Short answer: The best known prostitute in the Bible is Rahab of Jericho, who hid two Israelite spies and ended up in the family line of Jesus. Others connected to the subject are Tamar, who disguised herself as one to secure justice, and Gomer, whom the prophet Hosea married at God's command. The Bible never says Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.
In This Article
It is one of the stranger questions people type into a search bar, and the answers may surprise you. The Bible includes women who sold their bodies, and it does not hide them. Some of them end up in the lineage of the Messiah. Others stand as warning or picture.
I want to treat each of these women as a person, not a label. In every case Scripture shows God's mercy reaching toward someone the respectable people had written off, and that matters for how we read the whole story. This article goes through Rahab, Tamar, Gomer and Mary Magdalene, then asks why Jesus welcomed people like them.
Who Was Rahab?
Rahab lived in Jericho, the walled city that Israel had to take to enter the Promised Land. Joshua 2 introduces her plainly as a prostitute whose house was built into the city wall. Joshua sent two spies to scout Jericho, and they stayed at her house. When the king's men came looking, she hid them under stalks of flax on her roof and sent the searchers the wrong way.
Why would she do it? She tells the spies. She had heard what God had done for Israel at the Red Sea, and she confessed that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. A Canaanite woman in a pagan city put her trust in the God of Israel on the strength of reports. She asked for a promise that her father's household would be spared, and the spies agreed. A scarlet cord in her window marked the house. When Jericho fell, Rahab and her family were rescued (Joshua 6:25).
The New Testament honors her by name, and does not pretend she was something else.
By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.
Hebrews 11:31 (NIV)
She appears in the roll call of faith next to Abraham and Moses. James uses her as an example of faith that acts (James 2:25). And Matthew includes her in the family tree of Jesus (Matthew 1:5). A woman from Jericho's brothel quarter became a great-grandmother in the line of David and of Christ. That tells you what God does with a changed life.
Some readers try to soften the word and say she was only an innkeeper. The Hebrew and the New Testament Greek both point to prostitution, and I see no reason to avoid it. The point of her story is not that she was secretly respectable. It is that grace reached someone who was not.
Who Was Tamar?
Tamar's story is told in Genesis 38, and it is uncomfortable reading. She was married to Judah's oldest son, who died. Following the custom of the time, she was given to the second son to raise up an heir for his brother. He refused to fulfill that duty and also died. Judah then sent her home as a widow with a promise he never kept: his youngest son would be given to her when he grew up.
Years passed and the promise was ignored. Tamar was left childless and without protection, in a world where a widow without a son had little standing. She took matters into her own hands. She covered her face, sat by the road where Judah would pass, and he, taking her for a prostitute, slept with her. He left his seal, cord and staff as a pledge. When Tamar was later found pregnant, Judah demanded she be burned. She produced the seal, the cord and the staff.
She is more righteous than I
Genesis 38:26 (NIV)
Judah's own admission is the heart of it. Tamar's method was deceptive and the Bible does not tell us to copy it. But Judah, who had wronged her, was the one in the wrong in the larger story, and he said so. Tamar bore twin sons, Perez and Zerah, and Perez stands in the line of David and of Jesus (Matthew 1:3).
Technically Tamar was not a professional prostitute. She posed as one to force a man to meet an obligation. Still she belongs in this conversation, because the story shows how desperate the options were for a woman with no protector, and how God works through even messy human situations to carry out his promises.
Why Did God Tell Hosea To Marry Gomer?
This is the one place where God directly commands a prophet to marry a woman with this background.
Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her
Hosea 1:2 (NIV)
Gomer is the woman Hosea married. Scholars have discussed whether she was already a prostitute at the time or whether she became unfaithful later, and the text does not settle that question, so I would not claim more than the passage says. What is clear is the purpose. Hosea's marriage was an acted parable. Israel had been unfaithful to the Lord, chasing other gods the way an adulterous wife chases other lovers, and God used the prophet's life to show it.
The picture does not stop at judgment. In Hosea 3, the Lord tells Hosea to love his wife again, even though she has been unfaithful, as the Lord loves the Israelites even though they turn to other gods (Hosea 3:1). Hosea buys her back. That is a picture of God's redeeming love, the kind that pays the price for the one who walked away. It is also a preview of the gospel.
Gomer is not offered to us as a model. Hosea's obedience cost him, and his love is the point. If you want to think about God's faithfulness in the face of ours, Hosea is a good place to stay for a while.
Was Mary Magdalene A Prostitute?
No, the Bible never says she was. This is one of the most common mix-ups in popular Christianity.
What the Gospels actually tell us: she was one of the women who followed Jesus and supported his ministry, and Luke notes that seven demons had come out of her.
Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out;
Luke 8:2 (NIV)
She stayed near the cross when most of the disciples had scattered. She watched where he was buried. And on the first Easter morning, she was the one the risen Lord spoke to by name (John 20:11-18). She was sent to tell the disciples that he was alive.
The prostitute label seems to come from a mix-up with the unnamed woman of Luke 7:36-50, who anointed Jesus' feet at a Pharisee's house and is described as having lived a sinful life. Luke does not name that woman, and he does not link her to Mary Magdalene. The two were joined in later church tradition, and a well known sermon by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century helped fix the identification in the Western church. Many Bible scholars today, Catholic and Protestant, regard that merging as unsupported by the text.
You may also have come across claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. Nothing in the four Gospels points that way. They describe her as a devoted disciple and the first witness of the resurrection, and I see no reason to go beyond that. She is worth honoring for what Scripture says about her, which is already a great deal.
Why Did Jesus Welcome Sinners?
The religious leaders of Jesus' day were scandalized that he ate with tax collectors and sinners. His answer is one of my favorite statements in the Gospels.
It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Luke 5:31-32 (NIV)
He went further and told the chief priests and elders something that must have stung.
Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.
Matthew 21:31 (NIV)
The reason, he explains, is that those people believed John the Baptist and repented, while the leaders did not. Welcoming sinners did not mean approving of their sin. When Jesus met the woman caught in adultery, he declined to condemn her, then told her to leave her life of sin (John 8:11). Mercy and call to change, together.
So why did Jesus love such people? Because that is who he came for. The proud have nothing to bring. The ones who know their need can receive. Nobody in these stories is saved by a clean record. Rahab was saved by faith, Tamar's line was preserved by God's purposes, Gomer was bought back by love, and the woman at Simon's table was forgiven because she loved much. That is the same way we are saved.
What About Prostitution Itself?
None of this makes the practice acceptable. The Bible treats paying for sex as sin and warns believers against it, noting that sexual sin is against one's own body (1 Corinthians 6:15-20). Many women in that world and in ours were not choosing freely. The Bible's response is to condemn the sin and still welcome the person. For a longer treatment, see Examples Of Sexual Sin In The Bible and What Is Sexual Immorality According To The Bible?
Key Bible Verses About Prostitutes In The Bible
- Joshua 2:1: the spies lodge at the house of Rahab, a prostitute.
- Hebrews 11:31: Rahab is counted among the people of faith.
- Matthew 1:5: Rahab appears in the family line of Jesus.
- Genesis 38:26: Judah admits Tamar was more righteous than he.
- Hosea 1:2: God commands Hosea to marry Gomer as a living parable.
- Luke 5:31-32: Jesus came to call sinners to repentance.
- Matthew 21:31: tax collectors and prostitutes enter the kingdom ahead of the self-righteous.
- Luke 8:2: Mary Magdalene had been freed from seven demons; no word of prostitution.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was the most famous prostitute in the Bible?
Rahab of Jericho. Joshua 2 tells how she hid Israel's spies, and Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25 both honor her faith. She appears in the family line of Jesus in Matthew 1:5.
Who did God tell to marry a prostitute?
The prophet Hosea. God told him to marry a woman named Gomer, whose unfaithfulness pictured Israel's unfaithfulness to the Lord. Hosea's faithful love for her is a picture of God's covenant love. The story runs through the first three chapters of Hosea.
Who slept with a prostitute in the Bible?
Judah did, without knowing it was his daughter-in-law Tamar in disguise (Genesis 38). Samson also went to a prostitute in Gaza (Judges 16:1). The Bible reports these things without approving them, and Paul later warns believers against sexual immorality in 1 Corinthians 6:15-20.
Why did Jesus welcome prostitutes and other sinners?
Because he came to call sinners to repentance, not the self-righteous. He did not excuse sin, and he told the people he forgave to leave their sin. But he treated them as people who could be changed, which the religious leaders of the day refused to do. Luke 5:31-32 is his own explanation.
Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute?
The Bible never says so. Luke 8:2 says she had been freed from seven demons. The idea that she was a prostitute comes from later tradition that merged her with another woman in Luke 7. For the broader topic, see What Is Sexual Immorality In The Bible?
