My previous article on pot, “What the Bible Really Says About Cannabis,” sparked quite an online discussion. The article itself focused on one question: Did Torah law prescribe the burning of cannabis incense in Tabernacle/Temple? The answer was simple and straightforward: Absolutely not.
Some, however, were not convinced, claiming I did not properly understand the Hebrew words in question. Others pointed to Genesis 1:29, where God gave every plant to the human race.
Still others discussed the pros and cons of legalizing pot, something that was not under discussion in this article, although it was the topic of an earlier article on The Daily Wire.
So, in light of the lively discussion surrounding the Bible and cannabis, I offer this third article on the subject.
But I do not write this to pass judgment on others or to play God in their lives. I simply offer an examination of the relevant biblical texts and then explain how, in my view, they relate to cannabis use today.
Let’s start with Genesis 1:29, where God said to Adam (representing the human race): “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.”
The first human beings, then, were not meat eaters but rather vegetable and fruit eaters. Every seed-bearing plant was theirs to eat – not to smoke.
This doesn’t mean that it was forbidden to smoke these plants. It simply means that this verse is totally irrelevant to our discussion, since it speaks only of eating these plants, not smoking them.
Or do we really think that the Creator said to His creation, “All these plants are yours to eat. You will find them nourishing and healthy. And be sure to try smoking some of them. You will feel groovy!”
Let’s also remember that Genesis 1 speaks of a pristine time on the planet, a time before human sin had entered the world and the earth had been cursed. Since then, we have had poisonous plants to deal with, some of them deadly, which means that not every plant is good for us today.
This doesn’t mean that the Bible prohibits pot. It simply means that Genesis 1:29 cannot be used to support the use of pot, since all plants at the creation were healthy and all of them were given for food, not for getting high.
As for the Hebrew words qaneh-bosem, meaning “fragrant reed” and discussed in the previous article, we should remember that no Semitic scholar in the world is on record as endorsing it with any etymological association to the word cannabis, and no scholarly Hebrew dictionary in the world supports such an association. (The scholar who proposed this etymology decades ago was an anthropologist, not a Semitist.)
Not only so, but the Greek language already had the word kannabis, hemp, hundreds of years before the time of Jesus, yet when the Greek Jewish scholars translated the Torah into Greek in the third century BC (called the Septuagint), they did not render qaneh-bosem with kannabis. Instead, they translated it with “sweet smelling calamus.”
Had the words qaneh-bosem, which, again, simply meant a fragrant reed, actually meant cannabis, then the Septuagint translators would have translated with kannabis, hemp. But that is not what qaneh-bosem means, which is why they rendered it with “sweet smelling calamus.”
Finally, note that in Exodus 30:23, where qaneh-bosem is found, the Heb. word qinnaman is also found. It is the word from which we get “cinnamon.” But as you can see, the Hebrew word qinnaman has two n’s, as does the English cinnamon.
In contrast, the Hebrew word qaneh has only one n, whereas Greek kannabis and English cannabis have two n’s. That’s because qaneh, reed, has nothing to do with cannabis. (There are other phonetic inconsistencies I could cite between qaneh-bosem and cannabis, but enough has been said.)
That’s why, to my knowledge, no respected Bible translation in any language in history has associated qaneh-bosem with pot. This is simply a one-off suggestion by an anthropologist which has now become an internet myth. (For the totally separate claim that traces of pot were found on an ancient Israelite altar, which also permeates the internet, though unrelated to the subject of qaneh-bosem, see here.)
But if the Bible doesn’t have anything positive to say about hemp, does it have anything negative to say?
The subject of this article is not prescribed medical marijuana, which falls into a separate category. My focus here is on recreational pot smoking. What does Scripture have to say?
Again, I’m not here to pronounce judgment on others or to impose my personal convictions. God is our judge, and we give account to Him. And we can probably all agree that there are more pressing issues today than the question of marijuana use.
That being said, having smoked pot and used other drugs from 1969-1971, I gave them up entirely when I came to faith.
This was not just because they were illegal and an expression of my rebellion as a teenager. I also understood that drug use was unscriptural.
After all, how can we follow the biblical admonitions to be sober, vigilant and clear headed while getting high? That’s why the priests were not allowed to drink alcohol when serving in the Tabernacle/Temple. Sobriety and reverence go hand in hand.
Again, I’m not judging others here, nor am I pretending to be holier than thou. I’m just explaining, in short, why I live as I do, based on the Bible.
On a purely pragmatic level, I’m also concerned that pot can still serve as the gateway to other, more destructive drugs.
But that is another conversation for another day.
Dr. Michael Brown (www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program. He holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries and is the author of 40 books. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.