that many either avoid with embarrassment or exploit with venom as a way of attacking Christian understanding of sex and marriage. Lamb combines careful scholarly reading of the biblical texts with a light and engaging touch, while pointing the way for pastors, churches and the rest of us to be a lot more biblical, discerning and Christ-like in what (and who) we love, and a lot more robustly honest and informed about what the Bible actually says (and doesn’t say) about sex.

Every once in a while a book comes out that compels us to consider subjects the Bible raises but the church tends to neglect. Prostitutes and Polygamists is more than a good read. It is an exposé of sexual issues the Bible doesn’t avoid that are as real and destructive today as in ancient times. Thank you David Lamb for shedding light on these important issues, for probing these taboo texts, and for calling Christians to engage on behalf of the vulnerable and wounded.