The law of Moses did not outlaw prostitution in general. It did forbid the daughter of a priest acting as a prostitute and it forbade a father being pimp to his daughter. So it protected the sanctity of the priesthood and the family, but other than that it permitted prostitution.
29 Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute, in order that the land may not commit prostitution and the land actually be filled with loose morals (Leviticus 19).
9 Now in case the daughter of a priest should make herself profane by committing prostitution, it is her father that she is
profaning. She should be burned in the fire (Leviticus21).
So a girl who makes herself into a prostitute profanes herself. And prostitution is loose morally. It is certainly not to be encouraged. But neither is to be outlawed. A girl could be a prostitute if her father was not a priest (i.e. if she was not from the daughters of Aaron) so long as her father was not her pimp.
Now on the other side of the equation we have 3 rather astonishing facts.
1. Judah, the son of Jacob, who inherited the firstborn kingship rights for the whole nation of Israel, fathered Perez and Zerah through whom Jesus came in an act of prostitution with Tamar, his daughter in law.
2. Jesus and King David were both descendants of Rahab. So in Hebrew terms Jesus' direct mum was a virgin, the virgin Mary, but his greater mum Rahab or Tamar was a whore. Therefore the statement: Jesus' mother was a ho is technically true. Since to the Hebrew a grandmother is a mother and a grandfather is a father. So there were two prostitutes in Jesus' ancestral line, Tamar and Rahab. Both are specifically mentioned in his genealogy in Matthew1. So the holy spirit is not ashamed of either of them. In fact the household of Rahab was the only group to be saved in Jericho in Joshua6.
2 Abraham generated Isaac;
Isaac
generated Jacob;
Jacob generated Judah and his brothers;
3
Judah
generated
Perez
and
Zerah
[twins] out
[ek]
of
Tamar;
Perez
generated
Hezron;
Hezron
generated
Ram;
4
Ram
generated
Amminadab;
Amminadab
generated
Nahshon;
Nahshon
generated
Salmon;
5
Salmon
generated
Boaz
out [ek]
of Rahab;
Boaz
generated
Obed
out
[ek]
of
Ruth;
Obed
generated
Jesse
(Matthew1).
3. Jesus' girlfriend during his ministry was Mary Magdalene, from whom 7 demons came out, an ex demon possessed girl. But one of Jesus' closest groups of friends was Lazarus and his two sisters Mary and Martha. Mary, the more spiritual of the two sisters, was the one who wept on Jesus' feet and wiped them dry with her hair and anointed them with perfumed oil. She could afford this expensive oil, because she was a prostitute until that day.
So in tabloid terms Jesus was close friends with ex prostitutes and ex demon possessed women and two of his maternal ancestors were prostitutes. And yet the scripture says...
3 He is the reflection of [his] glory and the exact representation of his very being, and he sustains all things by the word of his power; and after he had made a purification for our sins he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in lofty places (Hebrews1).
So his view of prostitutes and prostitution was identical to the view of God. Jesus is now himself a God like his father - see I27.
In summary, prostitution was not encouraged, but neither was it outlawed or demonized. Prostitution served a purpose in Hebrew society just as it serves a purpose today in Western Society and all over the world. It is a partial antidote to sexual frustration which is possibly the largest and most destructive force at work in the West today. The entire world of commerce sells largely on sex, and that is a tragedy since it means we are all largely sexually frustrated. Prostitution is methodone for the sex addict.
The reason that God could not be too hard on prostitution in the Law was that the whole world is based upon prostitution. If you want your car fixed there are not many people who will fix it out of love. Nearly everyone takes the car to a mechanic who sells you his skill. He charges you for the use of his body in fixing your car. Max Moseley, the formula1 chairman, was recently vilified in the tabloid press for having a spanking session with 5 prostitutes. The angle they used to attack him was the false charge that the session had Nazi overtones. He paid £2500 to the 5 girls. His legal bill for the resulting law suit against the tabloid press was £450,000. So who really were the prostitutes?
The largest insult that all the economies of the world make to their citizens is that they implicitly accuse us all of being prostitutes. The whole concept of an economy is that no one will do anything out of love and so the only way to get anything done is to pay for it with money. It is axiomatic in all society that everyone sells their services and there is no free lunch. So we are all prostitutes. The trouble with this system is that a person with money can go and get a product or service that he wants but does not really need, denying that opportunity to another person who does actually need it but has no money. Furthermore there are many talented and inventive and creative people who never get the money they need to make their dream come true. Economies are a means of denying opportunity to worthy people. We can all testify to that. Economies do not distribute opportunity very well at all and so hold back the vast majority of their citizens from realizing their potential.
In the Kingdom of God there will be no money. Products and services will be given to the people who need them the most, not to the people who have the most money.
True prostitution gives a plastic form of satisfaction, whether it be sexual or whether it be commercial or political. The most successful prostitutes actually show love to their clients. And the most successful business represent that they do the same thing. "We care about our customers". Yes customers, we are all customers. The most successful politicians likewise represent that they care about their voters.
This is where TV programs like Dragon's den and American Idol come in. In these programs people advance on their talent not on their money. Resources are given to the best performers and the best business ideas. That is how things would work in a world that was not based upon money. Although of course both programs are money spinners. But the reason they are popular as that TV viewers want a world in which talent can succeed, since their whole life experience is one of being frustrated by not having the money to do anything.
Imagine that every time you wished to acquire something you made your case to a panel of judges rather than getting out your cheque book. That is much closer to the kingdom of God than any economy.
A Marriage is supposed to be a union of two hearts not of two bank accounts. There should be absolutely no financial corruption to a marriage. If the marriage breaks up there should be no divorce settlement imposed by any court. If the richer of the two spouses is selfish and greedy well that is a part of the deal when you got married. We should take that into consideration when pledging our troth. Each should keep their own assets. But that is not how things work today. Instead judges have become the divorce pimps. They turn a blessed union into an act of prostitution by enforcing a payout, ensuring that sex gets paid for. And this from a society which demonizes and criminalizes prostitution!
Heather Mills knew what she was doing. She graduated from a part time prostitute with arms dealers (according to the daily mail) to being a full time prostitute when she married Sir Paul. And the UK divorce courts were her pimp. She joined the big league. The judges set the fees for the multi year prostitution trick that every marriage becomes when there is a court enforced divorce settlement.
Imagine a world in which no court has any power to enforce any divorce settlement and the final break up deal is entirely down to the generosity of the two spouses. What would be the attraction to a gold digger in marrying a rich man/woman then? Surely they would all marry a generous loving man/woman rather than a rich bastard/bitch? Then babies would be born to the loving rather than to the rich. But by giving courts the power to enforce generosity, we condemn children to be born into bank account mergers rather than emotional matches. So giving the judge the power to force a man to look after his children is one step thinking. Denying the courts that power is two step thinking, because it ensures that people marry for the right reasons. This ensures that children get the love they need. So children are better off in the latter system than they are in the former. But you will not see that unless you are a two step thinker. Democratic governments rarely indulge in two step legislation.
The short answer is that there is no sin in taking money for sex. There is only sin in defiling a woman with semen outside of a marriage agreement or in committing implied homosexuality with a married woman. It is the sex that can be a sin not the payment. For more detail please - see joining J11