Marriage and the Bible - Part 27 - Exile and Reconstruction

The End of history of the Old Testament has Israel in exile. The northern kingdom destroyed by Assyria and the southern kingdom destroyed by Babylon. During the exile, the issues of mixed faith marriages become more apparent. Not only the fact that there is less control by the people of God as a slave/conquered people class in these empires, but opportunity to keep marriages in the faith diminishes.

Ezra records the people returning to Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple. In the midst of this Nehemiah reconstructs the walls of the city. Noteworthy for Marriage discussion is chapter 9 and 10 of Ezra where it is reported that Israelite men had married foreign women. The actions that follow are somewhat controversial.

The fact that the elders require these men to divorce their wives, even if they had children by them seems harsh as well as the fact that both wives and children are asked to leave. What makes it seem odd to me is that the Law allowed for the marriage of Israelite men to foreign women, if those women were virgins, and thus by covenant made Israelite. It also seems to violate the law requiring women and their children to be taken care of by the man.

Further complicating the issue of mixed marriage and what to do about it is Queen Esther, who marries a Persian King and joins his harem of women. Once she does this she still considers herself to be Israelite although based on the culture she became Persian the moment she slept with King Ahasuerus. So it is OK for a Jewish woman to engage in mixed marriage if it saves the Jews, but it is not OK for Jewish man to do it because it violates God's law?!

Possible what needs to be considered is this is one of those situations where Ezra records what happened but given that God himself is not recorded as doing or saying anything, it may simply be like the end of Judges. Everybody thinks they are doing the right thing, but really God's mind is unknown. Also, given the list of offenders in Ezra 10 is short, this may be a case of men marrying women who were not virgins.

If this is the case, divorce for the purpose of purity of faith is presented and we shall see if any other writer picks this idea up.

Next: Marriage Imagery in the Major Prophets

Marriage and the Bible -- Part 18 -- Many Things Resurface

Time to get back on this series as I suspect it is going to take a while.

Now as we journey through Joshua and Judges some events reinforce what we have already talked about in past articles.

1. Caleb gives away a daughter to the man who captured a city for him. Nice prize.

2. While Gideon is probably most famous for his fleece (above), In Judges 8:30-31 he is noted for a couple of other things a) he had many wives and b) one of those wives was a concubine. Polygamy and concubinage

3. Jephthah was the son of a harlot, not a wife, of Gilead so when Gilead has other sons they drive him away. Difference between the wife and non-wife when it comes to legal obligations for the man become evident here. Also, it seems there are consequences for the children as well.

4. Samson illustrates several things: 1) The intermarrying issue comes up again as Samson desires women outside the Israelite camp and 2) Samson's original wife is given away to another man -- wives as trading cards again.

5. Judges 19 -- A Levite's concubine is raped and it is because the Levite and the host where they were staying offer her up to the Benjamites. Demonstrates the real second class citizenship of concubines in this culture. Even though later this rape would fire a civil war in Israel, throwing her to the dogs was apparently not a difficult decision.

6. Judges 21 -- the need for wombs in the tribe of Benjamin means women are acquired from two sources that involve kidnapping and battle. The tribe needed baby making marriages and they found the wombs necessary and married them to the surviving Benjamites.

Your probably wondering how the women felt about all this -- truth is because of living in this culture they would have accepted it. As long as a man was providing for her and her children as well as giving her respectability by being married and not a harlot or beggar, a woman had no personal problem sharing her bed with a man. She would have considered it her duty and obligation as a wife.

Next: Ruth - Romance at Last?

Troubling Passages of Scripture -- Part 1 - Marriage and Rape

This post is a response to a friends comments on facebook. In particular the subject was about some passages that seem to show the God of the Old Testament as a mean, nasty S.O.B. In most cases, the bigger issue when looking at these kind of verses is that we judge the people in them by our standards and ethics based on our western culture. In short we paint someone, including God, as a mean because to our culture they are mean but to their culture what they are doing is perfectly normal.

This is particularly true in the cases involving rape and marriage.

Our Western culture and the Ancient Oriental Culture are very different and because of that it is often difficult to understand what is going on in some passages or at best we will misunderstand their meaning:

1. Marriage -- in our culture people choose who they marry, it is a mutually accepted event. In the Ancient Orient culture of the Bible -- marriages are arranged by parents and there is often very little choice in the matter. In that culture marriage meant obligation not romantic love.

2. Sex -- this also creates a difference in the understanding of the purpose of sexual intercourse. In our culture sex is about expression of love and romantic feelings, it can lead to children but when we have sex that is not the main reason we go at it so to speak. In the Oriental Culture, the opposite is very true -- it is about creating children and secondarily it was about enjoyment. Sex was about the fulfilment of a contract of marriage to them so that a man would have descendants and a woman was to provide the womb in which those descendants would be made.

3. Rape -- In both societies rape is something evil, but the consequences are very different. In our culture, the stigma of rape, while still bad for the woman (unfortunately), does not mean that another guy might not marry her and love her. Not so in the orient culture as such a woman is considered 'spoiled goods' and would have only two options for the rest of her life -- begging or prostitution.

4. The Role of Women -- in our society women are equals, heck they are sometimes superior to men as far as roles ands power. In the ancient culture this was not the case -- women we somewhere above cattle and they have very few options. There main things in the culture of the Old Testament that gave a woman value was 1) her ability to produce children and 2) who she was married to. Marriage was something a woman wanted to give her both so she would be respectable. Otherwise her options became very limited.

These things taken into consideration some of the things in the Bible are a little more clear.

Deuteronomy 22:28-29 -- seems kind of harsh to westerners that if a woman who is not engaged is raped she has to marry her attacker. But in that culture this is actually an action to protect the woman. In all other cases of rape the man is put to death because the woman is either engaged or married and thus she has someone who is obligated to take care of her. Not so with the unmarried woman who is not engaged. If the Law had the man killed, the woman would either become a beggar or a prostitute. The man is forced to marry her and thus that makes him obligated to provide for her. He also looses his right to divorce her which means he has to take care of her for the rest of his life. This also meant he would loose face and in this culture that means no other family would deal well with him. He would live with the shame of his actions forever and at the same time the woman is provided for. This is not a mean law but an act of compassion in this culture.

Judges 21 -- Now one thing we need to remember is that the Bible sometimes simply records events but makes no moral judgement and parts of the Bible have no actions by God recorded. Such is the case of Judges 21. The people have slaughtered the Benjamites to the point that the tribe if for all practical purposes - gone. The reason for this slaughter was actually a rape of a Levite's concubine in the previous chapter. When the whole tribe of Benjamin decides to protect the rapists (thus becoming gilty as well after the fact), the rest of Israel decides to go to war with them and destroy them. They succeed. Now at this point THEY are troubled that the tribe is gone but it never says God was troubled. What follows is, in my opinon, the actions of misguided people who feel they are doing God's work but are really just being idiots because they have made rash vows. This causes them to destroy a group of people, so the women could be used be the few remaining Benjamites as well as kidnapping some women from another town.

In this culture, though, the odd thing would have been this -- the women would have accepted it. To them, as long as a man was providing for her and giving her an opportunity to have children, most of them would have been content with this arrangement because neither marriage nor sex was about romantic love but obligation and procreation. Hard to believe to our Western ears but true.

Next: Part 2 - God Goes to War

Engaging God's Problem -- Disagreements with Chapter Three

Now some disagreements with Bart Ehrman's God's Problem chapter 3.
This is going to be longer ;-).

1. On page 61, Ehrman's makes a statement that suffering seems to be random but he says this in the context of the Nazi death camps. Sorry this was not random suffering, nor is any suffering that can ultimately be attributed to peoples' decisions. There is nothing involving chance about the death camps -- they were deliberate efforts to inflict human suffering by other humans.

2. On page 62, Bart also shows a poor understanding, like many Christians, about the Proverbs. Proverbs are not promises or guarantees. They are general principles that if lived improve one's chances of living a better life. This is why it is called a book of wisdom, not a book of promises.

3. I want to restate a point that became very clear once again by the time I got to page 64. Ehrman does not seem to see how humans have caused a majority if not all the suffering they receive. He continues to want to point the finger at God, but almost seems to be glib in taking about man's sinfulness leading to mankind's own suffering.

4. Ehrman states that because of Eve's sin she will now experience pain during childbirth. The fact is this passage actually indicates their would have been pain in childbirth already as it does not say cause pain in childbirth but -- "I will greatly multiply or increase you pain". Some suffering may have been present to mark warnings or trigger certain events.

5. When Ehrman considers the flood, I think he puts God in double jeopardy. Mankind has become completely and thoroughly evil. My guess is that humans causing suffering is run amok. God decides to destroy mankind (which would end the evil) to solve the problem. Ehrman sees this as extreme. God is thus damned if he doesn't --because here is God letting evil run amok again. God is damned if he does, now God is causing suffering Himself to 'innocent people'. Though how a people could be innocent if they are thinking evil all the time is beyond me.

6. Bart seems to not understand the seriousness of entering a covenant with God. He seems to think it unfair if God enforces the consequences when people break their word to Him. What's God supposed to do, beg them.

7. He calls Joshua's army ragtag. After training for 40 years and fighting against two people groups already, I doubt they were ragtag. They were trained experienced warriors.

8. "Every man did what was right in his own eyes" -- Bart interprets this improperly as a moral statement. The context of this statement is not moral but political -- "there was no king in those days" It is actually a statement of the freedom that existed in the period of the judges. I believe Samuel (who was against the monarchy) wrote Judges and if so this is actually a statement against becoming a monarchy. The fact is based on judges that when the people did right wilfully as a group they prospered and handled their problems well.

9. Second Isaiah Nonsense -- I have only one thing to say -- show me two separate texts. Oh you don't have any. Why is it that Bart here will believe this theory without a shred of textual evidence but then turn around and say the current manuscripts are false when they actually represent textual evidence. Seems odd that we will believe something with no evidence but then not believe something that actually has evidence.

10. By the time I was done with both chapter 2 and 3, I could safely say that Bart relies way to much on penal atonement theory as the only way to look sacrifice. I can say this there is almost no consideration of the possibilities other atonement theories might have on suffering and sacrifice. He assumes 'this interpretation" of things is the Biblical one and i know many who would beg to differ. This is one Christian way of looking at atonement, but it is by no means the only one.

11. Israel was overcome by her enemies because they didn't listen to God or the prophets. Had they listened they would not have been overcome. The times they are defeated is always in the context of their disobedience. Bart really tries to avoid Israeli culpability here. Part of the problem is that he believes many of the 'fulfilled prophecies' are written after the fact. But then their is no evidence for this either.

12. Bart asks the question: Is suffering really our fault? He states that freewill only answers part of the problem. He then gives a short list of things he believes cannot be explained by freewill. Allow me to engage them.

a. Famine -- actually famine is a preventable thing, if you do not believe me look at the US. When is the last time we had a famine and it is not because we have not had droughts. Why is this the case -- food storage when things are good (Joseph), as well as learning how to get greater yields out of crops and learning how to make food last longer. Many famines happen because of political repression -- the rulers starving their people. By not being wise, prudent or kind people starve. Our fault, we could do better.

b. Genocide -- Is God killing these people or man? Man.

c. AIDS (STDs in general) to be blunt if people followed God's plan of faithful matrimony sexually transmitted diseases of all types would disappear in a couple of generations. God has told us how to stop this we just refuse to listen.

d. Cancer other diseases -- God told us not to eat the tree or we would die -- mankind blew it we die. We all die of something. Who's fault? -- ours.

e. War -- it seems to me that people make decisions that result in wars -- and people make decisions to be soldiers and fight in them. I don't see God' to blame in this.

f. Natural disaster -- see d. Plus the fact that if we take Genesis literally then the introduction of natural disaster may be the result of The Flood which means: WHO got evil, so evil that God almost destroyed us all -- that would be mankind. The odd thing too is that we all know natural disasters happen and yet people rarely prepare for them like they could. Our fault again.

I am beginning to think that maybe all this suffering is just because mankind is sooooooo stupid and continues to refuse to learn from God.

Next: Agreements with chapter Four