Episode Transcript
Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and this week is another continuation of our theme of human relationships. And how about that? I've managed to stay on track in the same theme for three weeks in a row.
[00:00:31] In episode 92, we talked about the gender paradigm versus the Genesis paradigm. And last week, in episode 93, we talked about the importance of embodiment. I realize that one's hardly risque, so that might be a bit disappointing, but we'll pick up some speed today and talk about adultery and some things like that.
[00:00:54] We'll be looking at biblical passages, and eventually we'll also look at some early Christian writings, because, I mentioned before, that our idea of adultery isn't the same as the biblical idea of adultery. But we can see some change through time in all of the texts that we have. And the early church had some interesting ideas that they were wrestling with. But at any rate, the fact is our standards today are not the standards of the ancient people.
[00:01:22] I'm sorry, but the Bible doesn't really say anything explicit about something like sex before marriage. Not in the way that we talk about it anyway. Now, there are things you can loop into that, but it doesn't explicitly call out premarital sex. And it certainly doesn't tell us to kiss dating goodbye. And a lot of our purity culture today that maybe some of us grew up in, myself included, is not actually what you might call the biblical ideal as described explicitly in scripture.
[00:01:56] Now that doesn't mean that our ideas are necessarily wrong or bad, but we get all worked up in ways that sometimes we're sure are coming from a biblical perspective, and it's actually stemming from something later. And progressive ideas aren't bad necessarily, because we do need to change and improve ourselves, right?
[00:02:19] But they need to come from a root idea that is established in the core of creation, in the way that God created us. At any rate, today we're going to focus on the concept of adultery a bit, because of that drastic change from the Old Testament to the New Testament, and we're going to loop in polygamy as well, and really kind of this whole idea of what the nature of marriage is according to the Bible. That's the first thing.
[00:02:46] And our application for this isn't actually the concept of adultery at all, because we probably all agree that that's wrong, but rather it's this. How can we have changed our ideas about marital relations, both in a physical, carnal sense, as well as the more institutional sense... how can we have changed our ideas about marital relations from the Old Testament to today? And doesn't any change in that imply that we can just keep progressing along some path where we have today the legalization of same sex marriage for instance?
[00:03:26] So, we're still not getting into the topic of homosexuality yet, because we first need to have a close look at the bounds and nature of marriage itself, which will naturally lead into the topic in any case.
[00:03:39] And I might be challenging a few things and pushing a few buttons from what you might be used to, I don't know. Some of what we see in scripture on this topic is a little shocking to modern sensibilities. Some of these ideas will definitely be uncomfortable for a purity culture mindset. Frankly, though, we're going to get in trouble if we want to use the Bible as a sexual ethics manual. It just isn't going to work like that.
[00:04:06] And on top of that, it's also unfair to just toss out the Old Testament, as some are wont to do, and say it's outdated, and that we just need the New Testament. We really can't do that either. And as different as the Old Testament is, it's still going to lead us rightly to how to understand marriage. Even with all of its flaws, we genuinely cannot do without the Old Testament, and I think you'll see why.
[00:04:36] Simply put, we need the Old Testament and its history and imagery and ideas to understand the New Testament, and really to even put anything into context in relation to how our lives reflect God and His relationship to us as well. We're going to see how and why marriage is a covenant.
[00:04:56] And of course, when we jump into the New Testament, we'll need to ask, why is the Church the Bride of Christ and what does that mean? Is that just a nice, fluffy metaphor where we're supposed to picture wedding cake and fancy table settings and soft music? Well, that picture is going to be less than idealistic when we see what leads up to the Church being the Bride. I'm going to suggest that this bride is not a virgin, but we are the bride nonetheless, and I think this image can really help us see some interesting things.
[00:05:31] All right, but let's get into the text and the history of the people of the Bible. And as I'm looking through this, it's quite apparent that once again, there is no way I'm going to fit this into a single episode. So this one will definitely be at least a double parter. Better to split it up and cover it well than try to rush through it.
[00:05:52] Now the natural place to start is, of course, with the first human couple. If we expect to see some sort of recognizable modern marriage ceremony between Adam and Eve, we're going to be disappointed in that. And I've actually seen people suggest that because we don't see a marriage ceremony, or again, what we'd recognize as a marriage ceremony, then that must mean that Adam and Eve were not married.
[00:06:19] Well, of course, that depends on what you think a marriage ceremony looks like and what components it's got to have. We'll get into some details with that later. Obviously, in the text, Adam and Eve aren't in any wider human community. So there couldn't be a human officiant, and there's no overall societal laws, aside from whatever God invokes Himself.
[00:06:44] And so what we see in the situation of the garden is man and woman are separated, and then they are brought back together. And this is done by God.
[00:06:55] Adam has a very formulaic sounding statement in verse 23 of chapter 2 that we might think is some sort of formality. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
[00:07:16] There's also verse 24, which says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
[00:07:26] So that might not look like any wedding ceremony we've ever seen, but there's a formality to it. It's got words, which again, we'll discuss the significance of that as we go. And there's another thing to note. The involvement of God in the joining together, as I said. In verse 22, after taking Adam's side and making the woman, God brought her to the man.
[00:07:53] Let's take a look at how Jesus defines marriage when he's questioned by the Pharisees on whether or not men can divorce their wives for any reason. Matthew 19, verses 4 through 6. And he answered and said, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.
[00:08:31] So, in the context of divorce, Jesus brings up Genesis 2. So, this is pretty clear then that what's happening there in chapter 2 of Genesis is in fact a marriage. God joined the man and woman together. The point here isn't that Jesus is trying to make sure everyone around him knew that Genesis 2 was historical, but rather to say that divorce is fundamentally an undoing of what God has done in joining a couple together in marriage.
[00:09:07] This will connect to the idea of marriage as covenant. See the main point from Matthew 19 isn't actually the first couple, it's using the first couple's joining to be the archetype of all the other marriages that have happened in which God joined together two people. But when we're reading Genesis, we quickly get into a bit of a bind regarding that whole thing.
[00:09:31] I mean, is every marriage approved by God? That's a bit stickier of a situation, at least if we are seeing it as "God joined this couple together because God himself approved the marriage, or arranged it somehow," rather than something else more like, "the covenants we make should be done in the presence of God, who is a partner in wanting that covenant to go well, ideally," and that kind of a way of thinking about it.
[00:10:04] So, anyway, moving forward through the text, Genesis chapter 4, Cain has a wife, but there's zero discussion on how that happened. We have Genesis 4, 19, where Lamech took two wives, again with no discussion on how that occurred, though this is the first instance we see of polygamy.
[00:10:28] And note that there are two wives, not a wife and a concubine, and concubine is something we'll need to define here in a bit, but this is one of those things that it just describes and it presumes it. There's no overt denouncing of the fact that there's polygamy going on. Now some people, of course, take that to mean that the text or God is approving of polygamy, and other people will also say that this means that polygamy is only having multiple wives and that concubines don't count as wives.
[00:11:03] And, again, we'll define what a concubine is. But I think it's more likely that the polygamy in the text has meaning that isn't called out specifically, but it's associated with a man who murders and is obviously a self centered human being. So I think it's presenting this kind of a marriage as a twisting of God's good order.
[00:11:28] I think part of the genealogy of Genesis 4 is that they are showing the building up of what's going on on Earth. Things are only getting worse, and it leads to corrupted practices. No longer is it a man joining with a woman to become one flesh, but a man is joining with two women. And that's at least conceptually against the idea of two becoming one, right? Because now there's more than two. The math is wrong.
[00:11:58] Okay, then, of course, we get to the flood account and the sons of God and daughters of men. And as I'm sure you know, I think it makes much more sense to see this as a heavenly beings mixed with earthly humans and producing something that is going to pose a problem throughout Scripture.
[00:12:17] The language there is centered on marriage, and we can wonder if they were genuinely getting married, or whether it was just about the intercourse. Again, this will end up clarified as we continue on our survey of marriage in the ancient world, at least to some degree, potentially. We'll have a little bit more data to decide whether or not these were marriages. This is actually asking a question from a modern mindset, but let's go with it for a moment.
[00:12:52] From the perspective of Genesis two and Matthew 19. What we know so far, reading chronologically at any rate, is that marriage is about God bringing two people together. And that that idea can be corrupted by people bringing new ideas and doing it a little bit differently.
[00:13:12] But we've already seen previous to this with Lamech at the end of Genesis 4, a corruption of the idea of marriage with the introduction of polygamy, which means that the idea of marriage is being taken from its original creation ideal to something else. If marriage is always and forever something that God is joining together, then we're going to need to see that instance of polygamy as being approved. But that's not necessary, especially once we see that it is a corruption of the idea. It's no more about two becoming one. Mankind is taking the institution and corrupting its good use. Just like man tends to do with everything else from the original creation. We take what's good and we corrupt it. Just like the image of God, for instance.
[00:14:04] But anyway, the fact that we have polygamy mentioned, and then this incident in Genesis 6, one of the interpretations of the passage of Genesis 6 is that the sons of God are taking the daughters of men in polygamous situations. So, the very bad thing that is happening in this interpretation is polygamy. Now, it is an interpretation, but just like with the Sethite view, you have to insert polygamy into the text, because it's just not there by itself, at least in the immediate vicinity. And really, let's be honest, most any interpretation's gonna need to add something or other here, because it's just such a short passage.
[00:14:46] Okay, but people love claiming that their reading is the plain reading, but still the plainest reading is just that the Sons of God are angelic beings, whatever else they have going on, because the exact same terminology is applied to those who are clearly the heavenly host elsewhere, like in the Book of Job.
[00:15:08] So anyway, my point being, the Sons of God could legitimately be marrying these daughters of men because, so far, as far as marriage goes, it seems to be mostly men taking women. Women maybe don't have a choice in the matter, but, again, something we'll touch on later. Genesis 6 talking about marriage could just as easily be a euphemism for intercourse, and not really be referencing marriage at all, if the point of the passage is the production of the Nephilim more than anything.
[00:15:43] But, in general, quite often in the ancient world, there were no formal ceremonies of marriage in the way that we would expect to see it. And it all got consummated in the marriage bed. But of course, there has to be some distinction, because, again, there's the idea of concubines. And concubines aren't wives.
[00:16:06] Or are they? At least there's a distinction there. We know that, because otherwise, why would there be another term? So let's go ahead and find out what a concubine is and how that differs from a wife. The difference resides largely in legalities of rights and inheritance and things like that. Otherwise, they're basically the same thing.
[00:16:30] So trying to get out of the charge of polygamy by saying, Oh, I only have one wife and all these concubines, it doesn't really work that way, but we'll see because you have the terminology that does get conflated and so, you can't really make that big of a distinction. So, for instance, to say that the patriarchs weren't practicing polygamy, that doesn't really fly, honestly. Especially when we see Jacob.
[00:17:00] But anyway, the difference resides largely in legalities of rights and inheritance. So, this is part of an argument that might side on the idea that the Sons of God weren't actually marrying the daughters of men, because where's the inheritance factor? Are the Sons of God going to provide their wives and children land and money and whatever? If the Sons of God were concerned for creating a human dynasty, then that would be one thing.
[00:17:29] But if they were just being used for the creation of Nephilim to corrupt humanity at large, then the legalities of the situation maybe wouldn't matter to them. But the big problem with that is that there would be no sense of cohesion, no tribal structure. How did we get to the giant clans, in other words, later? What would make it so that they'd even survive without association within a community? So that makes a defense for the sons of God somehow actually marrying these women. Perhaps they married into the tribes that the women were part of. But we'll say a little bit more on this later.
[00:18:07] Going back to concubines, 1st Kings 11 tells us that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. So again, there's some sort of difference. It seems to be odd to us that he has so many wives. Why didn't he just make 699 of those concubines? But we need to remember that these were often political alliances, so the wives would be bringing some sort of political value, and they would require something in return for that value that they were offering by having a higher status. Whereas the concubines would presumably be strictly for pleasure or some other purpose, like a wife giving Solomon one of her servants for procreation purposes, similar to Sarai and Hagar, or a king just saying, here, here's a bunch of women.
[00:19:02] Now what muddies the waters is that the terminology gets conflated between wife and concubine. Keturah, a concubine of Abraham, gets called a wife in Genesis 25, verse 1, whereas in First Chronicles 1, 32 through 33, she is called a concubine, though it's possible she was a concubine who was raised to the status of wife after the death of Sarah.
[00:19:31] But, there could also be different purposes for the writer of Genesis and the writer of First Chronicles, which is very possible. Again, some confusion with the terms when we see Bilhah, Jacob's concubine who was given him by Rachel, and she's called a wife. Of course, we know that Bilhah's children, Dan and Naphtali, had inheritance, but this was under the legal status of Rachel, since, when a wife would give a servant to her husband, for inheritance purposes, the children would be considered the children of the wife, rather than their biological mother the concubine. This is further established by the fact that it was not Bilhah who named the boys, but Rachel.
[00:20:20] So that's very interesting all in all. It shouldn't be surprising to us that marriage was about something as practical as inheritance, And since that didn't always line up with preferences and enjoyment, there was something attached to the idea of marriage that was more about, well, carnal appetites. And frankly, it was all very male centric. There's no getting around that. Now, we'll see how the Bible puts that on its head to elevate women, for sure, but it certainly doesn't just remove the male centricity entirely. Lust and politics make the world go round, I guess.
[00:21:05] Genesis 25, as we see with concubines and what happens to their lines, Abraham sends their sons away so that they can't compete with his main inheritor. And that might seem cruel to us, but in the case of a society where there's only so much arable land and whatnot, well, there were things you had to do. And there had to be ways in which you decided who had priority. In this kind of a society, it has a kind of logic to it.
[00:21:37] We have to realize that ancient logic and our modern logic aren't going to be the same. And we'll just have different aims and different ends. So, as difficult as this might be, we need to put aside our modern sensibilities and try to think in terms of what made sense in the past. Generally, there was a great concern over maintaining the family line and keeping enough family around to do what you needed to do, including having political power. And sometimes that happened through concubines.
[00:22:12] So, we've gone from one couple in the garden to the start of polygamy. And now we've developed the marriage idea even further to distinguish between wives and concubines. And shocker of shocker to the modern mind, the patriarchs, again, were polygamists. And the Bible doesn't say anything against that, really.
[00:22:37] Now, there is one place, the only potential biblical criticism against having multiple wives is in Deuteronomy 17, 17, which speaks about restrictions for the future king. It says, he shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away, nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself.
[00:22:57] That's not necessarily saying he can't have multiple wives any more than he couldn't have silver or gold. But really, the sense here is that the more gold or wives the king has, the more he will turn aside from what he's supposed to be focused on. Now, interestingly, even without a restriction, we do have a tendency towards monogamy as we move forward in history. So that by the 8th century BC or so, monogamy was a more common practice in general, though of course kings would still have harems.
[00:23:43] And this is a fascinating point to me, actually, because of the question of the dating of the Torah in particular, and also because of something else. So for the dating of the Torah, if by the time of the exile, and the supposed writing or the compiling of the Deuteronomistic history, if polygamy wasn't an established practice at that point in time, you know, by the exile, and if Torah isn't an old text, then why do we see all of the polygamy that we do in the first five books?
[00:24:18] We're going to get into some laws, and we'll see that polygamy being an established fact of life is a bit inherent to those laws. So to me, this is actually an indication that the Torah really is old, and not just a product of the exile.
[00:24:36] So, that's interesting, especially for the book of Genesis. But the other thing that's even more fascinating to me is that, well, Torah is the law, right? And even though they dropped polygamy eventually and did so without comment in the text, polygamy is still encoded into the way the law was written. So that's just fascinating to me.
[00:25:04] And this fact is going to be useful to our broader question of the change of ideas through time concerning marriage. We don't need to get all the way to the New Testament or the early church or today to see a difference. And that difference isn't, like, called out in the text, as I said explicitly. It doesn't say, okay, now polygamy's wrong.
[00:25:26] So already through the history of the Old Testament, there is a progression and a change, so we're going to keep that in mind as we go. But of course, as I pointed out, anyone can see that polygamy was not the ideal from creation, and that it is a corruption and a twisting of what is good. And we can put this in the category of something like God allowed this because of the hardness of man's heart.
[00:25:57] So the law, even though it's good, is there because of sin, as Paul brings out in various ways. So I just think this is a fascinating example of the law not being quite as set in stone as the perfect ideal after all. Like if we want to keep Torah, are we gonna go back to polygamy? Of course not. We're not gonna go back to the fact that if a man rapes a woman, the woman is going to have to marry that man, right? So keeping Torah isn't about the letter of the law though, of course, we can still nonetheless go back to the creation story and try to see what that tells us and filter the laws through that. So if that's what we're doing as far as keeping Torah, then that means that the written laws could in fact be situational.
[00:26:55] Also when we're taking a hard look at the concept of polygamy, we can be honest about the historical realities that are created through time. Women had a hard lot in the ancient past. Polygamy at least allowed them to be cared for properly, and hold a protected status within the community. The ends don't have to justify the means, but a wife of a wealthy man would simply fare better than the wife of a poor man. That's just the way of it. And wouldn't that be better than the alternative, if you were embedded in this historical reality that you couldn't change? At least not yet. Change happens slowly and through time. So, again, considering the logic of the time with the society and the morals, and the general economics and etc. Polygamy may have been the best of all possible options for many women at the time.
[00:27:58] Again, we don't need to justify the means, but sometimes you just gotta go with what's best in front of you. I actually think that the phasing out of polygamy is going to happen naturally within a society as it becomes settled and more affluent in general, with more opportunities for people as a whole, and there is less need for that polygamy structure.
[00:28:26] I mean, even today, economics plays a big, big role in why and how and when people get married. Why the big push for same sex marriage, for instance? Well, in part, because there are economic benefits to being married. And sure, sometimes in some cases there are more economic benefits to not marrying. I know people who don't marry because if they do, they'll lose their disability benefits or the like.
[00:28:58] But often it's the other way around. Tax breaks, combined incomes, insurance, monetary benefits all over the place. It's still the case that many divorces do not happen because of economic reasons. And then on the flip side, sometimes divorces happen because of economic reasons. But that general tendency is to do things that will give you an economic boost of some sort.
[00:29:27] And so this is part of that fairness language when we come to the concept of same sex marriage. You know, when we were talking about the concept of gender and gender identity, and the idea that people want others to not only tolerate what they're doing, but accept it. Well, this is part of that whole matrix, because if you are same sex attracted, and you're not going to marry somebody who is the opposite sex, then, well, that seems unfair to you, right?
[00:30:01] Because you're not going to be able to get those tax breaks and insurance benefits of being married and things like that. So that's part of that whole, at least defense of why people want to have same sex marriage. Because there's benefits. And it's not just money, but it's also societal status. You get social credit in many ways for being married.
[00:30:30] You'll often be trusted more. If you've got a spouse who is higher up the social ladder than you are, you'll benefit from that. And today, even though not everyone feels the same way about same sex marriage, If you're in one, in some sectors of society, at least the really loud ones, you'll be congratulated and esteemed for that.
[00:30:54] That is social credit. And we all want to say that we just marry for love, but it's always, always more complicated than that. We are all human, and we all have motivations that are invisible to us. Some of this stuff is just inherent to the fact that we are social creatures. And social credit is going to matter by necessity, because we are made to be in community.
[00:31:24] Now back to the concubines, here is an interesting quote. This is from the Baker Illustrated Guide to Everyday Life in Bible Times. It says, quote, Of course, a full status wife also brought advantages to her husband, but there were economic incentives that made the marriage to a concubine more desirable. The groom did not have to pay the bride price that was required for marriage to a full status wife. In addition, the husband could add children to the household without complicating the inheritance since the concubine and her children were not included in the calculation. Concubines were sought by kings for an additional reason. When alliances were struck, the partner nations exchanged young women. The more alliance born concubines one had, the more prestigious one looked as a leader in the ancient world. Although the Lord warned the Israelites about buying into this worldview, as we see in Deuteronomy 17, 17, Solomon had 300 concubines and Rehoboam had 60. As we see in 1 Kings 11. 3 and 2 Chronicles 11. 21, end quote.
[00:32:47] So when it talks about alliance born concubines, it's not just marrying a princess or a member of the court from one kingdom. That person would probably be a wife. But a nation could give a number of women to another nation, just as they'd give slaves or some other type of commodity. So that's how a king would amass a really large harem.
[00:33:11] Now, even though there was not a bride price for a concubine, that didn't mean that money wasn't exchanged at times, because frequently concubines were also slaves. As I said earlier, the Bible does tend to promote some things that perhaps were not common in ways that improved the status of even someone like a concubine.
[00:33:32] Even though it starts with the designation of female slave, Exodus 21, 7 through 11 is about a concubine. It says, quote, If a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to go free as the male slaves do. If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master, who designated her for himself, Then he shall let her be redeemed. He does not have authority to sell her to a foreign people because of his unfairness to her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters. If he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. If he will not do these things for her, then she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
[00:34:25] So, the fact that Abraham sent his concubines and their sons out with gifts was a generous move, though we should probably note that verse 11 here means that the woman is free, as in, she can probably go and marry someone else potentially, or at least it wouldn't be illegal for her to do so.
[00:34:45] So, a concubine, even though her status is going to be lower than that of a wife, that's still going to basically fit under the definition of marriage. And here's another thing that's important for our topic today in recognizing that marriage is associated with conjugal rights.
[00:35:05] And this is emphasized by Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, 3 through 5, which says, quote, the husband must fulfill his duty to his wife and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, also, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again, so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self control. End quote.
[00:35:45] Douglas Stewart says in his New American Commentary for Exodus that, quote, The apostle, Paul reiterated the principle behind the emphasis on marital rights in First Corinthians seven, three through five, in his reminder to married couples of the need for regular sexual activity in marriage. The Bible forbids sexual relations outside of marriage, but requires it within marriage, demonstrating that marriage represents a genuinely different state from singleness in God's eyes, with sexual intimacy serving as the covenant seal of marriage, and regular sexual relations functioning as a small scale, but important and required periodic marriage covenant renewal. End quote.
[00:36:36] So, just from that perspective, we can see a trend of sex being for marriage. So, we could use that for our basis for non premarital sex. But we'll talk more about extramarital sex probably next week. I actually don't think we're going to get too much into the idea of adultery today.
[00:36:57] But I want to point out this fascinating perspective, that of intercourse being a kind of marriage covenant renewal. If you want more on that, you can check out a book called Marriage as a Covenant: Biblical Law and Ethics as Developed from Malachi by Gordon B. Hugenberger, which obviously this book presents the idea of marriage as a covenant, and as such, a covenant needs to be accompanied by some sort of an oath sign.
[00:37:33] This really does parallel well the concept of God binding marriages, because covenants are generally going to be overseen or done before a deity. So, if marriage is going to be a covenant, then there would be some formality to it, right? Usually we're thinking words, but as I said, there's also oath signs.
[00:37:57] Now, for us, covenants are all about words, right? You can have a verbal contract with someone, but we much prefer to see things in writing. But either way, we're talking about words. Words are crucial to covenant making for us. And an oath sign would be, at the most, signing a paper in front of a witness or maybe giving some money.
[00:38:23] Marriage for us is defined by the vows taken in front of witnesses and the paperwork filed at the courthouse. Once those words are said and filed and papers are signed, then you're married. But that's not how marriage was done and defined in the ancient world. We do have some evidence of legal documents and some declarative formulas in the broader ancient Near East.
[00:38:50] And looking through some of the passages of the Bible, we can see there is suggestion of formal language that's associated with marriage. Genesis 2, 23, and 24 doesn't explicitly have to be about marriage because the phraseology is used elsewhere for kinship relationships. But there seems to be some sort of allegiance or oath associated with that declaration. So it's possible, I'm wondering, just off the top of my head, and I'm not getting this from anywhere else, but I wonder if the Genesis 2, 23 verse is kind of akin to the betrothal or the situation where you have the legality of protection of someone. Which, we're going to talk a little bit more about that here in a bit, whereas Genesis 2, 24 is more that actual marriage kind of declaration, but that's just speculation on my part.
[00:39:51] Then we have places like Hosea 2, 16 and elsewhere, which could be indicative of looking like a marriage formula. Where it says, And in that day, declares the Lord, You will call me, "my husband," And no longer will you call me, "my Baal," my Lord.
[00:40:13] That language is very similar to texts that we found in Babylon about marriage.
[00:40:20] And here's an example from a book that not everyone thinks is part of the canon, but some people do. We can see marriage as clearly being a type of a covenant in the Book of Tobit. And there is something that looks like a ritual formula here that parallels what we've been talking about. These ritual formulaic sayings, they're not fancy. It's mostly just a declaration.
[00:40:44] If you're not familiar with the Book of Tobit, we have here the story of a girl who has been unfortunate in having a demon kill each of her new husbands before the marriage could be consummated. And now we have the eighth marriage happening here in Chapter 7.
[00:41:02] Okay, so here's chapter seven verses nine through 15. And yes, I'm reading this from the KJV, so it's got that KJV language. Quote. So he communicated the matter with Raguel, and Raguel said to Tobias, Eat, and drink, and make merry, for it is meet that thou shouldest marry my daughter. Nevertheless, I will declare unto thee the truth. I have given my daughter in marriage to seven men, who died that night they came in to her. Nevertheless, for the present, be merry. But Tobias said, I will eat nothing here till we agree and swear to one another. Raguel said, Then take her from henceforth according to the manner. For thou art her cousin, and she is thine. That's the formula right there. And the merciful God give you good success in all things. Then he called his daughter Sarah, and she came to her father, and he took her by the hand, and gave her to be wife to Tobias, saying, Behold, take her after the law of Moses, and lead her away to thy father. And he blessed them, and called Edna his wife, and took paper, and did write an instrument of covenants, and sealed it. Then they began to eat. End quote.
[00:42:24] Okay, so again, the language sealing the couple is that of cousin, or the original language might be brother and sister. But clearly this is formulaic language for a marriage, and it's a formal covenantal agreement between parties, complete with signing a paper at this point in time, and a fellowship meal.
[00:42:45] So there's likely to have been formal oaths often associated with marriages. But that's not all. It's not just the words that make a marriage. We know also there's usually an exchanging of gifts, or what we call the bride price, which would be connected to that covenant type idea. But what about the idea suggested above in that quote about intercourse being a type of oath sign?
[00:43:15] Now, there could be other oath signs, of course, depending on the culture. sometimes the feast, sometimes a premarital bath, sometimes the pouring of oil, or changing clothes, but intercourse would be standard for the marriage.
[00:43:32] Let's have a look at Genesis 24, 67. Which says, Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and he took Rebecca, and she became his wife, and he loved her. Thus Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.
[00:43:50] Isaac took Rebecca into the tent. Well, that's clearly a euphemism. We know what's going on in the tent.
[00:43:58] Reading from Hugenberger, where he talks about the idea of the so called bride price, suggesting that the husband is purchasing a wife, probably many of us are familiar with that idea. Hugenberger says, quote, According to a majority view of an earlier generation of scholars, marriage throughout the ancient Near East conforms to the pattern of marriage by purchase. In other words, the husband legally purchased his bride from her guardian, usually her father, by paying a bride price, end quote.
[00:44:36] But Hugenberger is going to disagree with that view, actually, and see marriage more along the lines of adoption rather than purchase of a good, which is then used, and that use of the good, the wife, is going to be what goes on in the marriage bed. That's a typical older understanding of what's going on with ancient marriage, and many people still kind of think that that's what they were doing.
[00:45:05] But Hugenberger and others push back, and they liken marriage more to the lines of something like adoption, like I said, which is bringing an outsider into the family through legal means. In the case of an adoption, the original parents, if they happen to be around, would need to give up the legal rights of the one being adopted.
[00:45:31] So that would be what's going on with the marriage. The parents give up their legal rights, which are then assumed by the husband. Those legal rights are not about ownership, but about protection. And they include things like how you fit into the inheritance structure of the family, Or, if you don't fit into the inheritance, you're at least owed the rights of protection.
[00:46:00] An additional point is that the so called bride price can be given, like in the instance of a betrothal, but it's clear that the marriage has not yet actually happened. It's a step that ought to happen before the marriage, but as we'll see at some point, it can also happen after the marriage. So, clearly something else has to happen in order for the marriage to be a marriage other than this bride price.
[00:46:29] The formal words, or vows, also seem to happen before the marriage is actually said and done. So, in other words, unlike in our culture, the vows do not cause the marriage to appear.
[00:46:43] Okay, so I'm calling the bride price the so called bride price. Because it might be better to see the term as a betrothal gift. Because once it's given, it's not like another type of transaction which could be annulled by either of the parties between whom the money is exchanged. At that point, the father himself can no longer stop the marriage once the betrothal gift is given and accepted. There is strong indication in many places, though, that the wife could stop the marriage, and certainly the husband could.
[00:47:23] So we have the giving of the betrothal gift, which is between the husband and the father in law, but that's only a betrothal, which could have rights and responsibilities that are exactly like a marriage, But it's not yet a marriage. And even though there may be accompanying feasts and processions and other things, it's really only the act of intercourse that seals the marriage as a marriage. That's the only consistent oath sign of the covenant. And it's not between the father and the husband, but between the husband and the wife.
[00:47:59] And as I said, there are ancient Near Eastern laws, including in the Bible, which put on that level of Marriage to the betrothed woman that says that any extramarital relation She has with someone else is the same as adultery. But though she has the status of a wife in this way, she doesn't have it in other ways, as demonstrated by things like, she can be put away and marry another man if it was her father in law who had sex with her before she consummated the marriage with her husband, or if she was forced into it.
[00:48:34] Of course, there are still plenty of places where a woman doesn't have any choice, and even then, there's a certain order to things, or there's supposed to be anyway. Here's the biblical example of a man taking a wife from his enemies. He has to let her grieve for her parents, and she becomes his wife only after they've had intercourse. And if she doesn't satisfy the husband, he has to let her go.
[00:49:00] This is in Deuteronomy 21, verses 10 through 14. When you go out to battle against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive and see among the captives a beautiful woman and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall bring her home to your house and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity. And shall remain in your house and mourn her father and mother a full month. And after that, you may go into her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes. But you shall certainly not sell her for money. You shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled her. End quote.
[00:49:49] Here's another passage about a brother taking the wife of a deceased brother when the marriage has not produced children. This is called a levirate marriage. And here there is no betrothal gift.
[00:50:03] Deuteronomy 25, 5 says, When brothers live together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. Her husband's brother shall go into her, and take her to himself as wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her.
[00:50:23] Of course, we see the situation of the brothers play out in Genesis 38, with Tamar being given brothers in succession, until she's waiting for the last one, and clearly she's not being given to that brother, so she takes matters into her own hands. In the situation with Judah, who went into Tamar in disguise, it seems like that formed a marriage, actually, a covenant in which he had taken responsibility. In this way, Tamar actually was not committing adultery, and the children produced were legitimate heirs.
[00:50:57] And then, of course, there is the situation with Jacob and Leah in Genesis 29, 21 28. Quote, Then Jacob said to Laban, Give me my wife, for my time is completed, that I may go into her. Laban gathered all the men of the place and made a feast. Now in the evening he took his daughter Leah and brought her to him, and Jacob went into her. Laban also gave his maid, Zilpah, to his daughter, Leah, as a maid. So it came about in the morning, that, behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, What is this that you have done to me? Was it not for Rachel that I served with you? Why then have you deceived me? But Laban said, It is not the practice in our place to marry off the younger before the firstborn. Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also for the service which you shall serve with me for another seven years. Jacob did so, and completed her week, and he gave him his daughter Rachel as his wife. End quote.
[00:51:59] You see, there's no suggestion in the text that the marriage could just be annulled at that point. It was a done deal. They were legally married, and getting out of a legal marriage wouldn't be possible without a legitimate reason. So he had to marry Rachel as a second wife.
[00:52:16] All right, so what does all this have to do with our broader topic today? Well, from the perspective of the customs of the day, there was kind of no premarital sex. There was no, oops, we had sex before marriage because, once the sex happened, you needed to go through the other legal forms that were necessary, namely the transfer to the new family.
[00:52:38] Okay, well, we still need to nuance this, because there's still the matter of the covenant. So yes, there could be sex outside of marriage if there's no covenant being made. Then covenants would need to be agreed to and have some sort of formalities to them.
[00:52:54] So in the case of having sex with a woman who's not married, we see in Exodus 22, 16 through 17, if a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged and lies with her, he must pay a dowry for her to be his wife. If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the dowry for virgins.
[00:53:19] Now note that in Exodus 22, the woman is seduced. So, that presumes consent. If she consents to have sex, she has to become his wife, though the father can refuse to give up legal control of his daughter in order to allow that to happen. The reason this can happen is because there would need to be a transference of legal protection.
[00:53:44] Whose house is she in? If she doesn't end up as his wife, even though she had consensual intercourse, there's actually no punishment listed for her here. It was the responsibility of the man to pay up and make it formal. And if the father refused, then that was that. The daughter couldn't enter into another household of her own volition.
[00:54:07] And there's a parallel to this in Deuteronomy. But in this passage, the woman is forcibly taken, not seduced. And the man has to pay the father. And there is two ways to see this payment. Either the payment is a bride price or that betrothal gift. Or, also it's seen as explained as the payment for the crime, and thus there's no betrothal gift in this case. It's like the father's compensated for the loss of his daughter, but again, not in the sense of a possession, but in the sense of losing a valued member of the household. But I'm not sure I'm convinced that it's not a betrothal gift, because there's parallels in the text, and that's effectively what's going on here.
[00:54:50] But, anyway, this is actually part of a larger passage here, but I want to focus on the aspect of non consent for the moment. There are two situations here, one with a girl who is engaged, and one where the girl is not. The girl who isn't engaged should get married to the man who raped her, which I realize that sounds awful to us. And the engaged girl, nothing happens to her, although the man does die. So this is where we have consequence for rape, but it's only a consequence if the girl has that marital status of some sort. So again, that is something that is not in line with how we think today.
[00:55:34] Anyway, this is Deuteronomy 22, verses 25 through 29. It says, quote, But if in the field the man finds the girl who is engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die. But you shall do nothing to the girl. There is no sin in the girl worthy of death. For just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case. If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her, they are discovered, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father's family fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife, because he has violated her. He cannot divorce her all his days. End quote.
[00:56:23] So, yeah, in the case of rape, the man dies if the woman is betrothed, or probably if she's married. But if she's not, well, they just have to get married. Verse 25 says that only the man who lies with her shall die, which is as opposed to the woman dying, because presumably, if this happened in the field or somewhere where her screams wouldn't be heard, then she probably did scream. And so, she's innocent because she didn't consent.
[00:56:55] In the previous example in this Deuteronomy 22, the intercourse of the betrothed one happened in a place where she clearly did not call out even though she could have, so in that case she is guilty and both she and the man are supposed to die.
[00:57:12] All right, so there's a lot more we could say about that, but those situations are ideally, I say ideally, even though I know we've got problems with this whole situation. They're going to ideally end in marriage. And so the intercourse is technically between married people.
[00:57:30] What about situations where sex doesn't happen in conjunction with marriage? Continuing on the theme of being forced, you have situations like with Dinah in Genesis 34. The contract or covenant of marriage was a possibility here, and maybe even what should have happened according to Torah law. But the situation was forced, and even in a normal circumstance, A betrothal gift does not cause the covenant of marriage itself.
[00:57:59] There's still the aspect of whose legal control is Dinah under. Remember that marriage is a legal arrangement that has to do with inheritance and things like that. Dinah was legally under the protection of her father. So even if the situation was not forced, she couldn't just go marry anyone she wanted.
[00:58:18] So it's all a bit complicated. The situation in the past is not like what we have today. You've got the legalities of control and inheritance, which are going to have to do with that betrothal gift. But the marriage covenant itself is between the man and the woman, and it happened through the act of intercourse.
[00:58:36] In the situation in Genesis 34, that would seem to fall under the situation from Deuteronomy 22, and yes, I know the laws in Deuteronomy perhaps don't apply to Genesis, because that's before the giving of the law, So, anything that goes against Torah law in Genesis, we could just chalk up to the idea that they weren't under Torah law yet.
[00:58:58] And, of course, then you have the idea that the people at Shechem certainly wouldn't have been under Torah in any case. So, fair enough. But the readers of the Torah are generally going to have those Torah laws in mind, nonetheless, and say this is what's appropriate. So, it's not unfair to think about it in terms of those later laws.
[00:59:19] But even without Torah law, and presuming that there's going to be some differences, we still need to wrestle with how Genesis 34 presents marriage within the context of the ancient Near East, as I've been describing it. So let's read the first part of the story, keeping in mind what I've suggested about bridal price versus betrothal gift, and intercourse being the oath sign of a marriage, and the question of whether or not daughters were property of their father or just members of the household in general. We're going to see that it really does sound in Genesis 34 like it is the father who is giving the daughter in marriage.
[00:59:58] All right, Genesis 34, verses 1 through 13, Now Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had born to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters of the land. When Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, He took her and lay with her by force. He was deeply attracted to Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, get me this young girl for a wife. Now Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter, but his sons were with his livestock in the field. So Jacob kept silent until they came in. Then Hamor, the father of Shechem, went out to Jacob to speak with him. Now the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they had heard it, and the men were grieved. And they were very angry, because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done. But Hamor spoke with them, saying, The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him in marriage. Intermarry with us. Give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves. Thus you shall live with us, and the land shall be opened before you. Live and trade in it, and acquire property in it. Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, If I find favor in your sight, then I will give whatever you say to me. Ask me ever so much the bridal payment and gift, and I will give according as you say to me. But give me the girl in marriage. But Jacob's sons answered, Shecham and his father Hamor with deceit because he had defiled Dina, their sister. End quote.
[01:01:42] Okay, we'll stop right there. After that is when we get the whole story of the brothers lying about how they'll not give Dina to marry a bunch of uncircumcised louts. So they convinced the men to circumcise themselves and while they're still in pain, they go and kill them all.
[01:01:59] Now, I realize that I kind of made it sound like a marriage was just between the man and the woman who covenanted together to create the marriage, and that's part of it, but we can't lose sight of the fact that they didn't all just make individual decisions like we do today.
[01:02:15] Any covenant made by an individual would affect the whole family, and intermarriage was an inherently political thing. So, any marriages would still have to come under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of the family. It's like this complex matrix, and I think we tend to try to zoom in on one aspect of it to simplify it, but I think we can see that all of the pieces kind of have to work together.
[01:02:40] The interaction and covenant between family groups and between individuals, and there's technical legalities there in all of that. I think we often see that from the dark lens of ownership that, let's be honest, that may be partially true. But there's this other spin that could give some different perspective as well, because laws do benefit tyrants, but they're also instituted to provide a secure community that on some level ought to benefit the members of the community as individuals.
[01:03:14] We might not like old laws, but then again, we aren't in those circumstances. And we don't appreciate the necessary logic within a system. We don't like outdated systems because they have those prosaic laws, and fair enough, but if we're in those times and systems, we would feel quite different about them.
[01:03:35] All right, so we're definitely going to be continuing this conversation because there's so much to say, but I will end with this question, going back to the sons of God and the daughters of men, were they married? Well, because they're described as wives, I think that does mean that the covenant of marriage was in force, rather than this just being a circumstance of just violence or casual sex, as we might say, though the aspect of violence still might be included.
[01:04:07] There's no suggestion of a betrothal gift or anything like that, but we don't always have that explicitly stated in the text. Another point we might bring up for why this is something that was less than savoury that was going on is the idea that they could take whoever they wanted to be a wife. And maybe that's exactly what they were doing. So maybe they were taking the wives without proper legalities. I don't know. I don't think that's the whole of the story, as if that's the only thing they did bad or the only thing that was wrong here. But, what this could be is part of the general breakdown of society, and the taking of wives through violence might be an aspect of that.
[01:04:53] In general, there's just not enough data to go on here to really pin things down. The other thing is that it doesn't have to be an either or. So saying that this is about polygamy, or the breakdown of societal customs and legality, doesn't mean that it's not also spiritual beings who are involved. I just think that if you're trying to come up with a way to get out of that spiritual beings aspect of it, you're displaying an interpretive bias, and you know, we all have them. But the fact is, the ancient world would have no problem with the supernatural view. It's us who has the problem.
[01:05:29] Anyway, so we see this connection between marriage and sex, and we need to keep looking to see what else we see, because again, it's not the case that mere sex does land in a marriage covenant. But it's very wrapped up in that, and we see that reflected in the laws and the idea of what marriage is.
[01:05:50] Okay, so, like I said, there's so much more we could talk about here, but we've got plenty of time ahead of us in future episodes. So we'll end the discussion there for the moment. I'm hoping you are all enjoying this series. If you have questions or things you'd like to make sure I hit on, that I mention and maybe if I don't get to them, please do let me know.
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[01:07:44] I'm excited we're getting to 100 episodes soon, and as I've said, I've got some great plans for that, so look forward to the next little bit for more on that. But at any rate, that is it for this week, and I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.
