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Construction Material

Friday, March 29th, 2013 | Author:

So the LORD 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.  Genesis 2:21  ESV

Ribs – Except for this passage (side of man) and 2 Samuel 16:13 (side of hill), this word (sela’) is usually about an architectural component.  In other words, it describes building materials or building components like chambers or boards or doors.  “Ribs” is probably a completely inadequate translation.  What the text suggests is that God took the construction material for woman from man.

Why do we need to have this detail?  Why didn’t God just make a woman like he made the man?  The fact that God used material from the man to make the woman has some enormous relationship implications.  First, this action tells us that man and woman are inextricably linked.  The full picture of human being includes both and neither is complete without the other.  This, of course, does not mean that every individual man or woman must have a partner in order to be God’s representative in the world.  Rather it means that the total picture of what being human means is both male and female, and on this level there is no hierarchical difference between the two.  Both are formed by God.  Both have equal status before Him.  Both are linked to each other.

Secondly, this word shows us that the Man must give up something of himself in order for Woman to be.  Adam expresses this wonderful mystery when he says, “This is flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.”  Giving up something of himself produces precisely what he was missing.  The paradox is plain.  In order to be all that I am I must give away part of what I am.  The illusion that I am complete within myself is revealed as a false assessment of being in the world.  I am complete only when I give away myself.

We have already examined the exclamation of Adam and the fact that he is the first to use the Hebrew word ish, a word that is about the summary of relationships, not individual existence.  But now we see that the Man is not just the nexus of all his relationships.  He is also the extension of himself in the life of another.  He is because he gives.

In the end, marriage is about ribs.  Marriage is about giving away my side so that I might let God close the place with flesh.  Marriage is about recognizing that I am who this other is.  Marriage is about living with myself in the body and soul of my partner.  And that’s why it takes a lifetime to be married.  I must learn to give away all the ribs until we become one again.

“Male and female were summoned by their creator to act in unison in order to act successfully.  Yet they were not charged with the task of existing in unison, in order to cleanse, redeem, and hallow their existence.”[1]  That must come from the gift.

Topical Index:  sela’, rib, side, marriage, Genesis 2:21


[1] Joseph Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, p. 32.

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Looking for the Love of My Life

Friday, July 27th, 2012 | Author:

207,557 people on Facebook viewed the offer of the “spiritual bracelet for men,” a hand woven bracelet that “promotes feelings of spiritual well-being.”

I find that fact disheartening.  Imagine what kind of “feeling of spiritual well-being” would be fostered if these 207,557 people gave $1 a month to the efforts to rescue children from abuse or disease.  Imagine if these 207,557 people each did one kind deed a day for the next year.  No, I’m afraid that they would rather seek some non-involved way of fostering spiritual well-being for themselves.  The horrific assumption of this offer is that I can find spiritual well-being apart from acts of hesed.

This brings me to a common subject.  It begins with a question similar to the assumption of the offer for this “amazing” bracelet.  “Why shouldn’t I get what I need out of the relationship I seek with some other special person?”  Bear with my comments and observations:

1.  The idea of romantic love, invented in the Enlightenment and perpetrated by this culture, is false.  It is worse than false.  It is a lie – a powerful, seductive lie that twists relationships into contractual (spoken or unspoken) exchange agreements.  Rather than finding a partner whom we can serve with delightful enrichment, we look for someone who can serve us!  And the predictable result is that we find what we are looking for – self-serving inwardly focused narcissism – only to discover that the one we thought would be so invested in us isn’t what we wanted – because the focus has always been on what WE wanted, not what we are able to give.

2.  God does not punish us for these mistakes.  We take care of that by ourselves.  There are consequences for every action – even if we think we can avoid them, delay them or modify them.  So, choosing to measure our relationships by what they do for us has consequences.  The scars of guilt, the wounds of lost trust, the remorse of life not given away, the pangs of constant fear of rejection.  It is an unfortunate consequence of living that we often don’t realize these things until many years afterward.  Then it is too late to repair the damage.  Since we ignore the advice of those who have already suffered such errors in judgment, believing, of course, that their mistakes do not apply to us, we march blindly toward our self-serving goals, not recognizing the eternal wreckage we leave along the way.

3.  In the end, life is about friendship.  Loves come and go.  Friends last.  The reason they last is because we make a commitment to them regardless of their behavior.  Of course, sometimes the behavior destroys the friendship, but that should never happen because we caused it.  Since friendship is the real objective, making friends is the paramount goal of relationship management.  It is an inevitable and unfortunate consequence of human behavior that sexual attraction often interferes with this goal, altering a friendship into an exchange for common self-serving benefit.  But the bottom line is this:  until you make a friend of the one you wish to love, and keep that friendship, you have nothing more than a series of self-seeking encounters.  The end of the road of self-seeking is loneliness – a deep sense of never actually being loved for who you are, of being unacceptable as you are.  This is almost never the result of the other person’s inability to love.  It is almost always the result of our unwillingness to seek the best for the other person even at our own expense.  In other words, if you have experienced loss in important relationships, there is a very good chance the cause is your own desire to make the relationship meet your needs rather than acting as if the relationship is an opportunity for you to serve and whatever way possible the needs of the other.  Friendship is the solution, not romance. Where romance breeds pseudo-friendship, self-seeking brings broken hearts.  In order to be loved, one must first be a friend – and a friend never gives up caring for the other person.

4.  Friends are friends even if they don’t agree.  Lovers become enemies when they don’t agree.  You can measure the degree of your friendship with another person by your willingness to honor his or her life even when you disagree.  Exchange relationships are built on the necessity to receive equal value.  Friendship doesn’t care.

5.  In the end, marriage should be the common union of two deeply committed friends. When it is not, it is simply a convenient barter agreement.  If your marriage now has the characteristics, however subtle, of a barter exchange, then you must decide to make the other person your best friend – or face the inevitable consequences in #1 above.  You can do this.  It is not that much different than making any other person a friend.  But to do this you must stop counting!  If you find that you are acting in ways that would not promote friendship with anyone else, you must stop doing what you are doing no matter what the cost.  In the end, all that you give up is seeking your own ends – and of what value is that if you end up alone?

6.  Real marriage is commitment, not love.  Love (not romance) comes as a result of a lifetime commitment.  Love is the end of marriage, not the beginning.  Love must be developed, nurtured, cultivated for a long, long time before one day you look around and say, “I guess I really do love her.”  Love is longevity.  Romance is fireworks.  And fireworks explodes into nothing but the dark night.

Comments appreciated.

 

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A Request from Dr. Joe

Tuesday, July 05th, 2011 | Author:

Dr. Joe Arvay of Colorado asked me to post this request about marriage and families. I thought it would be good for all of us to think about it.

“This is not one of those gross emails. This is a serious challenge to all the men out there. This is a challenge to save your marriage, bless your wife, bless your family, and bless your life. Are you man enough to accept the challenge?

Ladies, will your son or husband accept this challange?

It’s time for us to Man Up. (click here to watch a short video) [Skip's note: just go to Dr. Joe's website to see the video] I challege every man to pray over his wife, (or furture wife if you are single, or son pray over your mom if she is single) every night at 9:00 pm for the rest of the month of July.

That’s it, just pray out loud with her. Pray a blessing, pray how much she is loved, speak words of love and encouragement to her. Are you man enough, if it sounds to simple, then just do it, every nigth for the rest of July.

You will be amazed at what will happen!

Max Blessings!

Dr. Joe”

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Wedding Gifts

Saturday, February 05th, 2011 | Author:

“I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in lovingkindness and in compassion, and I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness.  Then you will know the LORD.” Hosea 2:19-20

Betroth – God offers hope, even for the most miserable, most rebellious, most immoral of us.  Israel betrayed God’s trust.  Israel turned its back on God’s favor and commission.  In spite of all that, God promises restoration, renewal and revival.  But unless we know something about the Hebrew words here, we will miss how God is going to accomplish all this.

“Betroth” is the Hebrew verb ‘aras.  It means “to pledge in marriage, to become engaged.”  Of course, Hebrew engagement is not like the kind of wedding announcements we have in this age.  Betrothal was essentially a contract between families witnessed by the community.  Couples were considered “married” as soon as the contract was validated in spite of the fact that no sexual relationship occurred until after the wedding.  This expectation stands behind the story of Joseph and Mary and explains Joseph’s reaction to Mary’s pregnancy.  How was the contract validated?  By the exchange of the bride price and the dowry.  The groom gave gifts to the family of the bride signaling his intention to wed and cementing the agreement.  God tells Israel that He is giving gifts too.  These gifts will validate the marriage contract between God and Israel.  It is not simply an intention to someday restore the relationship that has been broken.  It is a guarantee that for all intents and purposes the marriage is done.  All that’s left is the celebration.

What kind of gifts will God give in order to secure this bride?  He will give righteousness, justice, lovingkindness, compassion and faithfulness.  In other words, He will give who He is, the essence of His character.   He pledges Himself to this marriage.

Righteousness (tsedeq) is in desperate short supply in Israel.  This is a gift that meets the most basic need of a fallen nation.  God will give a right relationship consisting of loyalty and commitment.  Where Israel has no tsedeq, God provides it.  Once tsedeq is in place, justice (mishpat) follows.  The gift of a right relationship precipitates the need for instruction, direction and guidance.  What fool would believe that God would provide righteousness and then leave His bride to figure out on her own how she should honor her husband and behave toward him?  Tsedeq and mishpat live and grow in an atmosphere of rahamim (compassion) and hesed (lovingkindness).  You might find it interesting that “compassion” is plural in this verse (Think about that for a few years).  Hesed is far more than lovingkindness.  It is the fundamental constituent of the covenant.

All of these gifts are exemplars of God’s faithfulness (‘emunah).  He is reliable!  He is constant!  He can be trusted!  If every groom provided these gifts to his bride, marriage might be considerably different than the compact for mutual possession that we have in our culture.  We should probably read Genesis 2:24 in light of Hosea 2:19-20 and we should certainly remind grooms that the model for their marriages is God’s marriage.  Do you think Paul might have had Hosea in mind when he wrote about the marriage between the Christ and the qehelah?

Topical Index:  marriage, gifts, betroth, ‘aras, hesed, ‘emunah, raham, tsedeq, mishpat, Hosea 2:19-20

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Marriage Counseling

Sunday, July 25th, 2010 | Author:

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 2 Corinthians 5:20

Be Reconciled – By now we have learned that God’s covenant relationship with us is reflected in the metaphor of marital faithfulness.  It’s not just about sexual fidelity but sex has a very big role to play in this metaphor, so much so that idolatry is viewed in sexual terms.  Just in case we thought that Paul wasn’t Jewish, he reminds us of his deep understanding of the Jewish marriage metaphor by choosing the Greek term katallasso as the verb about returning to the Lord.

Katallasso means “to reconcile,” but it doesn’t mean to come to a mental understanding of correct belief.  In fact, this verb is used in 1 Corinthians 7:11 about marriage reconciliation.  This Greek verb is the verb for marriage counseling.  It is the goal and the means by which estranged couples reunite.  And if Paul uses this verb as the actions required of broken marriages, how much more applicable is it when it comes to broken fellowship with the Great Lover.

Using katallasso has some interesting implications.  First, no one can be reconciled unless a relationship previously existed and is now broken.  We don’t tell strangers to be reconciled because they have never had a relationship with each other.  We encourage them to begin being friends, not to become friends again.  Paul’s use of this term implies that his readers had a prior relationship with God and that relationship has been broken because of their infidelity.  This certainly puts a kink in the application of this verse to pagan evangelism.  Is Paul suggesting that those who never knew God need to be reconciled, or is he saying that there are readers of this letter who once were part of the fellowship of followers but have fallen away?

Second, Paul’s use of katallasso parallels the Hebrew Scripture’s use of shuv.  God is constantly and consistently calling Israel to return (shuv) to Him, to be reconciled to Him and restored to His purpose.  But God doesn’t call the pagan nations to return.  They can’t return.  They were never with Him to begin with.  Pagans convert.  Jews return.  When Paul uses this parallel Greek verb, he implies that his audience consists of those who were once at home with God.  They are not pagans.  They are God’s divorced and estranged people.  When you think about the issues Paul addresses in his letter to Corinth, this should not be surprising.  The Messianic community in Corinth was in serious trouble, not because they didn’t know the one true God, but because their behavior was completely inconsistent with living according to God’s directions.  They were traitors to God’s government and adulterers to God’s covenant.  No wonder they needed reconciliation.

In the end, we discover that Paul is reaching out to those who were once part of the fellowship but now don’t live like it.  Their error is not believing in false gods.  Their error is divorcing God.  They knew the joy of His bond, but they chose to live for their own agendas.  Perhaps there are a lot more who need to be reconciled than we thought.  Perhaps the most important function of the “church” is divorce counseling with those who thought marriage to God only meant signing the contract.

Topical Index: katallasso, reconcile, marriage, pagan, 2 Corinthians 5:20

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Status: Married

Thursday, July 15th, 2010 | Author:

For you are a holy people to YHWH your God.  YHWH your God has chosen you to be His own treasure, out of all the people on the face of the earth. Deuteronomy 7:6

Chosen – Have you chosen one to marry?  Have you selected a partner for life?  YHWH has.  The Hebrew verb bahar is the verb for the action of choosing, of selecting through careful examination.  This verb is not used to describe the impulse shopper.  This is the act following meticulous examination.  It’s a life-long decision.  God and Israel didn’t get married in Las Vegas.

Why is it important for us to recognize the longevity of such a choice?  We need to see that God has not altered course in His covenant commitment to Israel.  Furthermore, the care taken in making this choice implies (and the Bible explicitly states) that this covenant relationship does not apply to any other people.  Only those who share in the history of this exclusive relationship are “married” to YHWH.  He is not husband to any others.

Certain immediate consequences arise from the exclusivity of this relationship.  First, it cannot be replaced with another one.  Israel may have been castigated for its unfaithfulness, but God did not leave the relationship because of Israel’s wandering.  The prophets make it abundantly clear that God’s faithfulness prevails.  There is no replacement of the bride.

Second, authors Halbertal and Margalit point out that the demand of the first commandment is not based on the uniqueness of the one true God.  It is rather based on a moral obligation connected to the exclusivity of the marriage between YHWH and Israel.  “The moral element exists because the very obligation to worship one God stems from the fact that God in Heaven chose Israel on earth as his wife, and so according to the norms of marital life, idolatry was forbidden for Israel.”[1] “You shall have no other gods before me,” is a statement about fidelity, not about sovereignty.  This is crucial.  It breaks the theological idea that our faithfulness to God depends on His uniqueness as God.  Instead, it suggests that our fidelity to God depends on His choice to wed Himself to us.  Of course, He isn’t husband to all nations or to just anyone who happens to acknowledge that He is God.  He is husband to Israel and to all those who take upon themselves the obligations of the marriage contract given to Israel.  Did you get that?

What happens to the martial contract when someone who does not accept the terms of agreement between God’s chosen and God decides to step into the place of the wife?  What would you do in your marriage if someone claimed he or she had replaced you?

Topical Index:  marriage, chosen, bahar, Deuteronomy 7:6

[1] Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, p. 22.

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Leverage

Thursday, February 18th, 2010 | Author:

“What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Matthew 19:6

Joined Together – Every translation I checked has the same wording, “joined together.”  But that doesn’t quite capture the overtones of this very unusual Greek verb (syzeugnymi).  The verb literally means “yoked together.”  It is found only twice in the LXX (Ezekiel 1:11 and 23).  Both are translations of the Hebrew verb havar.  When Yeshua spoke about the purpose of marriage, he must have used this Hebrew verb.  It isn’t just about “joining.”  It’s about pulling the load together.  Joining is what I do with lumber, committees and pipes.  But yoking implies work to be done.  No one hitches two animals in a yoke without having an objective in mind.  Yoking is about pulling in the same direction in order to accomplish the same purpose.

Two people who are joined together in an agreement for mutual pleasure, protection and provision are not necessarily yoked.  To be yoked is to share the same task.  This is the purpose of marriage as God sees it.  My spouse and I must share in the same God-given objective.  Without this, we are joined but not yoked.  Of course, that doesn’t mean we do the same job.  We may both have different tasks but we have the same objective.  What is that?  It is to live in yoked harmony, recapturing what it means to be one again in a display of perfect redemption.

In case the imagery wasn’t clear enough, we might look at the homophones of havar.  The consonants are Chet-Bet-Resh.  Changing the vowels from a to e produces a word that means a company, a band (of brothers) and a magic spell.  The concept behind all three is binding, whether by association or incantation.  Altering the vowels again produces haver, the Hebrew word for friendship.  Obviously, being yoked means more than a tandem work team.  It is closely associated with the deepest kind of community.

Finally, let’s take a glance at the pictograph.  Chet-Bet-Resh is the picture “a fence around a person in a house.”  Marriage is the fence around the house.  It binds husband and wife so that nothing and no one can interfere in the exercise of God’s prime directive for “one-flesh” union.  Oh, that doesn’t mean sex.  The prime directive is to act as regents of the heavenly kingdom here on earth so that His name may be glorified.

OK, here’s the bottom line.  Yoked means pulling together, not pulling apart.  Yoked means deep friendship, anchored in common commitment.  Yoked means not being alone.  Yoked means holding hands while we travel the path of God’s purpose in a broken world.  Yoked means not letting go.

Lots of couples are married, inside and outside the church.  Few are yoked.  Those who aren’t know they aren’t.  Those who are can’t imagine what it would be like not to be.

Topical Index:  marriage, yoked, joined, syzeugnymi, havar, Matthew 19:6

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Gender Idolatry

Monday, November 30th, 2009 | Author:

“No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other.” Matthew 6:24

Serve – Yeshua is pretty clear about divided loyalty.  No one, man or woman, can serve two masters.  The Greek word used here is douleuo, a verb that literally means to take the position of a servant, a doulos, a slave.  No one is able to accept slavery to two different authority figures.

Most of the time, we apply this famous verse to the issue of materialism.  We act as though the subsequent remark, “You cannot serve God and mammon,” is the only application of this verse.  But that is foolish.  Yeshua doesn’t restrict the principle to finances.  He merely makes one application of the general principle.  Divided loyalty doesn’t work.

Katherine Bushnell provides what I consider the final closing argument about the position of husbands and wives by applying this general principle to the case of marriage.  If no one can serve two masters, then it follows that no woman can serve two authority figures as the same time.  A woman cannot be in subjection to her husband and be in subjection to God.  The same general principle applies.  She will love one and despise the other; hold on to one and hate the other.  Clearly, Yeshua expected every follower to recognize the foolishness of this division and put loyalty to Him ahead of everything else.  This is no less the case in marriage.  A woman who serves her husband as a slave (douleuo) cannot be God’s slave, and a man who insists on a wife’s obeisance stands in opposition to the command of the Lord.  When Paul and Peter exhort wives to submit to their husbands, they simply cannot mean wives should act as their husbands’ slaves.  That would violate everything Scripture teaches about the proper relationships with the Lord.  If the principle is true about money, it is all the more true about relationships.

This tells us that submission is not servility.  It is not about “who’s in charge here,” or “who’s the head (authority) of the house.”  Submission must be something other than a hierarchy of slave service.  We are all enjoined to submit to one another as unto the Lord, so whatever submission means, it must apply equally to both husbands and wives.  It cannot be about an authority hierarchy or it would fall under the two-masters indictment.

What does it mean to serve from an Old Testament perspective?  The Hebrew word is avad, the word for work, serve and worship. God Himself uses this verb when He instructs Pharaoh to let the people go so that they might serve Him.  Now we see the bigger picture.  My service to God is my work and my worship.  With this in mind, no husband can possibly insist that his wife serve him.  That would require the wife to worship her husband.  It’s time to stop this gender idolatry.  The partners in a new covenant redeemed marriage do not endorse or demand an idolatrous hierarchy.  They act as one on their way back to the Garden.

Topical Index:  slave, master, marriage, douleuo, avad, authority, Matthew 6:24

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Picture This

Monday, September 14th, 2009 | Author:

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Genesis 2:24

Therefore – “Therefore” means that as a result of something previously explained, the following happens. Therefore, “therefore” is a very important word. Without it we will not know why a man (iysh) should forsake (that’s what it really says) his parents and cling (cleave) to his ish-sha. So, let’s back up. Adam offers the word “woman” because the woman comes out of the man. She is bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. Notice he does not say “blood of my blood.” That is already established in the creation of Man. But now Adam sees she is the perfect complement to him, the one he was designed to embrace as his equal under God. She comes from him.

When Adam has been separated so that he confronts himself in the person of Havvah, he is to be reunited with her. His destiny in this relationship is to re-establish the unity that existed before she was taken out of him. He is to bring her back to him – to recreate the unity so they are once again “one flesh.” That’s what the “therefore” is for.

“Therefore” is the Hebrew word ‘al-ken. It has a very interesting pictograph. It is the picture of looking toward the open palm of life. In other words, to move from one truth to another is to move toward life. In Scripture, “therefore” is the step from one revealed insight of God’s creation to another revealed insight. Knowledge is always connected with obedience. To understand the insight is to act upon it. ‘Al-ken is not restricted to our notion of logical conclusion or rational analysis. ‘Al-ken is about what we are to do as a result of what we understand. Its two components mean “what is foundational and what is correct that leads to action.”

Man and woman are two elements of the same original union. We are to bring about the restoration of that union by an exclusive relationship that reunites what was once a single entity. That is the purpose of marriage. It is not lust abatement, economic leverage or passionate possession. It is re-union. It is homecoming. It is two becoming one again. This is “soul-partner” language. It is what we are all yearning to find.

The two critical verbs in this ultimate declaration concerning marriage are equally informative. The first is azav. It means “to leave, abandon, forsake or loose.” The consonant picture is the idea of a leader cut off from the house. The second verb is davaq (to cling, to cleave, to join with). The pictograph of davaq (Dalet-Bet-Qof) shows us a tent door to a house behind. In Hebrew, the future is behind us, out of sight. We can see where we have been, but we are not able to see where we are going. This word is the picture of a new home, one that is in the future, over the horizon. So, these two verbs actually paint the same picture as the word description of the verse itself. A man is cut off from living in one home and finds a new home in his future. That new house is the place of the ‘ezer, the place where he is re-united with himself in union with the one who was made for him.

Perhaps husbands need to take some time to reflect on the biblical view of “one flesh;” a view not based in the Greek overtones of sex. Perhaps husbands need to discover what they are missing. Perhaps they need to realize that reunion is the goal of marriage. Then they may choose to become one again.

Topical Index: davaq, ‘al-ken, therefore, cling, marriage, Genesis 2:24

For today’s photo, click here – Upper Enchantment Basin, Stuart Range

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Added Sin

Thursday, September 03rd, 2009 | Author:

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, immorality, impurity, sensuality, . . Galatians 5:19

Adultery – Yesterday we looked at this same verse. Only yesterday the verse did not contain the word “adultery.” That’s because the current best scholarly edition of the Greek text from the oldest manuscripts does not have the word moicheia in it. That word is found in the Textus Receptus, the Greek text available when the King James Bible was translated. So, if you compare the King James to modern translations, you will see this difference. In King James, the deeds of the flesh include adultery. In modern translations, they do not. Isn’t that convenient? In 1611 those who committed adultery would not inherit the Kingdom. Apparently today they don’t have to worry about it.

Not quite! Even if it is added to the text, it has quite an important history. It is the same word Jesus uses when he speaks of the evil that proceeds from a man’s heart. In the Greek translation of the Tanakh, it is the word found in Jeremiah and Hosea when the prophets tell the people of God that they have whored after other gods. It is a very strong and fairly clear word. It means exactly what we think it means – illicit sex with someone who is married to another. However, the range of this word is a little bigger than the act of intercourse. It also means “to seduce” or “to be seduced” and it carries the sense of using deception and cunning to get control of someone. Here the word describes one of the actions of a larger class of actions called porneias. This larger group of actions is the next word in the list.

In order to understand why Jesus and Paul include adultery in the list of sins that separate us from God, we have to know a bit more about the contemporary culture of the first Century. The Greeks viewed adultery as a one-sided affair (pun intended). The prohibition against illicit sex with a married person applied basically only to women. Men were more or less expected to have sex with other single women and these actions were commonplace in the Greek and Roman world. In fact, the proliferation of sexual relations outside marriage became so great that one of the Roman Emperors actually passed a law against it – a law that had almost no effect on curbing the practice.

The Tanakh has a lot to say about adultery. God’s commandment against adultery establishes the commitment of both partners in marriage as one of the most important foundations of community life. Yeshua refers to God’s intention when He is confronted by the Pharisees on the issue of divorce. The reason for demanding fidelity in marriage is not only to protect the family. Marital fidelity is also a symbolic representation of exclusive loyalty to God. How we respect our vows with another person is a reflection of how we respect our commitments to God. This is the reason that prophets use the symbols of fidelity and adultery to point out the apostasy of Israel.

In the Tanakh, the focus of adultery is still on the adulterous woman. Obligation for fidelity seems to rest on her. However, when Yeshua and Paul used this word, they made it clear that the proper context involved both male and female partners in a marriage. For the first time in thousands of years, women were granted the same responsibility and the same respect as men. Neither party had license to pursue sexual relations with another person. God’s ideal of monogamous commitment was re-instated. In addition, Jesus amplified the requirement by teaching that the lustful desire for another was equivalent to the act of sexual exploitation. Adultery was not confined to the physical sexual act. It was a matter of the heart. In a culture that regarded sexual relations as commonplace as any other physical pleasure, this requirement radically separated early Christian believers from their contemporaries. Women were to be no less respected than men when it came to the unconditional divine command to love as Christ has loved. Women were not property and were not to be treated as such. Men were called to exhibit the same exclusive loyalty to their spouses that they would show to their God. The consequences for violating God’s intention were clear:

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge (Heb. 13:4)

Now that adultery is no longer the special burden of women alone, believers are told quite clearly that engaging in seduction, being seduced, considering and contemplating seduction and, of course, completing the act of seduction is a direct affront to the God who created us male and female. It circumvents His sovereignty by proclaiming (usually in secret) that I have the right to do what I wish with my body. That, says Paul, is entirely wrong. God gave you your body. It is His right to tell you how you are to treat it.

King David seduced Bathsheba. He violated God’s sacred intention. When he was confronted and he repented, he did not go first to Bathsheba to ask forgiveness. He went to God. He knew that his sin was in God’s face. Adultery is about our desire to dictate to God how we will use our bodies. That is a “right” we do not have.

Topical Index: adultery, moicheia, marriage, Galatians 5:19

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Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , ,  | 3 Comments
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