Why is giluey arayos one of the big 3?

Question

I get why murder and idol worship are things you have to give your life up for. But why is giluy arayos - sexual sin so fundamental as to require a person to give up one's life? I'm looking for a taamei hamitzvot perspective, not just the formal derivation of the law.

Answer 1

R' Hirsch notes that the Big Three are echoed in the laws for the Altar that God gives as an "epilogue" to the Assembly at Sinai in Genesis 20:19-23:

• Whatever v. 20 comes to prohibit, (according to the Midrash cited by Rashi, various misuses of angelic icons are included) it clearly echoes idol worship.

• Not making the Altar of cut stones (v. 22) "lest you wield your sword upon it and desecrate it" echoes murder.

• Not ascending steps to the Altar (v. 23) "so that your nakedness shall not be exposed upon it" echoes immorality (and even uses a form of the term "gilui 'arayot").

He says that the point of these laws is to tell us that the central symbol of our service of God, the Altar, has to represent the fundamentals of our actual service - our adherence to the three fundamental laws. We therefore have to, through the laws given here, "expel the very last trace" of the fundamental sins from the Altar, just as we do so from our actual lives.

He formulates the Big Three as "the culmination of sin against God, of sin against one's fellow man, and of sin against oneself."

So, how does sexual immorality constitute "the culmination of sin against oneself"?

I think R' Hirsch touches on this in many places, but I found it set out pretty clearly in his commentary to Leviticus 18:6, at the beginning of a list of couplings particularly prohibited to Jews:

Immediately when God led the first woman to the first man for their union to be a matter for the exercise of their own moral free will, in contrast to the blind physical urge of animal life, and He erected the pillars of the whole development of the human race, ... in His first proclamation for moral human marriage: - "'על כן יעזב וגו" [that a man must leave his family to marry - IM], ... He indicated that it was not within the narrow circle of blood relationship that the human male is to seek his mate if the morally high purpose of human marriage is to be reached. This is His למינו-Law ["according to its species" i.e. natural law with respect to propagation of species - IM] for the human race, which in the sphere of plant and animal sexes is carried out immutably by the almighty power of His Word at their creation, but which His one creature with moral free will, His Adam, His Man, is to accept from His Mouth to carry it out with his moral free will.

(my bracketed comments where indicated)

To our purpose, I think what he's saying is that sexual morality is the paradigm of human adherence to God's Law through choice. A person who violates this Law turns his back on his mission as a human being, just as an apple tree that somehow decided to produce grapes instead would be turning its back on its mission as an apple tree.