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Covenantal Authority and Inheritance in Torah

Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among the company of those who gathered themselves together against the LORD in the company of Korah, but died for his own sin. And he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be taken away from his clan because he had no son? Give to us a possession among our father's brothers. Numbers 27:3-4 ESV

The first covenant that God made with the people who could be called Hebrews was introduced in Genesis 15 and given more detail in Genesis 17. God made a covenant with Abraham to make him a father of many nations (Genesis 17:5) and to give to one line of his descendants, the land of the Canaanites between the river of Egypt and the River Euphrates (Genesis 15:18, 17:8). These descendants would not come through all of Abraham’s immediate children, but specifically through one son of promise, Isaac. In the next generation, the covenant would once again only pass down to one son, Jacob, because Isaac’s other son, Esau, despised God and the covenant. In the third generation, all of Jacob’s sons inherited the covenant from him, becoming the patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

Abraham had eight sons (one each with Hagar and Sarah and six with Keturah), and it seems likely that he also had daughters. Isaac had two sons that we know of, and Jacob had twelve, plus Dinah and an unknown number of other daughters according to Genesis 37:35 and 46:7. Only the sons of Abraham and Isaac are are listed as as having founded nations, and only the sons of Jacob founded tribes in Israel. To an extent, this could be attributed to the universal practice of mankind to attribute nations to patriarchs, not matriarchs, but primarily because that is God’s practice also.

Except for Dinah, their daughters are unnamed in the text, not because they weren’t important to their families or to God, but because Genesis isn’t a family history. It’s a covenant history, and God’s covenant with Abraham is passed down through the many generations from father alone. Daughters are also born into that covenant, but they don’t pass down the covenant of their fathers to their children; they pass down the covenant of their husbands.

Fast forward a few centuries to the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan…

The accounts of the Twelve Spies, the five daughters of Zelophehad, and the division of the Promised Land among the tribes clearly illustrates this principle. Patriarchal tribal identity is a crucial aspect of the divine order for both spiritual and practical reasons.

Land inheritance in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is more just a division of territory. It is a tangible fulfillment of the covenant with Abraham as passed down to all of his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. The boundaries laid out in Numbers 36 speak to a deeper spiritual reality, one in which inheritance in the Promised Land serves as a manifestation of divine grace and the delegated authority and responsibility that accompanies it. Just as rings in Biblical times symbolized authority and submission, so too does the allocation of land reflect the Hebrew people’s relationship with God and their duty to maintain the sanctity of their covenants with him.

Torah mandates that daughters who inherit land must marry within their tribe. This isn’t just patriarchal flexing; God (or Moses) wasn’t trying to keep women in their place by denying them the means to provide for themselves. By God’s design, tribal and national identity–and therefore generational inheritance of the Abrahamic Covenant–is patrilineal (passed down through male descendants). If your father was a member of the tribe of Issachar, then so are you. If a woman marries a member of the tribe of Zebulun, then she becomes a member of that tribe, and all her children will be also.

When Zelophehad’s daughters asked Moses for an inheritance in their father’s name in Numbers 27:1-11, they weren’t trying to change the way God reckoned nationality. To the contrary, they were honoring it by preserving their father’s place in that reckoning. However, if they were to inherit land within the allotment of the tribe of Manasseh and then marry a man of Benjamin or Judah, their children would belong to their husband’s tribe and would eventually inherit Zelophehad’s land within the territory of Manasseh. If other women later inherited in similar circumstances, the boundaries of the tribes would soon be a meaningless patchwork.

From a certain perspective, this confusion might seem like a good thing. Wouldn’t a unified nation without tribalism be a much better state of affairs, discouraging internal squabbles and simplifying international relations?

If God wanted a single people without tribes, he wouldn’t have told Moses to inscribe twelve names on the shoulders of the High Priest, he wouldn’t have put twelve stones on the High Priest’s breastpiece, he wouldn’t have commanded twelve loaves to be kept on the Shewbread Table in the Tabernacle, he wouldn’t have given Yeshua twelve disciples, nor installed twelve foundation layers to the New Jerusalem, nor twelve gates into the city.

Although the twelve tribes are completely mixed and mostly hidden today in exile, for his own reasons, God wants the twelve tribes to remain distinct in the Promised Land. When they return in the Millennial Kingdom, they will once again be assigned land within tribal territories. (Ezekiel 47:13) Part of those reasons, I believe, involves the authority that is inherent in the passing of a covenant from one generation to another. A father must have authority over his son in order to subject his son to a covenant, and therefore must have authority over all of that son’s children, and so on throughout all generations.

In this same principle, God commanded that the members of tribes should camp together in the wilderness, each under the banner of his own clan, and that the army (technically, the militia, since the army included every able bodied male twenty years and older) should be organized by families. (Numbers 1:3) Judges were also appointed and given authority based on their tribal and clan affiliations. (Deuteronomy 1:9-18)

If a family on one plot of land is under the authority of the patriarch of Ephraim and the family on the next plot of land is under the authority of the patriarch of Naphtali, national defense and civil law becomes as confused as tribal boundaries and much more likely to incorporate favoritism for the judge’s own tribesmen. If the national Judge or King makes a call to arms, without instantaneous and secure communications, how would the militia know where to assemble or to whom they should report? God’s plan for land inheritance solves both of those problems.

In Deuteronomy 1, Moses says that he chose one man from each of the tribes to scout out the land. Numbers 34 outlines the boundaries of the Promised Land and gives the names of the twelve men–one from each tribe–whom God selected to divide it. Moses and God could have chosen women for these roles if they had wanted to. Neither of them bowed to cultural expectations in other matters, such as the Shemitah year, dietary rules, and the sacrificial monopoly, so they certainly could have allowed female priests or appointed a woman to participate in the surveying and division of the land, yet they didn’t. Both the survey and the division had to be executed by men representing each of the twelve tribes, because only men have the authority to speak for their people on covenantal questions.

When the patriarchs of Manasseh explained the practical difficulty of allowing daughters to inherit land in Numbers 36, they weren’t trying to oppress women. They too were trying to honor Zelophehad, the covenant, and all of the people of Israel.

There are no prohibitions in Torah against women owning property or operating businesses, but only sons routinely inherit land from their fathers. As detailed in Numbers 36:6-9, if a man dies with only daughters, then his daughters will inherit his property as if they were sons with the one restriction that they must marry a man from his tribe so that the land won’t permanently become the territory of some other people. The point isn’t to restrict women, but to protect the sanctity and continuity of God’s covenant with Abraham. Ultimately, the Torah’s directives on tribal land inheritance in Numbers 36 are far more than a matter of property distribution. They encapsulate the very essence of the covenant between God and his people.

Women are vital in God’s covenantal order and his plan of redemption for mankind. Where would we be without Sarah, Ruth, and Mary? But however much our modern ears may rebel against it, God counts nations by their patriarchs, and covenants in the Bible are inherited from fathers. Zelophehad’s daughters respected their father, their tribe, and God on this matter. We should too.

Hear more about Zelphehad’s daughters and God’s promises in this video on Joshua 17.

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Adultery of the Heart

Adultery of the heart isn't punishable by a civil court and isn't grounds for divorce, but it is definitely a serious problem.

I recently posted this on social media:

If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 20:10

By Biblical standards (not modern English nor American legal), adultery is a sexual relationship between a married woman and someone who is not her husband. A man cannot commit adultery with an unmarried, unbetrothed woman. It’s impossible by definition. A sexual relationship between them might be sinful, but it is not adultery because she’s not married or betrothed to another man.

Don’t get mad at me. I’m just letting the Bible define its own terms.

I added that last sentence because I know that this can be a very sensitive topic and will put many people into fight-or-flight mode. Sure enough, this post had many times more comments than normal, many of them quite irate and accusing me of having all kinds of nefarious motives for even discussing the topic. I’m not going to waste my time defending myself from other people’s imaginations, so I blocked most of them.

One person had the self-awareness to recognize that her emotional reaction against what I was saying might be only emotional.

Holly wrote…

I think this discussion raises hackles because it seems to insinuate a greater standard of fidelity upon married women than upon married men. Biblically, the latter will not incur the death penalty if they sleep with a woman who isn’t married; whereas the former will incur capital punishment in 100% of cases in which they stray from their marriage. A married man could potentially justify a range of unfaithful behavior with any unmarried woman, could he not? Also, I struggle to reconcile the Torah commands about adultery with Yeshua’s statement about a man looking upon a woman with lust in his heart. The Savior did not qualify His statement by saying “a man who looks upon a MARRIED woman…” He knew the Torah far better than we do, so what are we to conclude from this?

If you can help shed any light on this difficulty, it would be much appreciated. A husband, as the head of his household, ought to have at least an equal standard of fidelity as his wife, if not a higher one.

I thought Holly’s questions were good, and I appreciated that she wasn’t trying to attack me for merely exploring what the Scriptures might mean. She deserved a thorough and honest reply.

Thank you for the honest questions, Holly. Topics related to male-female relationships can be very difficult for most people to think objectively about, so it takes a lot of thought and study, and a willingness to confront ideas that might be very difficult. So, I sincerely appreciate the spirit of your question.

Remember that Yeshua was primarily addressing heart conditions and not delivering sermons on the technicalities of the Law. For example, if you hate your brother in your heart, you are guilty of murder in your heart, but you haven’t actually murdered your brother. Torah says it is a sin to hate your brother in your heart, but it’s not a crime that can be punished by anyone.

The same principle is true in marriage.

Matthew 5:32, Matthew 19:9, Mark 10:11-12, and Luke 16:18 all give somewhat different versions of the same teaching. We’re not getting precise transcripts in the Gospels. We’re only getting summary versions. I think this causes some confusion in cases like this, but we’d probably find even more to argue about if we had full audio recordings of everything Yeshua said.

Keeping in mind that Yeshua almost never discussed technicalities of the Law, choosing to teach about the state of people’s hearts instead, here is how I believe these 4 statements, along with Matthew 5:27-31, harmonize:

It’s a sin to covet another man’s wife, even if you haven’t done anything about it. In Matthew 5:27-30, Yeshua discusses lust that is tantamount to adultery. The text doesn’t specify “married woman”, but it also doesn’t specify “married man”. I think we’re all in agreement that adultery requires at least one party to be married, so we already have to make some assumptions about what Yeshua’s intent. (I know that some people believe it’s adultery even to desire your own wife, but I hope we agree that’s nonsense.) In v28, I believe he meant for his audience to understand he was talking about a married woman, because it wouldn’t have made any sense to them otherwise. Just like we assume that he must have been talking about married *people* because it doesn’t make sense to say that two unmarried teenagers have committed adultery because they find each other sexually attractive.

(Please note that I am NOT saying it’s ok for anyone to lust after someone who isn’t their spouse. I’m neither saying it nor implying it.)

If a man despises the covenant of marriage, whether his own or someone else’s, he has adultery in his heart, even if he hasn’t committed actually adultery. It is a sin for a man to hate his wife and want to divorce her when she hasn’t done anything to deserve it. It’s a sin to despise another man and want to take his wife. However, these aren’t crimes of which he can be tried and convicted. These are sins in the heart that can lead to sins of the body.

There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.
Mark 7:15 ESV

If a man does divorce his wife without just cause, then the adultery in his heart is beginning to come out. If you willfully put someone else in a position where you know they are likely to sin, you are making yourself guilty too.

You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:14 ESV

In the ancient world, a divorced/put away woman who had no family to fall back on, was in a very bad economic situation, facing possible starvation and constant abuse from strangers. She must either find another man to support and protect her or possibly resort to prostitution. If she was put away unjustly, her former husband shares in the guilt of her ensuing adultery because he put her into an impossible situation. He is guilty, she is guilty, and any man who sleeps with her is guilty.

Adultery of the heart isn’t punishable by a civil court and isn’t grounds for divorce, but it is definitely a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Just like having murder in the heart, eventually it comes out into the real world.

Any time you are trying to fill in gaps in the Scriptures, you are going to be engaging in some speculation, and there is significant danger that you are going to get it wrong. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make the attempt, though. Yeshua’s teaching style makes it necessary.

Believers need to stop being afraid or ashamed of the Bible. If it’s God’s word, being ashamed of what it says is tantamount to being ashamed of God. Since the Father, the Son, and the Apostles all tell us that God’s Law teaches us how to love one another, why in the world would you be afraid of it?

God doesn’t want childish marionettes who only follow orders with no understanding. Writing the Law on our hearts means that it must be internalized. To do that, we must spend a lot of time studying God’s Word, looking for connections between different passages, meditating on the meaning, and praying for understanding.

Sometimes you’re going to get it wrong. Don’t worry too much about it unless it leads you to doing something that seems to contradict some direct commandment or it bothers your conscience. Those are both warning signs that your understanding could be wrong. Keep studying. Keep meditating. Keep praying.

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The Tabernacle and the Family

The wilderness Tabernacle is a picture of God, the individual, and the family.

YHWH is a God of patterns. You only have to look at DNA for the proof. Humans share a large percentage of their DNA code with monkeys, fish, and bananas. Contrary to popular opinion, that’s not evidence for evolution. It’s evidence for a Creator who loves to reuse a good pattern. Every good coder does the same thing. He writes a module, which is a small bit of code, that can be called and reused from numerous other parts of the program. That’s not laziness or a shortcut. It’s elegance. Efficiency. God is the master coder, the most elegant and efficient coder who has ever existed.

He follows patterns in other ways too. Consider the feast days. They are all patterns of his interactions with Israel and the world. They remind us of what he has done in the past, and they prophesy of what he will do in the future. Also consider the creation of mankind. God said “Let us create mankind in our own image.” Then he took a pattern of himself and applied it to his favored creation: man.

The image of God in mankind is much like his signature or fingerprints. First, God created Adam in his own image, and then he created Eve in Adam’s likeness to be a helper “suitable to him”, unlike any of the animals. She was shaped like him, had free will, and an eternal spirit like him. Adam and Eve, both together and individually, are made in the image of God, and the two together are tasked with creating new people who will carry the image of both of their parents and, through them, of God himself. If you look closely enough at all of God’s creations, you can find evidence of his fingerprints in everything he created. God loves to reuse a good pattern.

In Exodus 25, we begin to see God’s instructions for his Tabernacle, the place where he would dwell in the center of the camp of Israel. If we did not see evidence of his fingerprints in the design of the Tabernacle, I think we should be very surprised and begin to wonder if the Tabernacle was from God at all. Fortunately, we do see those fingerprints.

Like God himself, the Tabernacle is a unit. It is echad. Yet within it there are compartments and furnishings, and the primary components of the Tabernacle follow the pattern of the primary components of God.

The Ark contains a memorial of divine provision (manna), and the tablets of the Law, and so is an image of the provider and law giver, God the father.

The Menorah is a source of light generated by oil, like the anointing of the Holy spirit. Like the Holy Spirit the menorah has seven branches. Recall the seven spirits of God in Isaiah 11:2 and in Revelation 3, 4, and 5.

The Table holds within the bounds of its crown twelve loaves representing both the bread of life and the twelve tribes of Israel. Since it holds all the people of Israel, the Table is a metaphor of the King and Messiah of Israel, Yeshua.

If the Tabernacle is an image of God–and it certainly appears to be–then it must also be in some way an image of mankind, since mankind bears the image of God. I have written elsewhere of how the Tabernacle can be an image of a single person, but it is also an image of the family, which God instituted at the same time and on the same day he created man in his image.

The commandments in the preceding chapters of Exodus show some ways in which a man’s responsibility to his family includes providing sustenance and protection. Elsewhere in Torah, a man is commanded to teach his children, to be a lawgiver and law enforcer in his house. In this, every husband and father is intended to follow the pattern of God the Father, as he his represented in the Ark of the Covenant.

The very nature of the woman’s creation and her physical aspect shows us that she was created to be a life giver, a source of wisdom and comfort to her family, and to light the way of the children to their father. She nurtures her children when they are too young to understand explicit instruction, teaches them the ways and wisdom of their father when they are older, and comforts them when they are hurting. She is the Menorah in the tabernacle of man, and in some ways an image of the Holy Spirit for the family.

The firstborn son, according to God’s order, receives a double inheritance over his brothers, putting him in the position of a secondary provider for the extended family and the captain of his father. He is the father’s right hand, an extension of his father’s power into the world, and he sustains his siblings as the showbread table holds the sacred bread. The first born son of a man in this respect is an image of the first born son of God. When his father deems him ready, he will sit on his father’s throne and become the patriarch of his family. Even more than other believers, a firstborn son should look to Yeshua, the Son of God, for his role model.

Be careful of reading too much into these patterns. We are very good at finding patterns where none exist, so it’s important that any lesson drawn from allusions and apparent patterns in Scripture is supported by more explicit texts elsewhere. Some of the roles pictured by the Tabernacle and its furnishings are explicitly commanded in torah, while others may only be illustrated or even just hinted at. There may be characteristics of the Tabernacle that could be extrapolated into roles in the family but that are not commanded in scripture. Patterns like these might be illustrative but are not definitive.

For example, there is no explicit command in Scripture that younger children should obey the firstborn son in the absence of the father. This is an idea that could certainly be derived from the structure of the Tabernacle and the pattern of the firstborn son of man after the firstborn son of God, and it might even be a good principle in many respects, but it is by no means commanded by God and should not be treated as if it is.

For another example, a father is not to be hidden away from his family. To some extent he will be inscrutable to his children due to his superior strength, knowledge, and wisdom, and perhaps the oft inexplicable nature of his rules. Like God, he has no obligation to explain his actions or his laws, but also like God, his laws shouldn’t be arbitrary. Every commandment of God is given in love for the good of his children, and so should be every instruction of a father. He must be actively involved in the care and teaching of his children, aware of their activities and experiences so that he can speak directly to them when needed. A father should not only be a lawgiver and disciplinary, but a caregiver and a protector. He holds the staff of Aaron as a rod of correction, guidance, and comfort.

Likewise, a mother is not simply a source of light and comfort, she also is a lawgiver of sorts and a disciplinarian. The difference between the roles of father and mother in these respects is more of degrees and ratios, than ironclad laws. The Holy Spirit is God just as much as is the Father and Son, and a woman is just as much the image of God as is her husband.

Reading through scripture, you won’t be able to find a clean division between the authority and roles of Father, Son, and Spirit, and this is true in the household as well. There is no hard line between the roles of mother and father and firstborn son, but a gradient. Deborah was both mother and judge of Israel. Yeshua is our master, brother, friend, and servant. There will be times when a wife must take command of the household because her husband is ill, absent, or incapacitated. That’s not a sin. It’s part of the flexibility that God has built into all of humanity. It is part of our image to be able to fill in for and support one another.

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Jacob, First into Battle

Why did Jacob divide his camp before he met Esau in the wilderness east of the Jordan on his way back from his years with Laban?

Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps, thinking, “If Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left will escape.”
Genesis 32:7-8 ESV

Jacob divided his camp into two companies. In one company went all of his livestock, and in the other went his family and other possessions. (We can know the general scheme of division because verses 22 and 23 say that all four women and eleven sons were still with him after he had sent off his livestock.) Jacob obviously did not consider his wives and children to be mere property. He was willing to sacrifice all his wealth before sacrificing even one of the concubines. Later, he would also divide his family into separate parties.

There are points in this story where it sounds like Jacob sent his family ahead to face the danger of Esau while he stayed behind to see what would happen, but a careful reading shows that this isn’t what happened at all. Here is a breakdown of the actual sequence of events:

  • 32:3-5 – Jacob sent messengers to Esau to announce his return.
  • 32:6 – Messengers returned to say that Esau was coming with 400 men.
  • 32:7 – Jacob divided people and herds into two groups, but they didn’t go anywhere yet. His entire retinue was still in one location.
  • 32:8-12 – Jacob prayed for deliverance from Esau and declared his trust in God’s promise.
  • 32:13-18 – Jacob sent servants with goats, sheep, camels, cattle, and donkeys as 5 separate gifts to Esau.
  • 32:19-20 – Jacob sent additional presents of herds to Esau.
  • 32:21 – Jacob stayed in the camp with his family.
  • 32:22-23 – Jacob sent his family and remaining possessions across the Jabbok river.
  • 32:24-30 – Jacob wrestled with the angel.
  • 32:31-32 – Jacob returned to his family.
  • 33:1-2 – Jacob divided his remaining camp into three.
  • 33:3 – Jacob went ahead of his family to meet Esau alone.
  • 33:4-11 – Esau met Jacob and his family. Discussion of gifts.
  • 33:12-15 – Esau offered to merge their camps and Jacob refused.
  • 33:16 – Esau returned to Seir.
  • 33:17 – Jacob went on to Sukkot.

At first Jacob feared for himself and his family, so he divided his household into two groups, thinking that if Esau attacked one, then the second might have time to escape. But then, as he prayed for God’s protection, he remembered God’s promise to make his offspring as numerous as the sand of the sea and realized there was nothing Esau could do to threaten that future. He changed his plan.

Instead of sending his household in two different directions, Jacob decided to try to make peace with Esau, apparently hoping to cool his brother’s anger before they even met. He formed small herds of goats, sheep, camels, cattle, and donkeys and sent them ahead as gifts, one herd at a time. He instructed the herdsmen accompanying each herd to tell Esau that they belonged to his servant Jacob and were sent as a gift to Lord Esau. He called Esau “Adonai” and used the same word for gift, minkhah, used of the grain offerings given to YHWH in Leviticus 6 and 7. He simultaneously expressed humility and generosity to someone who was legally and justly his inferior and did so in a way that was certain to soften Esau’s heart toward him.

Jacob then followed this with more of the same, with groups of animals–the most widely recognized form of wealth–probably arriving over the course of at least two days. He could have sent all of these animals as a single, tremendous offering, but he understood that many small–but still generous–gifts over time will have a much deeper impact on the recipient than a greater gift given all at once. If a soft answer turns away wrath (Proverbs 15:1), how much more will a dozen soft answers?

In Genesis 32:22, Jacob took his family and the rest of his household across the Jabbok River north of Esau’s territory. While both sides of the river were within the territory that God had ultimately promised to Abraham’s descendants, it was a significant geographic boundary separating them from Esau. Jacob had authority from God, but Esau still held most of the actual power, as evidenced by the significant force that accompanied him–100 more men than Abraham fielded in his war against Chedorlaomer in Genesis 14.

Verse 23 says that Jacob “sent them across the stream” and is then left alone in verse 24 for his wrestling match with the angel. However, verse 22 shows that he crossed the Jabbok with his family, probably going back and forth multiple times to lead them across in smaller groups. When his entire household had successfully crossed the river, it appears that Jacob went back by himself, possibly to make one last check for stragglers, just as we might check under all the pillows and in all the drawers of a hotel room before finally checking out.

Even then, the text doesn’t say which side of the river Jacob was on during his encounter with the angel. Most people assume that he was on the north bank since he was by himself, and that seems reasonable but is ultimately unknowable. The antiquity of Genesis necessitates guessing at many dates, names, and locations.

My point is that Jacob didn’t send his family ahead into danger. In 33:1, he is back with his family again, so whether he wrestled on the north or the south bank of the Jabbok, they were never far away.

In 33:1-2, when Jacob could see Esau and his men approaching, he divided his camp again, this time into a column of three groups, with those he valued most at the rear. Bilhah and Zilpah with their children were in the first group, Leah and her children in the next, and Rachel and Joseph in the last. Each of these groups probably included herds, beasts of burden, servants, and armed guards. Even after giving away enormous wealth to Esau, Jacob was likely still a very wealthy man.

Good leaders, fathers, and husbands should almost always be first into danger and the last to escape. Verse 3 says plainly that Jacob then went ahead of all these to be the first to meet Esau on the road, bowing seven times along the way. Although we know from Genesis 29:10 that Jacob was a strong man, he didn’t want a fight with Esau, let alone with all of his men. He wisely softened Esau’s heart before they met with generous gifts, shows of humility, and generally treating Esau as an honored lord, all the while putting himself and all his wealth in danger before his wives and children.

Finally, knowing Esau’s fiery character from previous decades spent with him, he seems to have also suspected that Esau’s good will might not last and that his men would not make good company for his family on the road.

In 33:12-15, Esau offered to accompany him on the road, but Jacob found a gracious way to decline: “Let my lord go on ahead of his servant, and I will lead my group slowly, at the pace of the livestock and children, until we reach Seir.” He flattered Esau by acknowledging his ability to travel more quickly, he made himself seem weaker in Esau’s eyes, and he even lied to say that they would join him in Seir, when he had no intention of going there.

Esau responded by offering to leave a group of men behind to guard them on the road, but without their lord present to keep them in check, that might prove even more dangerous than traveling with Esau. Jacob’s response this time was simpler, but even more subtly flattering: “There’s no need. Only let me find favor in your sight.” That last was probably to say that if everyone knew that Jacob was in Esau’s good graces, who would dare try to harm him? So Esau went to Seir and Jacob went to Sukkot.

Jacob, far from being a coward, showed himself to be a generous, determined, and humble leader. He put the well-being of his family ahead of his own, recognizing and avoiding dangers to them, and humiliated himself before the world in order to preserve them. He was far from perfect, but in this episode of his life, Jacob was a model from which all fathers and husbands can learn.

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To Serve and Protect the Garden

Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. What does that mean for our relationship to Creation and Creator?

YHWH Elohim took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Genesis 2:15

Adam was not placed in the Garden merely to water plants. The Hebrew word translated as “to dress” in the KJV and “to work” in the ESV is abad. It’s the same word used throughout the Old Testament for the Hebrews serving God or a slave serving his master. “To keep it” follows in the same vein. This is the Hebrew word shamar which means to guard and protect. Adam was to serve the Garden by helping it become the best that it could be, and also to guard it against anything that might try to harm it.

The King James rendering of “to dress it and to keep it” could just as literally be translated “to serve it and to protect it”, interestingly very similar to a phrase found on many police cars in America: “To serve and protect.”

Scripture describes many different kinds of servant relationships, but “serve” in this context doesn’t mean that Adam was a slave to the Garden. In fact, Genesis 1:26 says that God intended to give mankind authority over the whole earth. Adam’s divinely appointed task of caring for the Garden didn’t make him subordinate to the Garden. Rather it was a consequence of his authority over it. All authority is given, in part, to enable the bearer to care for his charge.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls, being accountable for them to God. Allow them to do so with joy and not grief, because that wouldn’t be good for you either.
Hebrews 13:17 (Paraphrased)

Mankind was never intended to be an absolute ruler over either the Garden or the rest of the earth. We were given authority over creation so that we might serve and protect it. The earth serves us, and we serve it, in turn.

God didn’t ad lib creation. His intentions didn’t change halfway through the week nor even after Adam was created. God programmed a drive to accomplish Adam’s first assignment into the very genetic code of mankind, both men and women. Men are driven to provide for and protect their wives and children. Women are driven to protect and nurture their children. We instinctively want to protect the vulnerable and help the weak become stronger.

In our sin-corrupted state, that drive is often abused, misdirected into tyranny. Some people may abuse the earth, destroying today with no care for tomorrow. Some men may dominate their families through physical intimidation and some women may treat their children as little more than annoying accessories to a lifestyle.

However, we can’t allow such abuses to rob us of the strengths that God intends for us to use. We have an obligation to use the resources that God has given us for his purposes. To neglect that obligation is as much a sin as it is to abuse it.

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Be Fruitful and Multiply! A blessing or a command?

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28 ESV

Genesis 1:28 says “And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it…”

The foremost question I want to answer concerning this verse is: “To what extent are we required by God to ‘be fruitful and multiply’?” I see three ways to argue the point.

1. God blessed us with fruitfulness, but did not necessarily command us to multiply.

The proximity of “God blessed” and “God said” (“And God blessed them, and God said unto them…”) appear to portray the two clauses as parts of a single act. God said “Be fruitful and multiply” two other times, once to the animals in v22 and once to Noah and his family in 9:1. In all three instances, the statement was intimately linked to a blessing. Therefore, the phrase “Be fruitful and multiply” is merely a blessing much as we might say, “Get well soon,” to a sick friend.

The problem with this argument is that there is a vital difference between the way that God blessed the fish and birds and the way that he blessed mankind. In v22, he does not appear to be speaking to the animals so much as over the animals: “God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply…” which could be reworded as “God blessed them by saying…” However, in the verse currently under consideration, Moses wrote “God blessed them, and God said unto them…” implying a qualitative difference in the nature of the blessing, as well as a logical division between the blessing and the “command.” But is this difference enough to make a command? I’m not convinced.

2. God categorically commanded mankind to be fruitful and multiply.

The qualitative difference demonstrated above, namely that God spoke directly to mankind and that the name “Elohim” is repeated as the subject of both clauses, certainly seems to support this interpretation. Elohim is Hebrew for “judges” or “rulers” and so it appears that, by repeating the name of the Creator, Moses was emphasizing the authority with which God spoke. The command is valid until the Kingdom in which men will become like the angels and no longer lawfully procreate. (At least that is the commonly accepted interpretation of Matthew 22:30.)

However, Yeshua said in Matthew 19:12 that some people are eunuchs from birth and some are eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul also recommended that unmarried Corinthians should remain unmarried if they are able. This means that we can’t say that every person who refrains from marrying and having children is disobeying this command from God. It can only be a command to mankind in general and not to each and every individual.

3. God commanded mankind to be fruitful and multiply, but only to a certain point.

God commanded us to multiply, but if the purpose of the command was to enable mankind to effectively govern the earth<1>, a point might come (or might have already come) at which further multiplication becomes unfruitful. “Replenish the earth” is an integral part of the command to multiply, so once we have populated the earth, the command may be considered fulfilled. This is the argument of the environmentalist who favors zero or negative population growth (and commonly also favors abortion and coercive measures to discourage growth, but these negative and ungodly attitudes are not inherent in the argument).

Although most theologians and men of God whom I respect believe this is not the case, I am not convinced either way. Since “subdue the earth” is part of the same statement, governance of the earth is at least a major part of the purpose for man’s creation, so this argument can’t be easily dismissed.

How does this question effect real life?

Believing that “be fruitful” is a blessing and not a command might change how you affect family planning or if you attempt to plan the growth of your family at all.<2> Some people will see rejecting a blessing from God as too presumptuous, even if it isn’t commanded, and decide not to make any special attempt either to avoid or prevent children. Others might want to time the arrival of children at the moment they believe will maximize the blessing.

Since the command is ambiguous, no one should be ostracized or harassed because they choose to have a large or small family or no children at all. I believe that most economic reasons for not having children are petty and faithless, but there are many other reasons that I am not capable of judging, such as precarious health of the potential mother, genetic disorders in either parent, or any number of other circumstances.

Paul wrote that under certain circumstances it is better to remain unmarried, and it might be that under some circumstances it is better to remain childless or to stop conceiving children. I cannot say for certain what all of those circumstances are, but I am not willing to judge the hearts of other men and women based solely on how many children they have. God knows and judges the heart in such situations.

I believe that we can say definitively that celibacy is not morally superior in general to marriage, although it’s possible that it might be in very limited circumstances. A divine command (or even a bit of divine advice) to multiply is also a divine command to have sexual intercourse.

The misogynist, anti-sex tendencies of a great number of Christians are proved in the very first chapter of Genesis to be perversions. These tendencies were no doubt inherited at least in part from the pagan philosophies that were popular in the early centuries of the Church. The Manicheans of Augustine’s day believed the whole physical universe to be the product of the Evil Kingdom’s invasion of the good. They believed that sex, by causing the continuation of the physical and by being surrender to physical pleasures, is the ultimate evil.<3> Many prominent Christian teachers of that day, Augustine included, were never able to completely purge this heretical taint from their doctrines, and it has infected the Church to varying degrees ever since.<4>

What about subduing the earth?

If “be fruitful” is a command then so is “subdue it.” To subdue means to forcibly subjugate, but I don’t believe that any kind of brutality is intended. In fact, the requirement of a Sabbath for the land in Leviticus 25:1-7 and a Sabbath for domestic animals in Exodus 20:10 indicates the opposite.

The point of the command was not to grant permission to conquer, but to grant the authority over nature which we require to effectively govern it and to use it for our livelihood. We were not commanded to go out and conquer all of nature for the sake of the conquest itself, but we were blessed with the ability and the authority to reshape it and redirect it as necessary.

In all cases, possession of the authority to do something when necessary is not a requirement to do it whenever possible. Environmental extremism and pseudo-scientific theories of anthropogenic climate change aside, it is impossible to witness the methods and abuse heaped by some men upon nature and call it righteous. Excessive abuse of authority is justification for rebellion. If we abuse the authority that God gave us over the land, we will eventually be thrown off by it. There are many examples all over the world of exactly that happening. We are not to simply ignore all of nature either. Adam was placed in the Garden in order to tend, protect, and cultivate it. The maintenance of the Garden—and by extension the whole earth—was one of his very first tasks.

Mankind, men in particular, can rarely be truly fulfilled living in the concrete hives we call cities nor in a scarred, oily wasteland of pure industry. We will be most happy living close to the earth, earning at least a part of our living through work with our hands. I have experienced few sensations as gratifying as burying my bare hands in rich soil and shaping and encouraging the growth of new life. The personal anecdotes of many others testify to the same phenomenon in their own lives.

God gave mankind, both male and female, authority over the earth so that we might be able to support ourselves through it and effectively tend it and protect it. Like the ox treading the grain, we may extract comfort and sustenance from the earth, but to take from the land more than we can use merely for the accumulation of wealth is an abuse of our authority.

Authority over land and house

The authority which a husband has over his wife is similar to the authority mankind has over nature in that his authority does not exist for its own sake and must not be abused. Men were given that authority for a purpose: in order to effectively guide and protect their wives and to facilitate their role as fitting helpers. If mankind abuses its authority over the land, the land will reject him; this is justice. If a husband abuses his authority over his wife, she will reject him; this too is justice.

Dominion over the land does not mean that the land exists solely for mankind’s benefit, nor does a man’s authority in his house mean that the woman exists solely for his benefit. She exists to be a support to her husband in whatever task God has given him and to be a mother to her children, but not to be a slave to either one. I absolutely do not mean to excuse the wife from submitting herself to her husband in matters where he is not terribly abusive or where he does not demand immoral behavior of her, but a man who mistreats his wife for his own purposes is in rebellion against God’s purposes and has rejected the headship of Messiah over him. He has no right to demand submission of his wife when he refuses to submit to his own head.

All of these things–children, marriage, fertile soil, and the authority to make them productive–are blessings that necessarily incorporate some commands: Do not commit adultery. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife. Don’t muzzle an ox when it treads the grain. Etc. Whether in having children, loving your wife, obeying your husband, or cultivating a field in a manner that preserves it for future generations, living according to God’s design, trusting him and his good will towards his creations, brings blessings in the form of peace, personal fulfillment, and abundance.

<1> Although I doubt that he would have openly supported the idea which I wrote next, this is the view promoted by Rushdoony: “The meaning of the family is thus not to be sought in procreation but in a God-centered authority and responsibility in terms of man’s calling to subdue the earth and to exercise dominion over it.” Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law. (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973.) 164.

<2> I do not mean abortion, abortifacients, oral contraceptives, or the self-centeredness which our society calls “family planning.”

<3> Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of St. Augustine, Books I-X. Trans. F. J. Sheed. (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1942.)

<4> Many Christian and Jewish writings from the period extending several centuries in either direction of the Incarnation feature this heresy. The Books of Adam and Eve and the Shepherd of Hermas are notable examples.

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Seven Patterns of Marriage in the Bible

Seven patterns of marriage in the Bible. Concubines, wives, handmaids, levirate, etc.

This isn’t a how-to article. I’m not going to tell you how to have a happy or fulfilling marriage. Marriage advice is vital. No matter how smart or “experienced” you think you are, you can’t figure it out all on your own. You need help.

That’s not this. This is more of a “how-did” kind of article. Good, bad, or ugly…this isn’t about managing the dynamics of person-to-person relationships. It’s about categories of marriage that nobody else seems to want to talk about.

That’s understandable. In modern America today, for the most part, a man and a woman date, get engaged, and get married. That’s pretty much how everyone does it. (For the moment, set aside the world’s wickedness and rare outliers like surrogates.)

But I’ve got some foreign and uncomfortable news for you: Modern America is an anomaly. Most people throughout history–most people in the rest of the world right now–don’t do marriage the way we do. That includes the ancient Hebrews who wrote the Bible and for whom it was written.

Marriage Is Central

The concept of marriage is central to God’s portrayal of his relationship with his people. Adam was made in his image, and from Adam, God extracted Eve, making the two together a more complete image of God than either one separately. Over and over, he describes his relationship with his people as a marriage.

The wedding feast…The bride of Christ…Idolatry is the same as adultery.

If God uses marriage as a metaphor of his relationship with us throughout the Bible, it seems to me that it’s important for us to understand how the Bible portrays marriage.

That’s not to say that every marital arrangement in the Bible is a pattern we ought to follow. The Bible doesn’t hide its characters’ bad choices. In fact, it frequently–almost always–highlights them in order to give us examples of what not to do.

But that’s also not to say that every marital arrangement in the Bible that doesn’t conform to our cultural expectations of right and wrong is actually wrong. God doesn’t care about our cultural standards. He communicates with us where we are, but he doesn’t conform his moral standards to ours. If God says something is morally acceptable, then it is. If he says it’s not morally acceptable, then it’s not. Our preferences carry no weight.

God determines right and wrong. We don’t.

It’s tempting to think that God merely “winked” at the sinful nature of foreign things like concubinage and polygamy, which appear on the surface to be unfair to women, because the ancient Hebrews didn’t know any better, but that was never a consideration for any of the laws that he gave. God didn’t hesitate to give a law against making and worshiping statues of him, even though the Hebrews obviously didn’t know that they weren’t supposed to do that. They struggled with idolatry for another thousand years after Sinai, so suggesting God didn’t outright ban any of these marital arrangements only because the Hebrews wouldn’t have understood is absurd.

Slavery…bride price…capital punishment…polygamy…genocide…. Like it or not, these are things that God allows in his Law under some circumstances, and our gut feelings about how right or wrong they are is completely irrelevant to the reality of their rightness or wrongness.

With that understanding, I’d like to describe seven marital arrangements that you will encounter while reading the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Not because I think we need all of these arrangements now, but because I don’t think you can fully understand the Scriptures without understanding the culture and mindset of the people who wrote them. I am neither promoting nor condemning any of these practices. I’m just telling you how marriage used to work and what God allows in his Law. “Allows” does not equal “desires”. “Allowed” does not mean “ideal”.

  1. Betrothal
  2. Free Marriage
  3. Concubinage
  4. Levirate Marriage
  5. Handmaid Concubinage
  6. Slave Marriage
  7. Captive Concubinage

Betrothal is somewhere between our “engagement” and marriage. Free Marriage is closest to what we call “marriage” today. Levirate Marriage is tied to life in the land of Israel. The other four are all variations of concubinage. I’ll explain what that means later, but it’s important to know that Biblical Hebrew doesn’t have a separate word for any of these, except perhaps for “concubine”, and that word isn’t always applied to concubines. In fact, it doesn’t have specific words for marriage or wife at all.

The Hebrew word for “wife” used in the Bible is ishah (אשּׁה), which really just means “woman”. Except for the Levirate Marriage (yabam / יבם), there is no single word for marriage or marry. For women, the Bible uses phrases like “become a woman” or just “become”. For men, it most often says “master”. For readability, almost all English translations render these terms as some variation of “wife” or “marry”, depending on the context. That’s fine as long as the reader knows this, but if you don’t, I think it can often lose meaning or gain unintended meanings.

The differences between these marital arrangements are fuzzy and often overlap. A captive woman might become a handmaid to a Hebrew wife and then be given to the husband as a surrogate. A concubine might be a man’s only wife and if he dies childless, she might become a levirate wife to his brother. It can be complicated.

The ancient Hebrews probably didn’t categorize their relationships in the way I do below, but I think applying labels and descriptions will help the modern Bible student understand what he’s reading in the Scriptures.

Betrothal

Betrothal is similar to what we think of as engagement, but wasn’t so easily broken. In fact, betrothal was considered tantamount to marriage and could only be broken by a divorce. A woman who was betrothed to one man and had a sexual relationship with another would be guilty of adultery.

A betrothal would begin when a man and woman (and her father) agreed to marriage. Under normal and ideal circumstances, the man would give her and her family a bride price–a substantial gift that would likely be shared between the bride and her father or eldest brother. The woman’s family would reciprocate with a dowry of land, livestock, or some other tangible form of wealth. If her husband ever abandoned or divorced her unjustly, her family would probably try to get her dowry back from him.

Joseph’s betrothal to Mary (Matthew 1:18-19) is an example. The primary laws governing betrothal (apart from to whom you are allowed to marry) are in Exodus 22:16-17, Deuteronomy 20:7, and Deuteronomy 22:23-29.

Free Marriage

A free marriage is one in which a man marries a free (not a slave) woman and receives a dowry as part of the marriage agreement. Although we don’t consciously think of bride prices and dowries, this is what we usually have in mind when we talk about marriage.

If the man paid the woman and her family a bride price and did not receive a dowry in exchange, then she would probably be considered a concubine instead. Recall the story of Jacob’s marriages to Leah and Rachel. He agreed to work seven years for each of them, and if that had been the full transaction, they would have been concubines instead of full wives. When Jacob suggests that it’s time they left his father-in-law, both of the sisters replied by saying “Our father sold us and devoured our money”. They were complaining that Laban had sold them to Jacob for labor and had used up their dowry for himself. Fortunately for them, God intervened and miraculously extracted their dowry from Laban in the form of striped and spotted sheep, ensuring that they were free women. See Genesis 31.

Abraham’s marriage to Sarah, Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah, and David’s marriage to Abigail are all examples of free marriage.

Concubinage

In short, a concubine is a wife who is also a purchased slave, usually belonging to the man to whom she is married. In many ancient cultures, such as the Greek, a slave girl could be used by her master however he saw fit, including for prostitution, but that kind of behavior is forbidden by Torah.

If a man owned a female slave who was married to someone else, usually another slave, and if he had sex with her, then he could be executed as an adulterer. A man could take any of his unmarried, unbetrothed slave girls to be his own concubine, but that would become a permanent relationship. She would be his wife, and he couldn’t then toss her aside or give her to someone else like a party favor.

The primary difference between a concubine and a free wife was her legal/economic status as a slave. She had an added layer of economic obligation to her husband that a free wife did not. This had a huge impact on her social standing and on her options if he were to abandon or divorce her, but–contrary to popular mythology–it did not change the fact that she was his wife. She did not stop being a slave when she became his wife, nor did she stop being his wife just because she was also a slave. God required that he provide for her in the same way that he provided for a free wife. See Exodus 21:10.

The children of a concubine did not inherit her status as a slave if her service was owned by her husband directly, but probably would not be able to inherit as a firstborn unless he had no children by a free wife.

Abraham’s marriage to Keturah (Genesis 25:1; she was not the same as Hagar) and the unnamed Levite’s marriage to the unfaithful woman who was murdered (Judges 19) are examples of concubinage.

Levirate Marriage

The word “levirate” isn’t related to the tribe of Levi. It comes from a Latin word that means “brother-in-law”. In this type of marriage, if a man married a woman and then died without having any children, one of his brothers was to marry his widow and their first-born son would become the legal heir of the deceased. The woman was fully a wife to her new husband, just as she had been to her late husband.

Levirate marriage existed to ensure continuity of inheritance in the land of Israel. In Biblical language, a “name” is more than just a label. A person’s name is their character, reputation, faithfulness, and influence in the community. The story of Zelophehad’s daughters in Numbers 27 and 36 shows that a man’s inheritance in God’s promises is an important part of his name, and the levirate marriage is one way that God ensures his name isn’t lost from Israel.

Exactly how this kind of marriage played out in real life is difficult to discern from historical records, including the Bible, but we can extrapolate a few things from the limited information we have:

  • The deceased’s brother would inherit his land if he died unmarried and without any children, but the brother couldn’t simply take the land if the man had been married and was still childless. In order to take over the land, the brother needed to marry the widow and produce an heir for the deceased. The land would then belong to that heir when he came of age, so the brother would only have control of the land for that period of time. His other children would divide his original inheritance among themselves after his death, while the firstborn of his brother’s wife would be the sole heir of his brother’s estate.
  • There were no exceptions for a man who was already married, so this could result in conflict and complications in his house. A second wife doesn’t just add a second relationship, because she will have to be integrated into the whole family.
  • The widow might also come with obligations to her family, including any stipulations that might have been included in her marriage agreement.
  • The deceased’s brother could refuse to marry the widow but such a refusal would cost him honor and social standing. The levirate obligation would then pass to another brother.
  • If the deceased had no brothers or none of his brothers were willing to marry his widow, it seems from the story of Ruth that more distant male relatives might have the option to marry her and produce an heir for the deceased, although that isn’t explicit in Torah.

Tamar’s marriage to Judah’s three sons (Genesis 38:6-14) and Ruth’s marriage to Boaz (Ruth 3-4) are examples of levirate marriage. See Deuteronomy 25:5-10 for the laws governing levirate marriage.

Handmaid Concubinage

Female slaves weren’t only purchased as concubines. Frequently they were purchased as laborers or as another woman’s personal maidservant, also known as a handmaid. The mistress of such a slave could give her to her husband as an additional wife–usually because she was unable to conceive or bear any children of her own–but this didn’t remove the economic obligation of the slave to her mistress. Hence Abram’s response to Sarai in Genesis 16:6 when she complained about Hagar’s behavior: “Look, your servant is under your authority; do to her as you please.”

A wealthy man’s house could get quite complicated if he had multiple wives, each with their own handmaids. Each wife would constitute a sub-house within the house of the patriarch, and each handmaid and her children would be a sub-house within the house of her mistress. The children of the handmaid were counted as the children of the mistress in some legal sense that’s difficult to make out from scripture, but treated as children of the handmaid in household practice. As with the children of a simple concubine, any sons of the handmaid would likely be passed over as the firstborn in favor of a son born to a free wife, if there was one.

Abram’s marriage to Sarai’s handmaid Hagar (Genesis 16:1-4) and Jacob’s marriages to Rachel’s handmaid Bilhah (Genesis 30:1-5) and Leah’s handmaid Zilpah (Genesis 30:9-10) are examples of handmaid concubinage.

Slave Marriage

In God’s Law, the master-slave relationship takes precedence over the husband-wife relationship. If a man marries his female slave, she becomes his wife, while remaining his slave. If a master gives his female slave to a male slave as his wife, they both remain slaves, and their children will belong to their master.

This is probably one of the most difficult elements of God’s Law for modern Americans to accept, but we don’t get to define right and wrong. That is God’s purview alone.

God requires that Hebrew slaves be set free in their seventh year, but non-Hebrew slaves and their children can remain slaves in perpetuity. If the male slave above is a Hebrew and set free, while the woman is not a Hebrew or has not reached her seventh year, she would not be able to leave with him.

At that point, he can decide between three options:

  1. He can walk away, leaving his wife and children behind.
  2. If his slave-wife is a Hebrew, he can wait for her to reach her seventh year, so that she and her children can join him in freedom.
  3. If she is not a Hebrew or if he doesn’t want to wait for her seventh year, he can choose to remain with his master for life.

I’m not aware of any specific examples of this kind of marriage in the Bible, but it is described in Exodus 21:2-6 and Deuteronomy 15:12-17.

Captive Concubinage

Scripture records numerous instances in which Israel captured the women and children of an enemy people. Although this sounds like a horrible thing, the alternative is that they be abandoned to pagan captors, who did not have God’s instructions on how to treat slaves, or to probable starvation. The most humane thing to do after a war in which all or most of the enemy’s men have been killed, is to take the survivors under your protection, and the only practical way to do that is to put them to work.

Many (most?) of those survivors would become handmaids or field workers, but an Israelite warrior also had the option of marrying a newly widowed or unmarried woman. This would make her a captive concubine. He was not allowed to take her immediately, though. In Deuteronomy 20:13-14 and 21:10-14, God gave instructions intended to add a layer of protection for everyone.

Her new master was required to shave her head, trim her nails, and wait thirty days before he could marry her. This gave her time to mourn her family, time to know if she was pregnant or sick, and time to evaluate her character. If, at the end of that time, the man realizes that he let his passions overrule his good sense, or he changes his mind for some other reason, he is required to set her free. He humiliated her in this process and the recompense is that she had shelter in his house for at least a month and cannot then be made a slave to anyone without her consent. She was free to remain in Israel as a widowed sojourner or make her way to some other land or relatives if she had any.

Although I don’t believe the Bible gives any specific details of these relationships, the sacking of Shechem in Genesis 34:29 and the remnant of Midian in Numbers 31 show two instances when a large number of women were captured in war, some of whom almost certainly became concubines to the victors.

Shadows of the Divine

As I mentioned earlier, throughout the Bible, God uses marriage as a metaphor of his relationship with his people.

Since we are most familiar with the concept of the free marriage, it’s relatively easy for us to understand that metaphor. We are the “bride of Christ”, chosen and betrothed, waiting for the marriage supper of the Lamb. But it’s easy to miss the exchange of gifts: the bride price of the Son’s life and the dowry of gold, frankincense, myrrh, spikenard, and spices. These seem like paltry tokens compared to what we were given, but there is no requirement that the dowry and bride price necessarily have to be of equal value. One could say that we give him our lives in exchange for his, but dedicating our lives to him is the marriage itself, so I don’t think that can be considered a dowry.

When we were transgressors, we were subject to the condemnation of the Law, debtors to the Law under a burden we could never pay. He betrothed us to him while we were still hopelessly in bondage, but then he forgave our debt and redeemed us from bondage so that we could be a free bride.

The freed slave who loves his master and his family and binds himself permanently for their sake of his family. This is connected to the believing spouse in 1 Corinthians 7:14 whose family is sanctified to God because of his faith.

All of the laws governing betrothal, marriage, and servitude in scripture are shadows of greater things designed and implemented in heaven. The shadows are patterns intended for our enlightenment. By studying God’s instructions for marriage–even those marital arrangements that aren’t practiced in our culture–we can learn more about him, ourselves, and our relationship to him.

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No One Can Serve Two Masters?

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Matthew 6:24 ESV

In Genesis 24, Abraham ordered his servant, Eliezer, to swear by YHWH that he would find a wife for Isaac from among Abraham’s people in Haran.

And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his household, who had charge of all that he had, “Put your hand under my thigh, that I may make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell, but will go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac.”
Genesis 24:2-4 ESV

When Eliezer met Rebekah, the daughter of Abraham’s nephew Bethuel, he thanked God for guiding him.

The man bowed his head and worshiped the LORD and said, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the LORD has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen.”
Genesis 24:26-27 ESV

Eliezer followed the orders of his master, Abraham, and of his God, YHWH.

However, in Matthew 6:24, Yeshua said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” At first, it sounds as if Yeshua was saying that nobody should ever have any master except God himself, but clearly that’s not what he meant.

The word for “master” in this verse is kurios, which means the same as the English word “master”. It can refer to a teacher, employer, slave owner, nobleman…pretty much anyone who has authority over something. In Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, and other places, Paul tells slaves to obey their human masters (kurios). In 1 Peter 3:6, Peter holds Sarah up as an example for women because she obeyed her husband and called him lord (kurios). Since God established the authority of judges, husbands, and others, clearly Yeshua didn’t mean “No one can serve two masters” in a strictly literal sense.

This is another of many times that Yeshua employed hyperbole as a teaching tool. The immediate context of his statement was the pursuit of material wealth. Just a few seconds earlier, in verse 19, he said “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth”, and he didn’t mean anyone to take this in a hyperliteral sense either, because it’s not a sin to acquire wealth. Once again, Abraham is a case in point.

The key to understanding what Yeshua meant is in the verses between:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Matthew 6:21-23 ESV

Do you see the world as land to be exploited for every grain of wheat and every lump of coal you can extract? Or do you see it as the property of a higher master entrusted to your care for its health and prosperity?

Eliezer served Abraham by seeking out the best possible wife for Isaac, ultimately serving God by being faithful to his charge. A disciple serves God by serving his master. A wife serves God by serving her husband and caring for her children.

There is no conflict at all between serving God and seeking the wellbeing of one’s family, employers, neighbors, and country, because the wellbeing of all people is tied to their conformity to God’s will. On the other hand, if any authority commands us to disobey God’s clear instructions, then we are obligated to obey God rather than man.

But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.”
Acts 5:29 ESV

It’s one thing to submit to taxation that we know will be used for wicked purposes; it’s another thing entirely to obey orders to carry out that wickedness with our own hands. It’s one thing for a wife to submit to a criminal husband; it’s another to be an active participant in a criminal enterprise. Where exactly you draw that line in your own circumstances is between you and God.

YHWH is the Creator of everything and everyone and remains the ultimate authority over all people and relationships. So long as we do everything for his ultimate glory and purposes, we serve him by serving others in whatever role he has placed us. If we elevate our own desires–or those of anyone else!–above God’s, we also elevate ourselves above God, rejecting him as Master.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Matthew 7:21-23 ESV

For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 4:24 ESV

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Man and Woman in the Image of God

Man and woman together were created in the image of God.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27 ESV

Scripture never explains why God created mankind, but there are some clues we can discern from the Creation narrative.

  • We were created in his image, so our purpose requires being like him in some important ways.
  • Our first command was to “be fruitful and multiple and fill the earth and subdue it”, so our purpose requires a large enough number of us to fill the earth and be its master. (See Be Fruitful and Multiply.)
  • Adam’s first task was to inventory all the animals so that he would know he was unique and needed a helper of his own kind.
  • Eve’s first task was to assist Adam in his role as the keeper of God’s garden.

Humanity’s mission as God’s stewards over the earth requires us to act as his agents in the world, to be god-like to the plants and animals, much as Moses was to be like a god to Pharaoh (Exodus 7:1). To fill that role adequately, a man needs a wife, and through that relationship, together they act in another of God’s capacities: they create more people.

God created Adam first, and he was the only man to have been created directly in God’s image through divine action rather than through procreation. Even Yeshua, who is God in the flesh, had a body built cell-by-cell within the body of a woman. All others, including Eve, are created in God’s image by being created in Adam’s image.

Moses’ was deliberate and precise in his wording of Genesis 1:27. Consider this very literal translation:

God created the man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

The man in this verse is literally “the man”, ha adam in Hebrew, not “mankind”. While Scripture sometimes refers to mankind collectively as adam, only the first man is ever called Adam as an individual. Throughout Genesis 1 and 2, when Moses referred to the individual characters, he calls the man adam and the woman ishah. (The woman isn’t called “Eve” until the end of chapter 3.)

The Hebrew words used for male and female in v27 are also illustrative. Zakar, the Hebrew for male, comes from a root that means “remembered” or “memorial”, and what is an image but an imprinted memory of something else? Nekevah, the Hebrew for female, is derived from nekev, which means “to pierce”. It might be derived from the wearing of rings, especially in the context of betrothal, or it might be a sexual reference, as crude as that seems to our Western sensibilities. It’s a more functionally oriented word and describes more of who the woman is rather than who she resembles.

Adam was created from dust and the breath of God, while Eve was created from Adam. In 1 Corinthians 11:7-9 Paul pointed out that all mankind as a whole bears the image of God, but men more specifically are that image: “…he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.”

Despite all this, the very first task God put to Adam was to learn how incomplete he was without Ishah.

God is neither male nor female, but he has something of both the masculine and the feminine within him; else how could Eve have been created from Adam, who was created in the image of God? When the first part of the substance of Eve was extracted from Adam, both feminine and masculine traits, which he had inherited from God, were passed on to Eve, but in a very different balance. Both men and women have masculine and feminine attributes, and in this they both bear God’s image, but each in different ways and degrees

For example, Adam is the law-giver and protector (inadequate as he might have been in both of those roles) and Eve is the mother and helper. But they are only able to be fully God’s agents in Creation when they are together, not as man and man or woman and woman, but Adam and Eve. They are complements, not Lego blocks that can be swapped out for each other at will.

By God’s original design, a man is unable to be a woman and a woman is unable to be a man. They can fill in for each other in a crippled, temporary sort of way, but one will never be complete without the other. If either disregards their role for any length of time, like any well-designed machine, malfunctions will begin to accumulate in every system: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. A person can compensate for that damage for a time through drugs, entertainment and distractions, but that won’t stop the degeneration. It only hides it, enabling a cascade of failures until the whole person is drowning in utter misery.

Hollywood, the legacy media, the National Education Association, and Washington, D.C. are all intent on convincing the world that the only loving thing to do is to encourage injured people to go on destroying their lives. I can’t help but believe they know the damage they are causing and that they actually hate all those they claim to love.

For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Romans 13:9 ESV

True love isn’t making people feel good about this moment at the expense of the rest of their lives. It’s teaching them to keep God’s commandments, including those that concern sexuality and “gender roles”. If you love your neighbor, you must support the Biblical example of marriage as male and female joined together and oppose the world’s twisted counterfeit.

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What Is Marriage?

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.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24

Some topics are more personal than others and tend to trigger more emotional reactions. Food and holidays, for example. Or “is that dress white and gold or blue and black” and, of course, marriage and sexual relations.

Although the Bible has a lot to say about marriage, it never explicitly answers the question, “What is marriage?” Probably for the same reason it doesn’t give a precise definition for travel, war, and sacrifice. Everyone in the Bible’s original audience already knew what marriage was, so why waste expensive paper and ink explaining it.

Our world, on the other hand, has become so full of confusion that we need to spell out even the most basic ideas. So, let me begin at the beginning…

Adam gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field, but the man could not find a helper fit for him. So YHWH God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that YHWH God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman (ishah), because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Genesis 2:20-24

This passage gives us the three most important elements of the definition of marriage.

  1. Marriage exists to help a man fulfill his assigned role in Creation.
  2. Marriage is meant to be a lifelong union of a man and woman.
  3. Marriage was instituted by God from the very beginning.

Marriage Exists to Help Man Fulfill His Mission

Although Genesis 1:28 records that the first collective mission of mankind was to be a caretaker over the earth and all life on it, Adam’s first individual assignment was to evaluate all of the other creatures to see if one of them might serve as a special helper for him. Of course, God knew that none of them would, but he had Adam go through this process so that the man would also know. When Adam was satisfied that none of the animals would meet his requirements, God created a woman, whom Adam named Eve.

Adam and most other creatures were created from the ground, but Eve was created directly from Adam. God didn’t create Eve from Adam’s head or foot, but from his side, showing that she wasn’t supposed to rule over him nor be his slave, but was supposed to be a peer. The woman was to be more like the man than any other creature in heaven or earth, a counterpart who would rule over and care for the earth together with him.

Eve wasn’t created to be exactly like Adam, though, or else God would have created another man and made them hermaphrodites or capable of parthenogenesis. Woman shares in the collective purpose of mankind as God’s stewards on earth, but each woman does so primarily by assisting her husband in his individual mission.

For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.
1 Corinthians 11:8-9 ESV

I know that doesn’t sit well with many people, but it is the plain teaching of Scripture. Eve was created specifically to be a helper for Adam, and Paul asserts that this principle applies within all marriages.

While the original task of humanity was to be a caretaker of God’s creation, the Fall necessitated a change in mission parameters. Our task now is to expand the Kingdom of God through procreation, evangelism, establishing justice, and generally doing good works according to God’s standards of justice and good. How each individual and family participates in this mission varies in as many ways as there are individuals and families, but you can know this with absolute certainty: A woman’s divinely appointed mission will never be at odds with her husband’s.

All kinds of things can prevent us from fulfilling marriage’s full purpose: illness and other circumstances that might be out of our control, the husband isn’t fulfilling his calling, or the wife isn’t fulfilling hers. However, our circumstances and failings can’t change the reason God created marriage.

Marriage Is a Lifelong Union

Genesis 2:24 says that the relationship of Adam and Eve is to be a pattern for all marriages, that a new marriage is inaugurated when a man leaves his father and mother to become one flesh with his wife.

“One flesh” implies that they are united in a way that would be painful and unnatural to separate and Yeshua confirmed this understanding when he said “They are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (See Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6-9.)

“Leaves his father and mother” doesn’t necessarily mean that he physically leaves their dwelling place. The Scriptural example is for extended families normally to live close together, frequently on the same land, and obedience to God’s instructions for the use of the land in Israel requires this. What this statement actually means is that the man steps outside of the nuclear family unit into which he was born and creates a new family still under the broad umbrella of his father’s clan and tribe.

This also doesn’t mean that marriage cannot be ended. God hates both divorce and death, but both happen, whether for good or bad, and both end a marriage. I’ll write more about this another time, but the Torah, Prophets, Yeshua, and Apostles all discuss when it is and is not appropriate to end a marriage. Divorce should be avoided because it breaks something that God didn’t want to be broken, but it is still possible.

Marriage Was Instituted by God

From the very beginning, God intended mankind to be male and female and to be joined in a union that he uses as a metaphor of his relationship with Israel.

Like the Sabbath, marriage was created for mankind’s benefit. Both parties, as well as their children, benefit from the arrangement, especially if it is conducted according to all of God’s instructions. However, also like the Sabbath, God created marriage because it suited his purposes. Every good master provides his servants with the tools necessary to accomplish his assigned tasks. The servant benefits because his job is made easier and more enjoyable. The master benefits because the servant is able to do a better job with greater economy.

Also like the Sabbath, marriage is not a man-made custom and man doesn’t get to define it. People today insist that they can make marriage whatever they want it to be: a man and another man, a woman and herself, and every other perversion one can imagine. Yet, Yeshua said that marriage is “what God has joined together”, so there can be no real question on this score. God makes the rules, not us.

Marriage was the very first government and was created by God to serve as the core of ministry, labor, justice, and civilization. It is a model of God and of our relationship to God and, as God is one (Hebrew echad), man and woman are to be one in spirit and flesh. Marriage benefits us and was created to help us in the work for which we were created, but ultimately both we and marriage belong to God and we have a responsibility to him to protect and honor it.