Hitchhiker’s Guide to Babylon (4)

“Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce.   Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease.   Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.” Jeremiah 29:5-7 NASB

Take/give – Captive Israel is instructed to “take wives for your sons.” But how? Didn’t Babylon execute the young men who could become future enemies? That was fairly standard practice in the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar deported thousands of Jews to Babylon but that doesn’t mean he spared those who fought against him before his victory. Furthermore, those who were deported consisted of the nobility, the priests, the administrators and officials. These were not young men. Are we to imagine that these older men had children in Babylon and then waited for those children to reach marriageable age before they sought brides and grooms within their own community? Didn’t they also find wives and husbands just as Joseph did—from the culture of the masters. Didn’t God bless Joseph’s children, including them in the tribes, even though their mother was the daughter of a pagan priest? Why shouldn’t the same happen here, in Babylon? Nebuchadnezzar gave the captive population protection, rights and religious consideration. Wouldn’t this become fertile ground for establishing family relationships so that sons and daughters from both cultures became husbands and wives?

laqah is the common verb for taking in marriage. Now the text introduces natan, “to give.” Used twice as often as laqah, its range of meanings covers a very wide spectrum. In this verse, the action follows a well-established custom, the contractual process of marriage between families. Unlike our modern practice, individuals are not the focus of marriage. When a marriage occurs, it melds families. That is the point of marriage. The union is arranged because both families benefit. Therefore, we can expect that the Jews in exile would only take and give when both families shared common values.

Of course, none of this ignores the fact that marriages did take place within the families of the deported. The whole course of these instructions is intent on notifying the captives that their lives will be much like they were before, with actions like building, farming, marrying, having children and grandchildren. All of this erases the false prophets who claimed the exile would be short-lived. But none of it precludes reaching into the lives of the oppressors and converting them to be followers of YHVH. Families marry families and if God puts us in places where our sons and daughters are surrounded by idolatrous culture, then it’s our task to bring some of those families into our way of life so that there will be posterity. The task is not gender specific. Both men and women are to be fully involved since both men and women are affected.

If you’re one of the displaced, if you live where God is obscured or ignored, if your culture serves some god other than the God of Israel, then your assignment is obvious, for the sake of your children. You must be the Joseph who helped, and thereby win an audience with those who would one day belong to the same household.

Topical Index: take, laqah, give, natan, marriage, family, Jeremiah 29:5-7