BESTIALITY

Unnatural sexual intercourse of a man or a woman with an animal. The Mosaic law emphatically condemned this perverted practice, sentencing the guilty person and the beast to death. “Where a man gives his seminal emission to a beast, he should be put to death without fail, and they should kill the beast. And where a woman approaches any beast to have a connection with it, you must kill the woman and the beast.”—Lev. 20:15, 16; 18:23; Ex. 22:19; Deut. 27:21.

This prohibition, together with the rest of God’s laws governing sex relations, lifted the Israelites to a much higher moral level than their neighbors. In Egypt, bestiality constituted a part of idolatrous animal worship; historians attest to the cohabitation of women with goats, for example. Similar practices were also prevalent among the Canaanites (Lev. 18:23-30), and reportedly in Rome.

Despite its depravity, bestiality is not the same as adultery or fornication, and hence does not constitute Scriptural grounds for divorce. (Matt. 19:9) However, anyone indulging in such filthy practice is morally unclean, and, if a member of the Christian congregation were to indulge in such a practice, that one would be subject to disfellowshiping.—Eph. 5:3; Col. 3:5.