I saw this picture recently and literally laughed out loud. I had forgotten a few of these Bible stories. So it made me wonder, when was marriage re-defined to include ONLY one man and one woman who enter into marriage of their own free will? Who re-defined it to one man and one woman in free will, God? Or the society? Why did God sanction some of these alternative types of marriage?
Thanks.
(See picture for relevant Bible sections)
Hi Veritas,
We seem to have two basic situations described here: forced marriage and polygamy. Polygamy, while in no way anything that we would want to revive, does not violate the “one man one woman” rule, since the women are not in a marriage relationship to each other, but each has her own marriage to the man. In other words, there are two one-man one-woman marriages. Same with concubinage, which would combine marriage and slavery.
Forced marriage is even tougher to cover since there have been many profound changes in the way the social order works since nomad-tribe days described in the early Old Testement, and since we find the idea of being forcibly “taken” in marriage to be so repulsive (we women perhaps even more so). Even so, once the woman was established with the man and had borne children by him, there may have been very few practical alternatives (thinking about the economics of the time) to tolerating the relationship. Granting that I am not a historian, based on my reading of the women of the Bible it seems like the women of those primitive days would often prefer almost any marriage situation to that of nonmarriage (the only alternative for a rape victim). Christianity, by the way, did something great for women in elevating the status of permanent virginity.
All this was about the establishment of procreative relationships and the continuance of the human story, and this is true even where it was brutal and highly disrespectful of women. In contradistinction, “same-sex marriage” is about simply satisfiying sexual desires and having the government recognize that for some reason that totally escapes me.
I’ll say again that this is not an easy topic, and I hope that in covering it I have not given the impression of defending marriage practices that have always violated God’s plan for men and women, and which both the Church and modern law rightfully treat as heinous. Yet such matters are covered in Scripture, so I think they should be treated honestly. If anyone with a better background than I have has some better approach to the question, I would be delighted to read it.
God Bless,
Joan
